People need to realize you can use alternatives

  • Ghostalmedia@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.

    Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.

    • nattekrant@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.

      • _cnt0@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        That isn’t guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn’t a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer …

        Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.

      • StringTheory@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I would be very sad if I was randomly assigned an instance in French (for example) because I don’t speak French.

    • mangel@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It’s also that lemmy.ml is the instance I’ve seen posted everywhere when it’s brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.

    • goat@burggit.moe
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      1 year ago

      How’s it work if I get banned from one instance? Yet I can still comment in that instance I got banned from? No clue how that works

      • Vlixz@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Just joining in, and what will happen if the instance you created your account on decides to stop running. Does your account just dissapear?

        • RoosterBoy@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes. But it is easy as hell to set up on another instance or even throw up your own.

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        If you get banned from your home instance, you’re banned everywhere.

        If you get banned on a different instance, you can no longer post/comment/vote in communities there but otherwise you’re fine.