Today the first of Feb is Global Switch day, Spread awareness of the Fediverse in your communities.
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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I've tried to promote Lemmy on Reddit in the past, only to be met with people complaining about the really old UI and bad UX, they also complain about tankies.
PieFed doesn't have that bad rep, so I've found it easier to promote, both lead to the Fedivers so either is a win.
UX/UI are only as bad as the client is. For me, Lemmy is indistinguishable from reddit (if you don't look at numbers of comments), because I use Lemmy Sync, as I used Reddit Sync before
I used Lemmy for months, mostly in the browser and my UX was absolutely horrible.
The default browser UI sucks.
I had to try many different settings and eventually through a lot of effort found the Photon UI, which is nice.
The vast majority of users just won't go through that effort. PieFed's default UI is quite clean and modern and much nicer to use, which is why I promote it instead
Okay then recommend Lemmy with PhotonUI?
Too much friction, and that's really bad UX.
And now you have to explain to people why the default UI sucks. I tried to promote https://p.lemmy.world/ to people, and they tell me to get lost with that dodgy virus link.
Don't link p.lemmy.world. it's well over a year out of date.
phtn.app probably looks a bit less suspicious, and also lets you use any Lemmy/Piefed instance.
You could say it as "phtn.app is a web portal for the fediverse" or something like that because the concept of web apps is confusing to many
People are very sensitive and suspect of dodgy links.
If you tell someone 'hey checkout lemmy, PS the default UI sucks so actually go to phtn.app'
they simply don't click and think you're trying to scam them
That's just fine. Don't worry yourself too much. I don't know about everyone else, but I only want the people open to making a switch here. If you're so put off by trying something new that you aren't willing to give it a chance, then I'm not going to be begging for you to join my community.