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How do we get "normies" to adopt the Fediverse? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 week ago by dch82@lemmy.zip to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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This is a follow-up from my previous thread.

The thread discussed the question of why people tend to choose proprietary microblogging platfroms (i.e. Bluesky or Threads) over the free and open source microblogging platform, Mastodon.

The reasons, summarised by @noodlejetski@lemm.ee are:

marketing

not having to pick the instance when registering

people who have experienced Mastodon's hermetic culture discouraging others from joining

algorithms helping discover people and content to follow

marketing

and I'm saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.

Now that we know why people move to proprietary microblogging platforms, we can also produce methods to counter this.

How do we get "normies" to adopt the Fediverse?

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[-] lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 week ago

I'm a developer, and it was a pain picking an instance. You start reading about them, and it turns out one's censored, the other one's communist, third one doesn't cooperate with the other ones so you can't see anything...

As long as it is like this, I don't believe mass adoption is feasible. I would've given up because it takes a lot of time compared to just registering and off you go, but I was interested to see what's all the ruckus after reddit started with censorship. Maybe interesting to mention that I was never an active reddit member (not one post there).

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 6 points 1 week ago

Just send them to Lemmy world... Edge and shit lords will get banned and figure how this bitch works lol

Normies being on Lemmy world is better than. Reddit in my book

[-] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Just send them to Lemmy world

I agree that having a "default instance" would greatly help with onboarding new users, but as many others have said before, centralizing on the largest instance is not a good idea.

There are several other "general purpose" Lemmy instances. Why not send everyone to lemm.ee, until its size is close to lemmy world? At that point, start sending everyone to lemmy.sdf.org or lemmy.zip.

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Yea, instead of a default instance, I think there should be a default system that assigns you to one of a set of participating “general” instances without you having to decide or think about it.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

Doesn't https://join-lemmy.org/ do that?

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

AFAICT, it helps you pick an instance based on your interests, which only barely helps with the problem. If you’re new to the ecosystem, you typically just want to join in and see what’s going on before making any decisions. And you probably don’t want to bother with selecting criteria for a selection guide at all.

What I’m suggesting is clicking a button “Sign Up”, enter credentials, verify and done. Then allow the whole finding an instance process pan out naturally.

Part of the issue IMO is that how an instance advertises itself isn’t necessarily how it will be seen by someone … they need to see it for themselves.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

Part of the issue IMO is that how an instance advertises itself isn’t necessarily how it will be seen by someone … they need to see it for themselves.

Indeed