Hey everyone, I’m honestly really liking Lemmy so far. Maybe that’s because it feels so much like browsing reddit 10 years ago and I think it’s safe to say many of us have migrated from the blackout. I’d been a Reddit user since 2010 so I’ve witnessed the slow decline over the years but popping here has really driven home how corporate it started to feel–less like a genuine hub of community and more like a manufactured product with low effort content and some genuine discussion/input peppered throughout.
That said, does anyone feel the idea of a federated platform might be confusing to some less network-savvy users? There’s other successful multi-server platforms like Discord but somehow for me the idea of a ‘chatroom’ versus something more like a forum/board seems like it would make more sense to a less informed user. I could see hearing that posts are aggregating from other sites or being cross-visible confusing to individuals who understand web usage as, ‘visit site–post to site–view content on site’.
Does that make sense? lol Anyways, loving the site so far–hope to see it grow!
I remember for years people would look at the interface of Reddit “old reddit” and just not understand it because of its totally utilitarian design. They couldn’t make out the subreddit names being r/asentencelikethis. It kept the mainstream users (or let’s just say less techsavey) out for a long time.
I think lemmy captures that original feeling of being slightly off-putting unless you’re willing to get your head around it.
I generally tell people not to over think it.
Step 1 is to join one of the big instances.
Once they’re in, then talk about browsing cross instances.
If they stay long enough, they’ll figure out favorite instances.