Think about things from the point of view of someone who has never used Reddit or the fediverse, but you’ve heard about them both from recent news articles and want to see what they are about.
Reddit:- You Google Reddit and your first result is Reddit.com. You click the link and are presented with the front page. You from scroll from a few hours and end up signing up and staying.
Lemmy:- You Google Lemmy and your first result is a wiki article for Lemmy Kilmister… Your second result might be join-lemmy.org, which you’re smart enough to realise it’s probably more likely what the news is about.
You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code…
There is very little chance you’re going to investigate further.
If we want the fediverse to replace Reddit then either
A) Lemmy needs to improve its initial impression and Search engine optimization
B) We should be promoting a different platform with a better initial first impression.
I’d recommend kbin personally as it gives the same sort of experience as Reddit from the initial interaction.
3 of the top 4 results for me are fediverse related when searching for “lemmy”.
I don’t think its the signing up, its the lack of centralization/community. reddit was a singularity, the community is protesting en-masse because they felt they were all part of the same thing.
to me, the fediverse is a segmented… oddly connected group of overlapping communities. it lacks cohesion.
Agreed, and honestly this is why I don’t think these federated platforms will ever truly get to a large scale. The amount of disconnection on a service that is meant for connecting people together. Unless its changed, the fediverse will be only for the group of people who are quite comfortable with technology (beyond just downloading an app and creating an account). The complexity needs to be hidden.
The Fediverse is just the world wide social web. It lacks cohesion just the same way that the regular web does.
That’s going to limit its appeal for the people who see the internet as 3 cellphone apps. But that’s also ok. It doesn’t need to be for them.
If kbin/lemmy/the fediverse are to be something the average reddit user wants to migrate to, then a lot of ground has to be covered still. There is no “reddit migration” possible or remotely likely without significant change, as much as I want the fediverse to succeed and as cool as I find it
“If” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, to be honest.
The average internet user has been ok with everything collapsing into a monolithic search engine and 4 giant social websites owned by 3 guys.
Maybe we accept complexity and expect a little more out of the people who end up here. People whole like what things have become can stay where they are.
It’s also a hell of a lot clunkier. For all the talk of federation, it can be a total pain in the ass to view content on a non-native instance. Edits not loading, boosts/upvotes not taking, some posts just not showing up at all…