Can I just rant a little to you all?
I’ve tried numerous times to help people from reddit set up an account and get started on Kbin (and lemmy), but 4 out of 5 times people can’t seem to grasp the concept of registering an account and starting to use this platform. Even breaking it down into 2 steps, with direct links… They get angry, and then ragequit their attempt in a huff saying how it’s too fucking complicated and it will never take off because it’s so hard.
Ok, I get that the fediverse is complicated if you think deeply about all the interconnectivity and federation etc, but there is no reason you even have to think about any of it to create an account and get started. Like, at all.
It reminds me so much of my 70/y old mother-in-law not immediately knowing how to work a tv remote and shoving it at me after 1.5 seconds saying “here, I can’t figure this out”. When in reality all she had to do was press the fucking big red button…
I’m just so frustrated with people’s complete lack of ability to help themselves.
A lot of these people are hedging their bets about what “platform” is going to “win”. I think complaints about technical difficulty are just masking the fact that they are susceptible to peer pressure, and most of their peers are (and will continue to be) on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Most people don’t know how DNS or TCP or SMTP works, but that doesn’t stop them from using the Internet or email. As others have pointed out, the federated nature of Lemmy et al has almost no impact on a user’s adoption, but they see people talking about the technical details, so it becomes the excuse.
I don’t particularly want a lot of low value contributors diluting the fediverse anyway. I see all of this as a skill check for admission.