this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?

I'm a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It's definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it's great to see something that isn't Reddit growing in popularity!

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[–] Luna@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 years ago

I have found some difficulties getting set up, and there still seems to be quite a lot foreign about this tool, but I expect I shall grasp its concepts soon.

As a primarily mobile(Android) user, I downloaded Jerboa and found a list of instances. After being redirected to my browser to view this list and to sign up with my chosen instance, I came back to Jerboa to sign in.

Jerboa offered a preset list of instances, of which mine was not included. After multiple attempts at guessing what the "formal name"(?) of the instance was, I finally got an error indicating that the account didn't exist, rather than the first error that the instance didn't exist. After a bunch more bumbling around, I realized that there was a similar instance to the one I signed up on and I had to use a hyper specific identifier I only found in one place, then I could sign in.

I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of description on the esoteric settings. The app should define what is meant by All vs Local vs Subscribed. There are a few sort modes that I think I can puzzle out, but I'd much rather proper descriptions exist.

Frequently when a post is linked to and I click it inside Jerboa, the post is opened in my default browser... which doesn't stay logged in for some reason?

Unsure about community following / community discovery / community naming and namespacing.

Frequent incomprehensible errors when posts fail to load, I have to go back two pages then navigate to the attempted page to load it again for it to display.

Hopefully these are all just growing pains and everything smooths out and becomes more familiar rapidly.

[–] Suppoze@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm also a new user and to be honest, it's pretty much the same browsing experience for me. I use Jerboa, and browse all for now, subscribing to subs that I like. I'm on Beehaw, and it federates with a lot of instances, I can pretty much find all the entertainment I would want from reddit.

Even more so, the community is much more frendly, cozier and there are much less noise and significantly more meaningful conversation which I truly appreciate.

I won't delete my account on reddit, because even though I loathe their practices, I also dislike removing information - I'm all for archiving discussions and information.

[–] bzImage@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

The thing with lemmy it seems that you can install your own instance and the "federation magic" shares content between instances, but not accounts ?? !!!

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[–] socsa@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

First comment. Still getting used to the whole fediverse concept. Super cool so far though.

[–] knova@links.dartboard.social 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm a bit torn. I really like the Lemmy project, but kbin being able to interact directly with microblogging fedi sites as well is pretty appealing to me. That is my primary social media usage, and it basically seems like a 2-in-1 which is great. To be clear, I know I can tag Mastodon users from Lemmy, and see Lemmy posts from Mastodon. But after looking at the way kbin handles it, it seems more 'native'. Not sure how I'm going to proceed.

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[–] super_user_do@feddit.it 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

The webapp Is only fine on desktop. On Android I'm having to use Jerboa which works and does its job but still has an extremely outdated and unpolished user experience

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[–] Veritrax@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm really enjoying Lemmy so far, it's a lot different from Reddit but at the same time feels familiar. I understand and like the concept of a bunch of small hosted servers federated together. I feel like if user logins were also federated that would solve a ton of the onboarding issues for new people. I really miss default subreddits too.

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[–] nykot@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

I'm enjoying, the UX feels a bit lacking but it can become better with time, I'm reading the docs to see if I can help and running my instance, I'm enjoying so far!

[–] madt_@lemmy.one 5 points 2 years ago

Once I have already made an account, it turned out to be less confusing than. One of the things I like is the all tab which does not show 'random crap' like reddit's main page, but actually somewhat interesting content.

[–] anthoniix@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

Having a lot of fun. I think the federation model works way better for reddit style websites as opposed to what we're trying to do with Mastodon.

[–] Repulsa@lemmy.fmhy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

It's pretty good. Looks like early days but hopefully more users will bring more content and we can all do our part to contribute and help it to grow in the mean time!

[–] synthllama@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Took me a bit to decide which instance to join and get setup, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. The registration process needs some feedback instead of just spinning if you're not yet approved though I saw this is being worked on.

It has been clunky to reference other communities or search for them, I keep finding links that send me to another instance and then I'm not logged in there.

Also, there seem to be a lot of duplicate communities. It would be nice to have some kind of system for groups of communities. So that they can link together as a super-community (if agreed by their mods) and if you subscribe to one you get them all. Or maybe over time the most popular ones will become apparent.

Overall its been neat to get setup over here and see the beginning of something.

