I know it’s hard for tech literate people to understand but choosing a server is daunting. Most people chose their email because it was linked to a service they were already familiar with like Google and Microsoft. There’s no familiarity with the Lemmy or mastodon instances and there are so many of them that people who already have trouble learning new technologies get to deal with decision fatigue on top of that. People like what is familiar and having a service that mostly works the same is still very confusing for them.
I am tech literate and even for me the choice of “which instance to register on” delayed my Lemmy sign up for 2 weeks. I eventually just signed up on 3 of them but now I have 3 different accounts each with their own set of subscriptions and favorites.
Aside from that, the Lemmy UI is a usability disaster and needs an overhaul. I’ve been thinking of giving that a try but I already have other projects that are taking up all my free time at the moment.
The “which instance to join” thing is the worst for me. People here are claiming at the same time that “it doesn’t matter because fediverse” and “it does matter because you need to find one that you agree with their stance/philosophy/admin-decisions”.
I was thinking that for this to work, each instance should had a mandatory landing page with the “about us”, but this is not a solution either. How do you know that the instance has competent sysadmins? I’ve seen instances with exposed logs with IPs, private info etc. Its impossible to know and its literally roulette.
I have ended up having a different account in different intsance in each of my devices, which I actually enjoy tbh but claiming “just sign up” is bullshit. I may even sign up in one that the admin decides to shut down tomorrow. If I don’t know the risks of randomly selecting an instance it is almost certain that something will happen that will piss me off.
That’s what bothers me about these sorts of threads. We represent a completely self-selected group of people who have not just managed to create accounts on the Fediverse, but then decided to stick around.
Of course we think it’s simple.
We do not represent “typical users” (whatever that means) of mainstream platforms, and yes, Mastodon, Lemmy etc. have a lot of work ahead of them to make themselves appealing to those users.
It doesn’t really help to talk about how simple the Fediverse is, or to shame people who find it confusing. The only thing that will actually help take it mainstream is UX work to remove the friction and make it as simple to use as we claim it is.
Going to play devil’s advocate and say this is similar to the early days of e-mail, and e-mail has since matured quite a bit. Normal users don’t need to worry about the intricacies of IMAP or POP3 or SMTP in general.
Idk, I wasn’t really around in those early days, but it’s my guess that the experience wasn’t as turnkey as it is now.
Similarly, we’re in the early days of the fediverse, and while it’s not as complicated as the aforementioned example, I do believe the experience is going to get more and more streamlined as time goes on, just as it did with email.
At the moment I’m just glad they don’t charge for use the way old email did, and in some cases, still do
Hey sorry I deleted my comment b/c I realized it was basically the same as the top comment. But since you replied, what I said was: “Anyone who claims the Fediverse is hard… just ask them if they use email. Is that hard?”.
And yea to be fair, it’s not just federation that makes it hard. There are still some missing features that could smooth over the complexities of federation.
It doesn’t matter what “instance” you sign up for with email, you’ll get all mail. But just the email for YOU. If you pick federated on Mastodon you get half a billion messages a minute and none of them are for you.
Anyone who claims the Fediverse is hard… just ask them if they use email. Is that hard?
I know it’s hard for tech literate people to understand but choosing a server is daunting. Most people chose their email because it was linked to a service they were already familiar with like Google and Microsoft. There’s no familiarity with the Lemmy or mastodon instances and there are so many of them that people who already have trouble learning new technologies get to deal with decision fatigue on top of that. People like what is familiar and having a service that mostly works the same is still very confusing for them.
I am tech literate and even for me the choice of “which instance to register on” delayed my Lemmy sign up for 2 weeks. I eventually just signed up on 3 of them but now I have 3 different accounts each with their own set of subscriptions and favorites.
Aside from that, the Lemmy UI is a usability disaster and needs an overhaul. I’ve been thinking of giving that a try but I already have other projects that are taking up all my free time at the moment.
Oh, and then there’s the bugs.
The “which instance to join” thing is the worst for me. People here are claiming at the same time that “it doesn’t matter because fediverse” and “it does matter because you need to find one that you agree with their stance/philosophy/admin-decisions”.
I was thinking that for this to work, each instance should had a mandatory landing page with the “about us”, but this is not a solution either. How do you know that the instance has competent sysadmins? I’ve seen instances with exposed logs with IPs, private info etc. Its impossible to know and its literally roulette.
I have ended up having a different account in different intsance in each of my devices, which I actually enjoy tbh but claiming “just sign up” is bullshit. I may even sign up in one that the admin decides to shut down tomorrow. If I don’t know the risks of randomly selecting an instance it is almost certain that something will happen that will piss me off.
That’s what bothers me about these sorts of threads. We represent a completely self-selected group of people who have not just managed to create accounts on the Fediverse, but then decided to stick around.
Of course we think it’s simple.
We do not represent “typical users” (whatever that means) of mainstream platforms, and yes, Mastodon, Lemmy etc. have a lot of work ahead of them to make themselves appealing to those users.
It doesn’t really help to talk about how simple the Fediverse is, or to shame people who find it confusing. The only thing that will actually help take it mainstream is UX work to remove the friction and make it as simple to use as we claim it is.
deleted by creator
Going to play devil’s advocate and say this is similar to the early days of e-mail, and e-mail has since matured quite a bit. Normal users don’t need to worry about the intricacies of IMAP or POP3 or SMTP in general.
Idk, I wasn’t really around in those early days, but it’s my guess that the experience wasn’t as turnkey as it is now.
Similarly, we’re in the early days of the fediverse, and while it’s not as complicated as the aforementioned example, I do believe the experience is going to get more and more streamlined as time goes on, just as it did with email.
At the moment I’m just glad they don’t charge for use the way old email did, and in some cases, still do
Hey sorry I deleted my comment b/c I realized it was basically the same as the top comment. But since you replied, what I said was: “Anyone who claims the Fediverse is hard… just ask them if they use email. Is that hard?”.
And yea to be fair, it’s not just federation that makes it hard. There are still some missing features that could smooth over the complexities of federation.
It doesn’t matter what “instance” you sign up for with email, you’ll get all mail. But just the email for YOU. If you pick federated on Mastodon you get half a billion messages a minute and none of them are for you.