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1st Feb is #GlobalSwitchDay
(media.piefed.social)
Today the first of Feb is Global Switch day, Spread awareness of the Fediverse in your communities.
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.
PieFed has its own share of dodgy stuff:
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’m checking in with voyager here, and I came from the reddit Apollo app and I feel the same.
It was practically seamless, though I’ve considered switching to try out other clients.
Tried Piefed and find it clunky with my current level of familiarity
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
In what ways does the Lemmy UI suck? I would appreciate feedback in order to improve it. For what its worth I only use the default UI on desktop and mobile, and like it a lot.
Any actions you need to take that could have been avoided = bad UX.
Any time you need to think and not immediately know what to do next = bad UX.
Sadly we're in a time where users expect their hand to be held the whole time and where they expect zero effort to be put in and everything to just work.
For me the biggest issue with default Lemmy is, why do I have to click on a image post to view the image, when it could just have defaulted to a bigger size?
But I don't want a bunch of huge images in my face. Isn't that what pixelfed and Instagramy things are for? I only want to click on the things I'm interested in, not be shown an ugly frustrating stream of giant, semi-traumatic political pictures one after the other. Thumbnails exist for a reason and claiming they're bad UX is incorrect, it's the industry standard design pattern for any control that allows a user to browse quickly through multiple images or to provide an impression to a user before they decide whether or not to open the full content.
Lemmie/piefed is more about text and conversations so titles should always be the largest clearest part so you can read them quickly to know whether you want to engage with the post or not. Otherwise, how is it different from pixelfed? Likes vs upvotes is not a big difference.
I don’t understand your problem. Can’t you just tap the image to see it larger? I don’t have to click an image post like you claim to.
They seem to want new reddit ui and not understand most hate that ui/ux
Like a card style interface? Edit: to clarify, I understand that, but I also don’t get this specific complaint because it doesn’t seem to be true unless I’m misunderstanding it
Piefeds default is images and text are bigger, like a card style while lemmys default is like old reddit and compact.
They've got their complaints in multiple comments in this thread but it basically boils down to wanting reddit but not being on reddit. Which also gets to a lot of other complaints about people moving because it's different than current reddit
I use compact on Piefed. It's a click in settings. I don't think this really means anything.
How long ago? It was a bit flaky a couple of years ago but for me now it's perfect - like Reddit UI before it enshittified.
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
"Complain about tankies" it's the same fediverse... With the same content...
Sure but PieFed doesn't seem to have a tankie problem. They're blocked from what I've seen.
Even if that wasn't the case, PieFed doesn't have a reputation for having a tankie problem.
The bottom line is when I promote PieFed I don't get people on reddit telling me the UI sucked and that it's flooded with pro-russia propaganda.
So I find it more efficient to promote PieFed
It's a shame to see that people think of Lemmy creators as some sort of villains.
I created my account on .ml before the Reddit blackout, but there wasn't much content there, so I didn't use it much. I properly started using it after the "Reddit blackout," and that's when I learned about the so-called "tankie problem." I've met people with weird opinions, but the developers and Marxists in general aren't bad people. People just usually make a strawmen to argue against.
Anyway, none of their opinions are reflected in the software. Lemmy is done in a truly democratic and user-oriented way, and I respect them for it.
Those guys aren't Marxists, they're mentally unstable Americans with a fetish for authoritarianism.
The Lemmy devs? I'd suggest to read what they actually write. They are good guys.
I also don't think it matters. For example, I don't really like the behavior of the Duckstation dev. It's a PS1 emulator. But I don't have to agree with him in order to use it.
Anyone can instance can defederate from any other instance in Lemmy, not that hard to understand.
I agree, and I think it's a shame it has gotten to this point, but I understand his viewpoint completely and have seen the interactions myself. At this point it's simply more efficient to promote Piefed on Reddit instead of Lemmy, because you want the absolute least amount of friction for potential new users. Literally any single minor inconvenience/negative thing will cause people to not even consider trying it out. Lemmy has unfortunately already accumulated a reputation, and if you promote it you are very likely to run into comments about tankies which is typically enough to scare potential new users away.
At the end of the day it shouldn't matter to us which software people use, as long as we get more new users into the ecosystem.
People will always find some excuse to do nothing and stay on Reddit. Whether its Lemmy or Piefed you will only ever get a few people to switch.