this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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It is almost impossible to make mastodon similar of an experience as Twitter was. I used Mastodon and found it kinda boring so I didn't even try. But I did want to use Lemmy since I am a Reddit refugee. I had a pretty hard time trying to figure out how to choose the best instance, where to find my communities (should I join technology at beehaw or lemmy.world?). I still somewhat get confused trying to wrap my head around the fediverse AND I HAVE A FUCKING COMPUTER ENGINEERING DEGREE. If you think that the average user is gonna confidently just make a user and not get confused at all the new concepts you don't know normies.
I get this to some extent... On the other hand, none of that matters.
What instance to choose? Doesn't really matter.
What community to subscribe to? Both! If later you figure out you don't like one of them, just unsub...
But yeah, I know normies seem unable to just jump in and see how it works. They just read "fediverse" and don't know what it is so just reject everything that it's related to because "it's too complicated".
For me personally it's the FOMO, what if the technology board on that instance is that much better than the one. Do I have to sub to 20 of the same boards? Kinda annoying tbh
Yes. And then you get 20 versions of the same post hiding the one unique post that you didn't want to miss out on.
one UX improvement is also in replies. I comment from Mastodon, and because I'm replying to you my post will be federated to feddit.uk but not to your parent comment on feddit.de or the OP on lemmy.ml :|
Do you mean the parent and OP won't be notified of your comment? If they come back to the post it will all be visible to them, right? I personally think that's best, but I was a forum user (phpBB, vBulletin) and rarely got notifications.
On Mastodon it tries to @ everyone so I presume that causes everyone to be notified. You can @ people on Lemmy too I think.
It would actually be better to share / block comunities across instances instead of duping them and creating this schizophrenia.
The problem is instances were supposed to be specific enough that there wasn't so much duplication. A gardening instance, a technology instance (even these are broad), a Red Dwarf instance. Not general purpose instances with high duplication. It needed forward planning and instances started from the beginning, even if all run by the same people.
The fact you call users normies as an insult just shows how pathetic the user experience is and that you think people need any skills or whatever to access it. It SHOULD be accessible and easy for "normies" but using that term is pretty pathetic.
What? It wasn't meant as an insult, I'm sorry it came off that way. I just meant people that aren't tech savvy or that aren't chronically online. And what I said is literally that people don't need any skills!! They just get scared off by terms they don't understand (fediverse, decentralized, instance...), but that in reality don't matter at all.
I'm very tech savy, it doesn't phase me, but I 100% think it's not as easy as reddit, facebook, threads, instagram, etc. etc. Lemmy, Kbin, is NOT as easy as the competitors
I haven't tried Kbin much at all, but it did seem different than anything I've ever used...
Lemmy I just made an account, followed a bunch of communities, and that's that. IDK, felt very easy. Obviously IDK the average user experience, didn't feel harder than Reddit though.
Mastodon as well, difference from Twitter was just that on Twitter I knew who to follow because it's more established, but in terms of usability it felt basically the same...
IDK, maybe I got lucky. But that has been my experience, and when I made my accounts I had no knowledge of the fediverse or anything like that.
The solution would be importing a discoverbility algorithm of some kind, which the service seems very adverse to.