tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year
As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.
First I created account there and then landed on my current instance, because lemmy.ml's admin views looks sketchy for me. Been living in ex-ussr for all my life I just cant accept all that communists and marxists and the fact that lemmy.ml has /c/Communism on it.
I know that's silly but that's why I'm not there anymore.
It's at the top of the list on join-lemmy.org's popular server list, next to lemmy.world and beehaw.org, of course new users will sign up on the more popular ones. Plus, a few posts on reddit called out these three which set everything in motion.
Once folks start to understand how it works, they might start to sign up on other ones, for a "cooler handle @ address" for their user, or register a domain and start their own instance like I did.
I'm using Lemmy.world, but I still need to get away from the traditional mental model of usernames. It bothers me a bit knowing someone could use my username on another server and interact with the servers I do... But then again, nothing prevents someone from creating my Gmail on Yahoo. So it's just a matter of getting used to things.
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.
Hello from lemmy.world! Don't come here, I think it's starting to get overloaded too. Lemmy.one looks like it may be in a good "growing but not snowballing yet" position, go over there and get that ball rolling.
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
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
This is something that lemmy devs need to better address. This is an "Eternal September" kind of situation. People (me included) are not used to the fediverse. They think you can participate only if you're in that instance. And people want content, so they think "why's the instance with most people? Ahh lemmy.ml? Cool, let's join.
If I want to comment on another insurance such as beehaw.org, do I need to create a different account or can I log in with one that I created on lemmy.ml?