Let’s compose a list of the all shortcomings so that we can address them and eventually hit 100k mau.

  • hendrik
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    13123 days ago

    Not enough people around to discuss some more niche topics and hobbies.

    • @Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
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      2623 days ago

      Specific video game subs are what I miss the most. I used to be very active in r/stalker and r/teslore, r/trueSTL. There is nothing like that here that sees more than one post per month, and I’m not sure that I have the energy to commit to reviving it myself.

      • hendrik
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        1123 days ago

        Same, same. I miss hobby electronics projects. And some of the communities about AI topics (and more detailed descussion than just the hype) really lost momentum.

    • @vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works
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      2123 days ago

      Have you tried being more in to US Politics, Linux and Privacy? I’ve found several very vibrant communities for those here.

      • hendrik
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        23 days ago

        Yeah, I think the main issue with that is both people watching the All feed and then complaining they get to see all the posts about all topics. And also people asking their Linux questions on c/asklemmy and other general purpose communities. I’ve given up on the US politics, though. That’s something we currently all have to go through. Remedy might be a keyword filter or turning off internet and TV for the coming weeks.

    • @jaybone@lemmy.world
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      523 days ago

      I keep hearing this. And I get it. But I think as a community our interests are so niche that we also miss out on more mainstream content I would like to see. For example there’s some prime time network TV shows I watch, there’s comms for them with subscribers but they are not active.

      • hendrik
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        623 days ago

        Sure. This wasn’t meant to take away from anything else. I think at least theoretically, both can go along. It’s just that it’s more obvious with the niche things. But probably applies to all of the topics. And there is a demand to discuss all kinds of things and I think we have the potential to let the user decide what they’re interested in… Whether that’s popular/mainstream or not. It just takes people to talk to to be present… somehow.

        • @jaybone@lemmy.world
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          423 days ago

          Oh I am absolutely not saying you are wrong. I completely agree with you. I’m just saying while there is a lack of niche content there is also a lack of mainstream content. Which might sound contradictory, but I think both can be true at the same time.

      • Blaze (he/him)
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        123 days ago

        For example there’s some prime time network TV shows I watch, there’s comms for them with subscribers but they are not active.

        Feel free to open threads on !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, we are the most active TV shows community

  • JackGreenEarth
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    9223 days ago

    It’s too fractured, posts in one community on one instance have separate comments and interaction to the same post in the same community on another instance, even if you use crossposts properly, and it clutters up your feed with multiple of the same post

    • @KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      This is a big one. Its probably doomed to imperfection and hold out Mods who don’t want to do it but I think some kind of Community Sync option would be huge.

    • Admiral Patrick
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      2023 days ago

      One problem is that the API call that returns the feed doesn’t provide crosspost information (unless that’s changed in 0.19.4+ since i’m still developing against 0.19.3).

      Crossposts in the feed have to be done client side, and you can only “roll up” ones that have the same URL (Tesseract can optionally roll up on identical titles if there’s no URL). However, that’s limited to just the ones that come through in the same fetch (unless you store all posts locally, which is something I’m considering in the future for offline support; most apps don’t).

      The API call that populates the /post page does provide that crosspost data, and I’ve thought about making an option to combine the comments from each into one “megapost”. But there are a few problems with that:

      1. Officially, crossposts are only compared against the URL. The crossposts may have different titles, and one or both may have different text in the post bodies. Which do you display?

      2. Culture clashes. Let’s say there’s an article posted called “Ford Releases Their New Monstrosity 5000”. It gets posted to c/cars and c/fuckcars by different people with different intentions.

      The tone of the comments would be wildly different since the two communities are basically ideologically opposites. The replies to comments that came in from c/fuckcars would be responding to car enthusiasts from c/cars and vice-versa. It would basically be a form of soft brigading.

      1. It would be confusing for moderators to have multiple communities’ comments in the same post. What flies in one may violate a rule in another. Mods would only be able to take action against those in their community and not all.

      I’ve wanted to do a feature like that for a while now, but every time I’ve tried to plan it out, it always seems like it would just make things worse. Even with indicators as to which community the comment came from, it’s still not ideal.

