If the fediverse is to be adopted by the masses, the onboarding experience needs to change. A new user can’t be presented with a choice of instances as part of signing up or at least the process of making the choice needs to dumbed down a lot. I don’t know how or if this can be solved, I just know as someone involved in app development and UX that the current experience won’t work.
My mother would not know how to handle this paragraph: “Lemmy.world is one node in a network of hundreds of Lemmy instances. Before you sign up here, take a moment to explore all the instances at https://lemmyverse.net/. You may find an instance with a regional or topical emphasis that speaks to you! Don’t worry about being left out; Lemmy instances are interconnected so users from each instance can participate with communities on other instances.”
For mass adoption it needs to be so simple that even non-techie older people can get through it without feeling like they might be doing something wrong.
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I’m pretty techie and I’ve been here for months. I still don’t fully understand why it matters and how a different instance would have changed my experience. The fediverse is so fragmented, it would be dumb to stick to one instance. My app is always set to browse “all”. Everyone commenting seems to be from different instances. I’m certainly not going to start reading about different instances at signup when it presents the fact that you will be able to access all instances anyway. I picked randomly from one of the most popular choices. This whole process of a selection of an instance sounded good to software engineers, and sure this is how the technology fits together…but these are “back end” issues that I (and other normies) don’t care about at all. Users do not want to get into the weeds of how the back end works and it is certainly off putting.
Different instances that have a unique interest or theme will determine the type and feel of content in your local feed, and can have a tangible community as you recognize names from your instance. That’s the main difference.
Unique interests can be already be self-curated by subscribing to certain communities. All apps have the subscribed feed. There’s no need for communities of a certain type to be on one instance.
Edit: typo
It’s not that the local tab replaces your home ‘subscriptions’ tab, it’s that it’s nice to have in addition to it.
My instance, slrpnk.net, caters to solarpunk topics only, and we’re small enough that it has a tight community of regular posters whom I recognize. In my local tab I can see at a glance just the stuff posted to my community, with my other subscriptions not mixed in and cluttering it up. I also see in my local tab what’s being posted in communities I’m not subscribed to, but will often have comments from our members since we all collectively view our local tab. It’s like a sort’ve town square feel that my all and subscriptions tab don’t have.
I like having access to both.
