Whenever barrier to entry is discussed for lemmy, and reducing confusion for different servers is brought up, all of the isolationist comments come out of the woodwork.

Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?

We have a platform that seems to be working and slowly growing. Shouldnt we want good defaults in place to give the best possible experience with minimal user effort?

  • BillWigly@kbin.earth
    1·
    5 days ago

    I’m a reddit migrant, making a move on as many media platforms as possible away from corpo ones over to more decentralized or open source ones

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    My comments in other threads are not intended to be isolationist, and when I reas others I fear you misconstrue many.

    We are not saying “let them stay on Reddit and other corporate media”. We are saying “teach them, preach the benefit, and when they want to come, and are ready to come, they will.”

    That is how you nurture a growing community, vs “make line go up.”

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    43·
    9 days ago

    This is probably in response to the thread here.

    I know I said something that may be taken this way, and I stand by it so I’ll repeat it here:

    There was something in retail I learned. There are people who will come in on sale days, and they will demand perfect customer service, and demand the lowest prices, and ask for more sales and bring coupons, all while talking about how they spend so much money there and that they’re so loyal. Then they’ll leave and you’ll never see them again

    You can spend time and effort with them, the ones who only care about the cheapest place, or you can spend time with the customers who are actually there regularly. The ones who get to know your names, who are loyal, or enjoy a sale sure but also will be there even when there isn’t one.

    I don’t want to attract users simply because reddit bad, and cater our experience for people who can’t bother to learn just the basic tenant of the fediverse. I want to cater our experiences for those who are here daily, and the ones who are genuinely interested. It’s the longer slower approach, but we’ll stay more true to our goals

    I’m not afraid of saying that yes, that is my opinion. I’ve helped a lot of people migrate here away from Reddit, and I also hold the opinion that sign up is a bit daunting for users - but it’s not impossible and it’s gotten much easier than it was even just a few years ago.

    What I see more often from people dipping their toes into the fediverse is constant complaining and whining. I’ve been through… 5-6 waves of new reddimigrants, and each time there are a quiet majority who pick up the fediverse and start running with it, and I’ve chatted with a good many of them. However, there’s also a major chunk of people who immediately start complaining. There isn’t feature parity, it’s more confusing, it’s less stable, why can’t it do video - all of which have been answered a thousand times and are constantly improving.

    To me it’s exactly like the people shopping for sales. They come in, demand the absolute best service, complain that their niche communities aren’t thriving, and refuse to even stick around for a week to see what it’s like. If they aren’t willing to even do the bare minimum of finding out “What is an instance?” then they’re not going to stick around when we tell them that none of us can afford to host video, or that we will never have stability like Reddit, or this, or that. So I say let them leave. We came here to the fediverse because we want to build something different, and we know there are shortcomings that come with it.

    If people want to join earnestly and help us build something here, curate small communities that we can be proud of, then I welcome them with open arms. If they can’t even bother to read the first two sentences on the joinlemmy page, well, you make your own success there.

    • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      9 days ago

      I’ll never understand people who knowingly come to a currently bare-bones community (said with love!) and then complain that it’s bare-bones, and not bother to engage and help it grow.

      Like no shit it’s nowhere near as huge as Reddit. Guess how content and engagement happen? By posting content and engaging! Ugh. /rant

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
        12·
        9 days ago

        I’ve quickly realized that many of them are people who wouldn’t participate anyway, they just want constant content for free and will never post or add to the conversation.

        It’s well known that here on the fediverse there’s a much larger percentage of people who participate vs those on Reddit. We really do make our own way here. For others, they have to be willing to put in even just a little effort

    • solarvalleys@lemmy.ca
      18·
      9 days ago

      Ever since I read this blog post, The Indie Web for Everyone, I can’t stop thinking about this quote when thinking about fediverse:

      It’s like everyone has spent the last few years in a giant all-inclusive resort, screaming at each other for attention at the buffet. Now we’re moving into nice little bed-and-breakfast places, but we’re complaining because it takes slightly more effort to book a room, and the free WIFI isn’t as fast. Maybe its time to rethink some of these expectations. Maybe we need some of that early internet vibe back and be ok with smaller, closer communities. Maybe we can even get some of the fun back and start exploring again, instead of expecting everything to be automatically delivered to us in real time.

      I think you are right, as much as fediverse is an alternative to the current social media, by its design it requires a completely different culture than how the general public has became used to interacting with the web - as a commodity.

  • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    8 days ago

    Currently, it seems most Lemmy users are very technically inclined, there are a lot of software devs and sysadmins. I certainly don’t mind that, but I would love to see a more diverse demographic. I do feel like some people here seem to think that technical knowledge strongly correlates with the ability to have intelligent discussions, which I don’t.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
      8·
      8 days ago

      I’m mechanically inclined, worked on cars profesionally for a few years, been in manufacturing for over ten years now. I can research enough to get around a linux terminal, but I learned compuers on apple IIe and commodore 64.

    • DacoTaco@lemmy.world
      5·
      8 days ago

      How dare you assume we are all software devs or sys admins!!
      … I am a software dev though hahaha ;p
      Jokes aside, i agree. We are all humans and diversity is important so we dont alienate ourselves to the outside world and create echo chambers.