[–] imekon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 years ago

Seems pretty reasonable, even the federated stuff works fine - unlike Mastodon, oddly.

[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Quick answer, it rocks πŸ‘. Things work differently obviously, but nothing's especially confusing or awkward. Everything I've done in the short time I've been here has worked fine. The speed and UI polish show minor problems in places, but it's to be expected. As far as I can tell it's 100% usable right away as a realistic reddit replacement, which is pretty outstanding IMO.

[–] NetMaze3@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago (5 children)
  • I have to scroll all the way down to comment
  • I can't collapse comments
  • I need an app :/
[–] Seraph089@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 years ago

Apps are in an early state, but they exist. I can only speak to the Android side of things, but we have Jerboa and it works pretty well so far. And iOS has Mlem, which sounds like it's in a similar situation.

[–] Xune531@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

You can collapse comments, it’s the little plus or minus icon next to usernames.

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[–] pitl@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 years ago

For the most part it hasn't been too confusing for me. I'm new to modern federated social media, but not new to the idea of federation due to experience with the IRC model. I really enjoy the idea of instances and having your own sort of smaller space while being able to contribute to larger spaces still... though there's definitely still some user experience hurdles that need overcome on that front.

[–] stallmer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m really glad that browse.feddit.de exists because it’s near impossible to find instances otherwise. However, I wish the β€œcopy” button on the search results copied !communityName@instanceName rather than a simple URL to make it easier to sub to that community from any instance.

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[–] LordGalen@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Enjoying it a lot. We just need more content over here. But I assume that is a problem that will solve itself very soon.

[–] GNUGradyn@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm pretty tech savvy so not a problem for me but I question how viable this is as a reddit replacement just due to how unintuitive the fediverse is. Like the whole having to choose a server but still having access to all the other servers bit. If lemmy.ml could handle being the "official" server it would probably be viable

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[–] s6original@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I think it's great so far. I'm a reddit refugee who decided to leave that place when I couldn't use my third-party client (Sync). It feels all new in here and I really like it.

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Chiming in from kbin.social (isn't federation cool?)

I also tried Lemmy out, I found kbin's ui to a bit more to my liking but I plan on trying both for a bit

[–] cowleggies@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

So far, so good. Excited to see more variety in communities as more users discover and migrate to lemmy.

[–] Faluuria@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I need to familiarize myself to this. I have used RiF for as long as I can remember. So I need to find a new place for my fix.

I think I can get the hang ot it eventually. However, I hope a RiF like Android app for the frediverse gets developed.

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

Jerboa is an Android app for Lemmy, and honestly it's very decent for something that's obviously still a work-in-progress.

[–] freshhotbiscuits@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I like that it’s still so small. None of this karma farming just diluting from high quality content and conversations

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[–] yelly@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I'm still very much in the kicking the tires phase but I'm generally liking it. Looking over all the communities is kinda like walking down a busy street full of shops the first time. So many possibilities! Who knows how many will actually become places I use?

Already debating if I start communities I want to see or just give it more time to maybe find it on another instance or wait for someone else.

Oh yeah, also waiting for mobile apps. I feel like that's going to be hugely important given how I tend to consume this type of content.

[–] Moo_Lefty@toast.ooo 4 points 2 years ago

Confusing. Took me a while to figure out how to reply to this

[–] Landrin201@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

I posted a comment, one of my first, about something I think would vastly improve the user experience. I stand by it 100%, what I describe there was by far the most confusing part for me. I think the new user guide in general could use a pass-over by people who aren't tech savvy and are going to be more "casual" users, right now it's quite long and IMO a bit too technical for most people. It's too much all at once.

Now that I'm past that, I'm finding it quite similar to reddit. The biggest "problem" so far is that it's so small, so a lot of the small reddit communities I was in are non existant. I'm not comfortable moderating (I don't really have the time), so I won't make them myself, but I will miss them. Tbh for some things I'll probably still use reddit on desktop (until they kill old reddit) but lemmy on mobile.

My biggest concern from the beginning, and the reason I joined a big and established instance, is what will happen to people's accounts if their instance gets taken down by the creators. To me that seems like a kinda fundamental flaw here. I'm really not sure how or if it could be fixed, either.

[–] piezoelectron@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

In terms of functionality, I'd love to have a search feature such that I can search for individual posts matching my search query. I don't think we can do that currently.

Does the federated structure make this difficult/impossible though?

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