Just recommend a website for them to join.
But the crux is which one do you recommend? We don't want to send everyone to the same instance otherwise it'll end up becoming dominant (see Lemmy World).
Ideally we shouldn't need to go through this motion of trying to work out which instance to choose or recommend one for them, they should be able to do that themselves after getting their feet wet.
The biggest UX issues, in my opinion, is the process of choosing an instance and content discovery.
When you go to "join lemmy", rather than choosing a username, you're presented a big list of instances, and you have no idea what that means and what it means for your experience if you choose one. Even though in reality it doesn't really matter, just having the list paraylyses the user as it's not a process they're used to. Users are likely asking themselves:
Sometimes I think it would be best if we could have some kind of read-only instance people can create an account on and get stuck in first, then choose an instance to sign up to once they understand it. The instance would be locked down so they couldn't create any communities. So basically when they they're directed to join-lemmy and go to sign up, they create an account on that instance right away and get started.
On the discovery front, a potential idea would be to allow communities to have a specific category tags field. When a user signs up, the host instance could have a page that they're directed to (this would be controlled by the instance, so they wouldn't have to have it enabled) which lets the users pick some topics they're interested in and can then subscribe to the communities right away.
This is me. Frankly, I'm surprised people are choosing to use the new UI, but I guess maybe they only discovered reddit when it had the new UI.
When I first read it I thought they were mentioning that as a selling point! But yeah it seems like they're saying it like it's a bad thing.
i’ve even received them as gifts (very expensive ones) but i just threw it in the trash
Wouldn't it have been better to tell the gift giver that you're really happy that they thought if you, but for security/moral reasons you don't want to install it? At least they could have returned it and got their money back.
What makes them think they're American? I don't see any guns or medical bills piled up?
I think it's just the colours for the peertube one. I like that it's three individual play icons to signify the federation aspect, but the colours are just dull.
Hopefully people are willing to donate to their instances to keep them financially healthy. It'll be a pretty big issue for growth if it starts to get popular but the larger instances can't afford to stay operational and disappear.
I've gone from sync to voyager too and yeah, that does bother me. Sync really does have the best UX, UI and performance but it's a shame it's basically been abandoned.
I don't think it helps that politics absolutely dominates Lemmy, where Reddit has enough diverse subreddits that you could probably just avoid politics all together.
It's much harder to get away from it here. But hopefully, as Lemmy grows then we start to see more and more users in the non political communities and people can have a laugh without people jumping down their throats. People just need to stick to it and give it a good go and help build something great.
It's not even a $5 one-off fee, it's a $5/month subscription!
Yeah you can browse an instance without being logged in, so that would be possible.