this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Fediverse

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we need more users (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.

the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.

So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.

edit: source for the graph

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[–] dantel@programming.dev 53 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (42 children)

I'm a very new user who wanted to give this a chance, here are the friction points from my point of view:

  1. The onboarding is way too complicated for the average user. A huge part of this is that there are 100 ways to do it. Before you even can start to do anything you have to investigate and then decide on what and how to do it. And even then there is no guidance at all, you are given options and then you can either go and do some research again or try them one by one. You lose at least 90% of the users here already. It doesn't help that fediverse users try to downplay this issue.
  2. Content discovery sucks ass. My feed stayed mostly the same since I started using Lemmy. I'm presented the same shit over and over again. I'm not sure if it's something that I do wrong, if there is just no content or if that's a side effect of 'no tracking at all' but either way the experience is just bad
  3. Someone in here already said it, but 'Lemmy' is a horrendous name. That alone was the reason why I didn't bother to try it at all for a long time. Only recent events pushed me towards it but tbh I'm not sure I'll stay.

In short the user experience is abysmal.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The onboarding is way too complicated for the average user. A huge part of this is that there are 100 ways to do it. Before you even can start to do anything you have to investigate and then decide on what and how to do it. And even then there is no guidance at all, you are given options and then you can either go and do some research again or try them one by one. You lose at least 90% of the users here already. It doesn’t help that fediverse users try to downplay this issue.

The solution to this is that people should not recommend Lemmy, but a specific instance such as programming.dev (depending on the audience). The Lemmy software and join-lemmy.org are mainly targeted at potential instance admins, or those who are already familiar with the Fediverse.

[–] dantel@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, you are technically correct. That would've made it easier for me. But I see a few problems with that:

How are you gonna make sure people start doing this?

And even more important: If people start doing this, it might actually harm the network IMHO.

I personally knew that something like Lemmy exists at all because I saw multiple people on Reddit recommending it as an alternative to Reddit. Often enough that I was able to remember this after some time.

Now if people recommended programming.dev in one sub, literature.cafe in another and discuss.online in a third - there is no way I would've remembered any of it and most likely wouldn't know that it belongs to the same network. Looking at them individually emphasizes the feeling that those are some ultra niche little sites with hardly any users on them.

Just my gut feeling, anyway.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

That is true. I made a post just now to gather suggestions for improving the website, please have a look and comment if you have any ideas: https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.ml/post/41719890

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