Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.
That isn't guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn't a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer ...
Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.
Well, hello from feddit.de! Since I’m a german user I thought it’d be only logical to register on a german instance. While new registrations are semi-locked, the criteria for being let in are quite easy to pass and they are mostly in place to filter out spam. Got my account approved right on the next day
RIF was such a good app. Hopefully Jerboa will get there, and Lemmy, as a whole, will get to a comparable state. Already liking Jerboa a lot honestly. RIF will of course be missed though
My work blocks lemmy.ml but not many other instances. Unfortunately all the heaviest memes are on lemmy.ml ! I just want to look at fun memes instead of my lame ass patients what’s wrong with that
I find it is nice to just join a server you enjoy at its core and then simply use the “all” sort of thing. I can see from other servers what is popular and can comment and upvote and downvote. It’s all very seamless even if I am not in that home server
lemmy.world
Hot