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I had my wife sign up yesterday as a daily reddit user and average tech skills. Based on that experience, I really don't think lemmy is going to go mainstream in its current form.
I agree. Had the same thought. Right now I think the influx will be tech savvy users fleeing reddit and have no big problems understanding Lemmy.
However, there will be (I hope!) a larger influx of 'normal' users wanting to check Lemmy out (my theory is that all the content creators are ending up here and the lurkers will start to follow content in the end) will have a hard time. Why bother them with instances or how you pick communities, how the fediverse works? Just allow people to sign-up, no forcing to choose server, one account only, deal with that login/create account when you end up on different servers, etc. Just make the initial access a smooth pane of glass. Later they can deep-dive in the tech if the so choose to. Just stop throwing tech into peoples faces, it really is as simple as that. Like someone else stated, if I drive a car I should not have knowledge about my engine, model/type of crankshaft, timing of the belt, etc. I have a garage for that sort of thing and I will not be bothered with details (unless I ask the mechanic of course).
I said this before and it seems that the 'core' or 'old skool' Lemmy users have issues with that, you should have to know the tech if you want to join.
I hope this will not be a typical open source/low level attitude of admins and tech savvy people where people are just lost in that tech maze. Whatever you need to run in the background, do whatever, just give me an alternative to reddit. This is not me speaking but I fear the average emigrating reddit user will want this simpleness. And why not give it to them, why force people to understand fediverse?When I first joined Reddit, it was like this. Much smaller and a very tech-savvy crowd. Loads of technology articles.
This place has the potential to replace Reddit for the masses, and if it does, I think it'll grow quicker than Reddit did. The turning point will be when/if Lemmy starts having better content and daily links start appearing on Reddit to Lemmy. People will just naturally start going to Lemmy instead of Reddit first.
It will also need apps as good as the Reddit apps. I am downloading my first Lemmy app as I type this. I laughed when I saw that Reddit had paid to appear in the list when someone searches for Lemmy.
People follow the path of least resistance and right now signing up to reddit is still that. Give a link to 1 of 10 or so general lemmy instances at the home page, let people sign up and explore. Offer a few links to some deeper understanding stuff for those who want it.
The couple of people I've tried to get to migrate get hit with what they feel is a wall of text trying to understand what the fediverse is, and they're just straight up not interested in investing any time in this when they can still just easily log into reddit and be on their* way.
Yep, true. I have all faith in the community to upend reddit in record speed. The awesomeness of the internet and it flowing where it will flow is just too good. Today someone pointed me to this proxy to transform an instance into a reddit UI.
https://lemmy.bolha.one/vlemmy.net/
(replace vlemmy.net with another instance to achieve the same)This is why I like the internet so, so much. In the end, it will find a way :-)
It's basically the same premise. Link aggregator with a forum attached, where upvoted content rises to the top. She doesn't need to know how instances work in order to use it in the same way that she doesn't need to be a mechanic in order to drive her car.
To an extent yes but when you follow a link to a different instance and try to log in with your account you can't. You have to get to that instance in the correct way to interact with it from what I understand.
Agreed, a lot of what makes it cool for some, makes others uncomfortable, a client that abstracts a lot of the distributed nature of the service away would be more attractive to some.