    • SamboT@lemmy.worldOP
      12·
      9 days ago

      Its just confusing to me because lemmy is made to give anyone their preferred corner.

      Asking for low barrier to the largest instances (entry points for new users) seems like a different ask than for professional lemmings to give up their platform.

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
        4·
        9 days ago

        Its just confusing to me because lemmy is made to give anyone their preferred corner.

        In theory, yes. In practice, it depends.

        It’s too easy for trolls to manipulate the way Lemmy is structured. If they get banned on one instance, they can create a dozen more accounts on other instances.

        In general, yes. Everyone does their own thing and goes where they want which is awesome. Unfortunately, trolls can do the same on a much grander scale than on Reddit.

      • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        Asking for low barrier to the largest instances

        And what defines a low barrier for entry? I just checked the sign-up process for Lemmy.world, and it’s just email > password > agree to ToS > complete a Recapcha. All on one page. How is that any different to any corporate social media site?

        The big hassle for signing up for Lemmy is finding an instance that matches your preferences, but I don’t see how that’s possible to get around. The only thing I can think of is streamlining join-lemmy.org to better direct people to a fitting server.

        I know I’m being combatative here, but the thing that bugs me people keep parrotting the same complaints of “there’s too much friction” when that problem has pretty much been fixed. Please focus on the currently existing problems instead

  • Presi300@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    9 days ago

    In my opinion, everyone who is like “we only want more people who understand the fediverse” are stupid.

    How are people supposed to learn and understand the fediverse if they don’t try it?

    The more people we get off of corporate bullshit, the better.

    • sweetgemberry@lemmy.world
      5·
      8 days ago

      I’ll admit that I don’t really understand it and I’ve been here since the start on various accounts over various instances. I don’t want to understand it, either.

      I never got on with mastodon, nor really any of the other fediverse other than Lemmy. Simply because I never used their corporate counterparts. I also don’t really care about other instances within Lemmy. I hate the politics between them. Though I understand why it exists, it makes this place much less enjoyable due to the hostility.

      I’m just here to keep me off Reddit because I’d been there so long that it became hard to walk away. Lemmy feeds that addiction, but it doesn’t provide the wealth of information that was readily available on modern Reddit. It feels a lot like old Reddit but with less rage comic and animal advice memes.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      ☝️🤓

      Everyone who is like “we only want more people who understand the fediverse” are is stupid.

      Everyone are stupid ❌

      Everyone is stupid ✅

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    22·
    9 days ago

    Who’s “we”? I don’t run a lemmy instance. I’m not against new users. I’m also not opposed to a lot of hard work and money going into making the experience better, but since I’m not providing either - who’s “we”?

    • SamboT@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      9 days ago

      Lemmy.world users, and maybe other instances.

      Its not about demanding new features from people who volunteer their time and money, its about the community being understood and maybe having some consesus about what we’d like to see because i do imagine the people who manage this instance care about what users want.

      And its nice to talk about these things directly instead of having people speaking for the instance in a hundred conflicting ways in random posts.

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
        13·
        9 days ago

        Broader adoption of lemmy ensures more longevity, and likely better, more diverse development. Ignore the haters. Everyone was new here at some point and the last thing we should do is pull up the ladder behind us.

        Change is good. Change is life. People who oppose change for its own sake are in favor of stagnation.

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 days ago

        I’m one of those, and km not against it.

        Seems like a pretty tiny minority you’re talking about.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
      6·
      9 days ago

      I got my instance, but I’m not really sure how to handle it if people started living on it :-)

      It’s all my hardware on a gigabit fiber link. Any advice greatly appreciated.

  • adaveinthelife@lemmy.ca
    22·
    8 days ago

    Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

    Diversity is paramount for social media, otherwise it becomes an echo chamber or worse.

    Say what you will about the average redditor, but remember at a certain point they’re just the average person.

    I mean, love me some Linux nerds and Germans as much as the rest of you but lemmy needs more.

    • starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      8 days ago

      Sure, but at the same time all of the worst comments I’ve seen have been from instances that were mainly linked to from reddit i.e. lemmy.world. Like, rage inducing misinformation. I prefer the much higher quality of discussions on lemmy which I would rarely see on reddit, but it is tiring seeing linux lotr star trek politics be 99.9% of the content / discussions…

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    18·
    9 days ago

    What I’ve seen many times is people stating the opinion that we don’t need to grow. We’re not some big commercial platform and we don’t need to satisfy some investors. Growth will come naturally. Or it won’t.

    My opinion is, judging by the numbers… We aren’t growing for quite some time now, so Lemmy will most likely stay what it is. I’d love if it were a super attractive place, though. And everybody would like to join.

    Sane defaults are always a good idea. I’m a bit split on the “minimal effort” though. Minimal effort is letting some algorithms dictate what to consume, simple truths, and not bothering with complicated stuff like freedom or privacy.

    And what I often see is people trying to solve such problems solely by technical means. And I think that’s not even half of it. We mainly need a nice and welcoming atmosphere, nice and interesting people, good content…

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
      12·
      9 days ago

      I think we were growing and then the election cycle happened.

