this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
198 points (98.1% liked)

Fediverse

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Defaults are crucial for good UX and getting more users on the Fediverse (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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Small things like 'Auto expand media' being set to true, can have a huge impact on user retention rate.

The vast majority of people never open or change default settings in the social media they use.

When they try out Lemmy etc., and the defaults aren’t great a lot of them will have a bad User Experience and leave.

I’m a IT professional, and joined Lemmy a few months ago, the UX sucked, most of that could have been fixed by having good defaults in place.

I powered through, but I won’t recommend Lemmy to many of my friends or family because I know they will give up due to too much friction in finding the right settings and how things work.

For the Fediverse to succeed focus needs to be put on giving people a very smooth UX from first opening a app or page, to finding enjoyment seeing and engaging with content.

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[–] CidVicious@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Defaulting to any one instance would be against the goals of federation, I think. Much better to have a centralized site to help people find an instance that uses factors that wouldn't bias too much. Perhaps pushing towards "general purpose" instances that would make geographical sense. And then you could highlight instances that cater towards more specific groups. But I think the goal of this would be to spread users across many instances rather than funnel them all towards one.

I might propose having something things like server ping be a factor, and capacity of the instance. Perhaps instances could also be shown with their largest communities so that people could see the vibe of the instance before they join.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A geographically based default is a great idea.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 3 points 1 week ago

I know I favour this, but I may be biased.

My main tip for picking an instance is go for a region or topic specific instance so your local feed is manageable and relevant.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com ), nowadays I basically go with:

" Lemmy has 47k monthly active users

Feel free if you have any questions"