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1st Feb is #GlobalSwitchDay
(media.piefed.social)
Today the first of Feb is Global Switch day, Spread awareness of the Fediverse in your communities.
FTFY
I've tried to promote Lemmy on Reddit in the past, only to be met with people complaining about the really old UI and bad UX, they also complain about tankies.
PieFed doesn't have that bad rep, so I've found it easier to promote, both lead to the Fedivers so either is a win.
PieFed has its own share of dodgy stuff:
UX/UI are only as bad as the client is. For me, Lemmy is indistinguishable from reddit (if you don't look at numbers of comments), because I use Lemmy Sync, as I used Reddit Sync before
I used Lemmy for months, mostly in the browser and my UX was absolutely horrible.
The default browser UI sucks.
I had to try many different settings and eventually through a lot of effort found the Photon UI, which is nice.
The vast majority of users just won't go through that effort. PieFed's default UI is quite clean and modern and much nicer to use, which is why I promote it instead
How long ago? It was a bit flaky a couple of years ago but for me now it's perfect - like Reddit UI before it enshittified.
I'm sorry but the default Lemmy UI is objectively bad, it breaks so many UX principles.
Photon is good, but go to Lemmy.world and it looks like a website built in the early 90's
If it looks like anything of the past then it looks like the web from 10-15 years ago pre-mass-enshittification, maybe people have forgotten what non user hostile websites look like.
Photon has infinite scrolling, which is horrible.
Infinite scrolling is optional and also a feature the majority of users (not hyper specific tech nerds) want. If we are to have any hope of bringing the average social media user onto these platforms, we have to design it for them. Most of the addictiveness comes from the algorithm (lemmy lacks a personalized one), not necessarily the infinite scrolling itself
Yes there's been enshitification, but not everything has gotten worse. UI's are much better than the past.
Why is infinite scrolling a bad UX? It saves the user from clicking next-page
You could argue that it's dark-ux, but it's not bad-ux
It prevents you from keeping track of how much you've read and makes the site more addictive with no significant upside, and even without that it's worse UX when you try to go back and read something from earlier you have no idea where it is. Commercial sites still use it because they care more about keeping users on the platform than overall UX, but there's no need for software like Lemmy to do it. Yes, dark UX is bad UX, it's the worst kind in fact.
You're describing Dark-UI
Dark-UI isn't Bad-UX
Good UX = Easier to use, Easier to navigate, etc. Good UX makes people use your platform more because there is less friction.
If it works against the user's intention then I'd say that's friction of another sort. For example if you go to a website and scroll more than you wanted to due to dark UX (as opposed to good content), the user may not immediately realise it's a bad experience for them, but still they've wasted extra time hence the site has got in the way of what they were originally trying to achieve. It's become normalised so it's not always recognised.
On a personal note, I want to be able to go on Lemmy and say "OK, I'll read the top 2 pages of my subscribed communities" and let that be it, that's a much more reasonable way of approaching a large amount of content.
Okay then recommend Lemmy with PhotonUI?
Too much friction, and that's really bad UX.
And now you have to explain to people why the default UI sucks. I tried to promote https://p.lemmy.world/ to people, and they tell me to get lost with that dodgy virus link.
Don't link p.lemmy.world. it's well over a year out of date.
phtn.app probably looks a bit less suspicious, and also lets you use any Lemmy/Piefed instance.
You could say it as "phtn.app is a web portal for the fediverse" or something like that because the concept of web apps is confusing to many
People are very sensitive and suspect of dodgy links.
If you tell someone 'hey checkout lemmy, PS the default UI sucks so actually go to phtn.app'
they simply don't click and think you're trying to scam them
That's just fine. Don't worry yourself too much. I don't know about everyone else, but I only want the people open to making a switch here. If you're so put off by trying something new that you aren't willing to give it a chance, then I'm not going to be begging for you to join my community.
I honestly use the Voyager web client in my desktop PC, it works pretty well.
I tried out a handful of Lemmy apps and Thunder is what I used for most of it but then switched to Summit. There's aspects I like about both and aspects I dislike about both, but they don't have a bad UI.
i recommend trying out thunder, I just switched from sync.
It's foss and actively developed
I’m checking in with voyager here, and I came from the reddit Apollo app and I feel the same.
It was practically seamless, though I’ve considered switching to try out other clients.
Tried Piefed and find it clunky with my current level of familiarity
"Complain about tankies" it's the same fediverse... With the same content...
Sure but PieFed doesn't seem to have a tankie problem. They're blocked from what I've seen.
Even if that wasn't the case, PieFed doesn't have a reputation for having a tankie problem.
The bottom line is when I promote PieFed I don't get people on reddit telling me the UI sucked and that it's flooded with pro-russia propaganda.
So I find it more efficient to promote PieFed
Anyone can instance can defederate from any other instance in Lemmy, not that hard to understand.
I agree, and I think it's a shame it has gotten to this point, but I understand his viewpoint completely and have seen the interactions myself. At this point it's simply more efficient to promote Piefed on Reddit instead of Lemmy, because you want the absolute least amount of friction for potential new users. Literally any single minor inconvenience/negative thing will cause people to not even consider trying it out. Lemmy has unfortunately already accumulated a reputation, and if you promote it you are very likely to run into comments about tankies which is typically enough to scare potential new users away.
At the end of the day it shouldn't matter to us which software people use, as long as we get more new users into the ecosystem.
Piefed starts out with poisoning the ecosystem, as linked here quite a few times by redwizard.
Sadly piefed isnt innocent either, they are trying to poison the AP protocol: https://communick.news/comment/8015757
It's a shame to see that people think of Lemmy creators as some sort of villains.
I created my account on .ml before the Reddit blackout, but there wasn't much content there, so I didn't use it much. I properly started using it after the "Reddit blackout," and that's when I learned about the so-called "tankie problem." I've met people with weird opinions, but the developers and Marxists in general aren't bad people. People just usually make a strawmen to argue against.
Anyway, none of their opinions are reflected in the software. Lemmy is done in a truly democratic and user-oriented way, and I respect them for it.
I hear that, but the thing is anyone can block whatever/whoever they feel the need to in the fediverse. I truly believe server admins should federate across the board, as it's a disservice to end users only allowing federation with certain servers based on admin preference.
As far as UI and UX go, Lemmy's devs are some of the biggest players in the overall fediverse functionality. So while the UI/UX could use some more attention in select areas, being able to interact with the other platforms is a much bigger aspect to the appeal of the fediverse! The Lemmy devs really do deserve a lot more credit for their work, regardless on their opinions or how ~~the~~ they approach discussing them.
Lemmy doesn't truly block stuff and the devs refuse to fix that
Really? Huh, I have a decent amount of communities blocked and I've never seen a single post from anyone of them after implementing the block
I’m assuming they mean it isn’t a two way block. Blocked users can still interact with your posts/comments, you just can’t see them. I personally think that should be how it works, but I’ve seen a lot of arguments for the Reddit-style blocking where they can’t interact with you anymore.
User level community and instance blocks will stop you from seeing posts from those places, but it does not block their users or their comments, so you'd still be able to see them around in non-blocked communities.
You can also establish a user block though too, so if their comments in unblocked communities are making your experience less than ideal, just block that user.
That's not a terribly good user experience if a user doesn't want to interact with or see any comments from users of a particular instance, as then it would require the user to manually block hundreds of users over a long span of time.
Granted I browse Lemmy via voyager on Mobile, and Alexandrite on desktop, but this has never been an issue. I find it incredibly easy to block stuff, and curate what I want to see