If the fediverse is to be adopted by the masses, the onboarding experience needs to change. A new user can’t be presented with a choice of instances as part of signing up or at least the process of making the choice needs to dumbed down a lot. I don’t know how or if this can be solved, I just know as someone involved in app development and UX that the current experience won’t work.

My mother would not know how to handle this paragraph: “Lemmy.world is one node in a network of hundreds of Lemmy instances. Before you sign up here, take a moment to explore all the instances at https://lemmyverse.net/. You may find an instance with a regional or topical emphasis that speaks to you! Don’t worry about being left out; Lemmy instances are interconnected so users from each instance can participate with communities on other instances.”

For mass adoption it needs to be so simple that even non-techie older people can get through it without feeling like they might be doing something wrong.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    11 days ago

    If people can’t understand what federation is then just send them directly to .world or lemm.ee or another big instance. If they have common sense then send them to join-lemmy and let them pick an instance. If someone is unable or unwilling to learn a very basic concept then they probably are not going to be a very good neighbor to have on the fediverse.

    I agree that the discoverability of communities needs improvement. I think that most instances should add starter pack like features with the most popular communities for people to choose to subscribe to when onboarding new users.

    In my opinion, finding the right and active communities to subscribe to is the biggest onboarding hurdle, not picking an instance. If picking an instance is a hurdle, that person wasn’t willing to try another site in the first place

  • nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
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    10 days ago

    You’re welcome to improve the text. That said the site is in large part aimed at instance admins and technical people. For normal users it’s better to link them directly to a specific instance.

  • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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    11 days ago

    "Lemmy has 47k monthly active users

    Feel free if you have any questions"

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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    11 days ago

    Your mother would ask you what the hell an “instance” was and then think that picking one meant she couldn’t look at posts from any others.

  • pound_heap@lemm.eeEnglish
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    11 days ago

    I think this should be baked into client apps.

    The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.

    Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone’s mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.

    Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
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    11 days ago

    Do we want ‘mass adoption’? and if so, why? and what would that look like, if we had it? how would we know that we had got it, and what good would the getting do us?

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
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      11 days ago

      Whether or not we want mass adoption I can’t say, but what we don’t want is to have a filter that only tech savvy people get past.

      We want all kinds of people on Lemmy, not just tech savvy people that push through the bad UX

  • Iapar@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    I disagree that we should do that.

    Internet became a shit show the second everyone got a smartphone and the barrier to entry evaporated.

    Needing to put in some effort to participate is a good filter for low effort people and their low effort worldviews.

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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    11 days ago

    That’s why I when I recommend lemmy to people I just send a link to an instance I think they’ll like. Instead of explaining the whole thing. If they join the instance with time federation will start to make sense to them and they might migrate later on.

    • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
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      11 days ago

      This.

      There are rough edges to the actual onboarding experience, of course, but the joinlemmy and joinmastodon and joinwahtever websites really aren’t a part of it. They’re more of an ad for admins, demonstrating that there’s an active network of sites already using the product. The fact that not even the product develoeprs seem to understand this is a real issue, though.

      Honestly, we need to stop sending people to “Lemmy” or “Mastodon” or whatever. Those are website engines. It’s like sending someone to “WordPress” when you want them to read your blog.

      • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        I look at it this way. If my grandma asks me how to “the email”, I’m not going to explain to her how she could choose outlook or gmail or whatever. I’m just going to choose and send the one I think is easiest for her to set up.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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    11 days ago

    Decentralization is an essential element of the Fediverse.

    I don’t get how you would get around choosing a server. Maybe make the recommendation algorithm easier? Like, ask clearer questions, ask fewer questions?

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      11 days ago

      I think there could at least be some kind of button or check box that says, “I don’t need to know how the Fediverse works, just sign me up!” and it would randomly choose one of the big instances.

  • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.todayEnglish
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    11 days ago

    This could be solved with a:

    Can’t make up your mind?

    Click here to choose a random general topic instance. Don’t worry, if you want to switch later you can.

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      11 days ago

      They can’t really switch later, though. At least, all of their submissions and comments stay at the old account

  • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    11 days ago

    lol not happening. Lemme just say it again: Lemmings are completely disconnected from reality. They can’t fathom that some people can’t or don’t want to spend time figuring that out. They will argue for days that “it’s not that hard” and people should just learn how to do it or stop being lazy or whatever before doing anything about it.

    Edit: I hadn’t even read the other comments in this thread before I typed this. There’s someone literally saying they want to gatekeep the fediverse from people without tech knowledge.

    • curry@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      It’s the same with linux distros. One of the instances could get a critical mass of newbies but we will still have die-hards trying to gatekeep the entire fediverse.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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    11 days ago

    I’m not sure I’d like that. I kind of like there being a technological filter. It prevents the Fediverse from turning into Facebook or X. The public Internet has been around and part of society for 40 years now. If you still don’t get it in 2025, that ain’t everyone else’s fault. People using the Internet in the 90s had to deal with way more than just figuring out what an “instance” is.

  • ekZepp@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    11 days ago

    They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the Lazy ass new users with the option to manually join any instances.

  • Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    What if instances could be tagged with their focus?

    Then during an app user creation they could click a few “topics” and narrow down the choices to a much shorter list including member counts?