In other places on around the web, (chiefly /r/RedditAlternatives) whenever Lemmy is brought up, invariably I see the exact same complaints from brand new accounts.
Lemmy is too complicated, it wont gain traction, can’t figure out how to use it, can’t log in, etc.
Now, I’m definitely more tech savvy than the average redditor, but I just don’t see the complaints. You can go to any Lemmy site, instantly start doomscrolling with a familiar UI, and sign up on all the instances I’ve tried has been frankly more simple than making a new reddit account. The only real complaint I have is the generally smaller volume of users and posts.
My only thought here is the words like federation and instances getting people hung up. Maybe join-lemmy.org being a highly ranked site is doing more harm than good by creating an additional barrier to the instances and content.
Ideally, the first link someone sees when googling Lemmy would be a global feed on a fairly generic instance, with a basic tagline akin to ‘front page of the internet.’ End users don’t need to care about the technical details, at least not until they’re interested in the platform.
So is this “Lemmy is too confusing” sentiment even real? And if not, what motive would there be to astroturf this?
If it is a real issue affecting would-be users, how can we address it?
People just install Voyager and use it just fine. Some of them don’t even know what instances they’re on
This is my point when it comes to federation stuff. You don’t need to understand it at all to use Lemmy. Join and start scrolling just like you would on reddit
That is probably the right way to get people started, assuming they want to do their browsing on their phone. The barrier to entry for those who just download Voyager is so low that it might help make up for a lack of understanding about other features. Then they just have to get over there not being an active community for everything under the sun.
Personally I find it worthwhile just for the extra civility there is here in the comments and the peace of mind I get from knowing that I’m probably interacting with real people rather than bots. Maybe those benefits of using Lemmy could be emphasized more than the benefits of instancing and federation.