      Kind of wish lemmy happened a decade earlier before all the constant rage.

      • Karmmah@lemmy.world
        6·
        9 days ago

        A decade ago I don’t think the circumstances would have allowed lemmy to exist because reddit was still in its growing phase and it was not as commonly known and appreciated as it is today.

        It would have been cool to develop lemmy like that but I think now is the right time for people to realise why lemmy should exist.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        4·
        9 days ago

        I don’t think this is the case. Judging by the statistics, we’ve peaked in 2023 and we’ve been on the decline since. And now we’ve pretty much homed in somewhere between 40k and 50k active users. But that’s way too early to be connected to the election cycle. But good question what would have happened if it had been around earlier. I suppose the Fediverse isn’t even that young. We had predecessors of the current platforms in the early 2010s already. And it’s been roughly 10 years since Mastodon got launched and ActivityPub got standardized.

    • SamboT@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      9 days ago

      I dont understand whats different about starting from nothing and curating your feeds… versus starting from a good default and curating your feeds.

      “Professional users” can disable or customize however they want. And it seems like a new user thing anyways… where established users wouldnt even notice a difference.

      Its literally just a more compelling starting point.

      I think proving that we dont need to be big commercial platform to be a big platform is an important milestone for foss. Big platforms should appeal to the masses. Any instance that wants to break off is obviously fine but when we are talking about the popular entry points to lemmy… thats where we should not be elitest.

      Thanks for your comment.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        6·
        9 days ago

        Hmmh, I don’t think it’s even elitism in this case. Feels to me like something else. But I’m the wrong person to ask, since I do not share that opinion.

        I think your proposal with default subscriptions (or whatever it is exactly) is a solid idea, though. In fact, I’ve heard some people scroll through the “All” feed here on Lemmy and subsequently block the things they’re not interested in. I’d say that’s about the same direction. And I mean why not? We also have sorting by popular, and things are popular for a reason. So we might as well subscribe new users to the 10 most popular communities.

        It’s a bit more complicated than just that, we’d have to take some care not to entirely destroy diversity and pour some cement over the whole thing, or we end up with a small echo chamber of just lemmy.world and AskLemmy and NoStupidQuestions… But I guess there might be some solution in beween the extremes. And things might change due to the size of the platform. An “All” feed might still be useful at our current size, but might prove to become infeasable once we grow.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    9 days ago

    I haven’t seen many comments not wanting people to join but more like, we are fine even if they don’t.

    When I joined lemmy, I found it to be rather easy, so I never understood this barrier to entry.

    I think it’s because someone just linked me to an instance, so I just went there and signed up like a regular site.

    Ideally we want more users and for the fediverse to hit critical mass but idk how that can ever happen when corporate social media sites will always have a marketing budget.

    So imo it’s not the difficulty, it’s like wondering why people keep paying for certain software when there are free alternatives, cause corporate software will always be more dumbed down.

  • stinerman@midwest.socialEnglish
    12·
    9 days ago

    Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?

    This has come up on Mastodon as well. Mastodon has a default server, which is mastodon.social. It’s somewhat controversial. I think it’s helped adoption but it’s also putting the ecosystem more under Mastodon gGmbH’s thumb…which is not great. I myself am on mastodon.social because it seemed like a sane default. I’d have chosen differently if I knew what I know now.

    I’m not as plugged into what the defaults are for Lemmy or if there even are any. I’m sure there is room for improvement, but it is fair to say there are a lot of people who willfully refuse to understand how federated software works and act like it’s so complicated that no mortal can possibly understand it.

    Can we do a lot more to help people who wish to join decentralized social media? Yes, absolutely. Should we give people shit for acting like choosing a server is so hard and confusing that they’d rather be on fascist-aligned platforms? Also yes.

    • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      9 days ago

      I literally picked my mastodon instance because it had a really high character limit. There was basically nothing differentiating Lemmy instances besides vague things like values or who they were defederated with.

  • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    9 days ago

    This isn’t a lemmy only thing.

    Seen this since the 90’s and the start of Eternal September. ‘How dare we change or help these constant Lusers show up. How DARE we allow for differing opinions. Our way is the ONLY right way! Why should we allow this CANCER to infect us?’

    To further emphasize that point: I’m part of a tilde community. I have been working on a migration document highlighting services and other options for social media migrants. The local newsgroup is sparcely populated. So the one technical guy that’s a frequent poster had this to say:

    I think these followers and likes counters’ places unleash the wrong attitude. People write stuff to collect these by pleasing the potential reader instead of writing just facts. Fights over points and factually wrong answers that gained a lot of up-votes drove me away from reddit and SE. Some even write BS and get terribly upset if you point them to a man page that contradicts their statements.

    Communication media should fit the job. Chats be volatile and fast while mail, mailing lists and news are allowing detailed discussions in long articles.

    Sending people from twitXter or FB to Mastodon does not help them evolve. It just gives addicts a supposedly more free variant of their drug instead of getting them away from it.

    Less is more!

    The isolationists are wrong, and to me would rather watch the world burn for the sake of being proven right in their isolation than to help people.