    • @kozy138@lemm.ee
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      523 days ago

      Reddit has the same issue. People will post an article in like 6, somewhat related subreddits and the feed would be quite repetitive.

    • @bullshitter@lemmy.ml
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      323 days ago

      What the hell I didn’t even know this existed. I just chose all posts and thought I was seeing the aggregate content from every instance. Also, Seeing the usernames (with different instances on it), it made me believe everyone’s interactions are saved and visible.

      • @dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de
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        1223 days ago

        Posts within the same community are synced and you can see communities from different instances. The point is that news@instance1 and news@instance2 are different communities even though the names are similar.

        The counter argument is that reddit has the same problem even without federation. /r/games, /r/gaming and /r/gamers are three different subreddits with very similar names and you have no way of knowing which one is the “main” gaming community unless you check each of them. With time, this will probably sort itself out with lemmy as well. It just takes time for one of the similar communities to become the de facto standard.

    • Blaze (he/him)
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      23 days ago

      That usually happens when there’s a LW world community and then the alternative

      Not sure why the posters on LW want to keep those active when the alternatives are more popular (e.g. !showsandmovies@lemm.ee has 2.4k monthly active users, !television@lemmy.world has 1k), and LW centralization is causing federation issues with aussie.zone but that’s why they are both kept alive.

  • hendrik
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    6823 days ago

    Too much focus on discussing the news and politics. And rarely is it an inspiring and new perspective. (Sometimes it is, though.)

    • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      3123 days ago

      this election is among the most important ones in the history of the country. if not the most. i am also looking forward to it just being fucking done with and having other things on the feed

      • hendrik
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        23 days ago

        I hope it turns out well for the people living in the country. We’re going to find out soon…

          • hendrik
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            823 days ago

            I don’t live there, so it’s kind of none of my business… I just always hope people don’t need to reach rock bottom to find out what’s important and how to proceed…

      • @Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        723 days ago

        One thing I’ve learned is that voting is a lot like breathing.

        Every time you do it, it’s the most important one of your life time.

        • @Screamium@lemmy.world
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          23 days ago

          I remember 2008. McCain vs Obama. I preferred Obama but honestly I wouldn’t have minded too much if McCain won, it was just Sarah Palin that was crazy.

          Contrast that with Jan 6th, 2021. The loser of the election incited a riot and attack on the US capitol and democracy. This individual is running again.

          • @Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            022 days ago

            I remember 2008.

            And that’s the thing lol, all these fucking “nothing matters” teenagers do not. They only know a political climate where democracy is on the line.

      • @Doburoku@lemmy.world
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        223 days ago

        2020 was the most important. Before that it was 2012. Then 2008. 2004 no more war!

        So yea. This is the one. The one election to vote them all for something.

    • @Soulcreator@lemmy.world
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      1723 days ago

      I recall another thread a few weeks ago where someone suggested a no political discussion day, and everyone down-voted him and gave them angry responses. I recall one up-voted response saying “everything is political”.

      This place has become an echo chamber for cranky old Linux users and is really uninviting to anyone else.

      One of the things I miss about Reddit is the diversity of opinions and viewpoints on the platform. (I didn’t love the insane amount of reposts and bot traffic)

      • hendrik
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        23 days ago

        Hehe, btw, I’m one of the cranky Linux users slowly growing old…

        I can tell you this isn’t really an echo chamber for people like me. I’d say the majority of people here are more “normal” people. My take on things often gets opposed. And it feels quite different to the old school places where Linux users and admins mingle. Often times the mob mentality (if there is underneath a post) is against me. A Linux forum feels very different. Especially the way they talk to each other. Here, people argue about opinions, while the “proper” nerds discuss technical facts and then something is objectively right or wrong (or solves something). Which I don’t see happening here that often. So I’d say it’s not it.

        You’re right. Everything is kind of political. And arguing about politic sometimes is stupid and tiresome. And I also like diversity of perspectives and opinions. I wouldn’t need to talk to other people if I wasn’t interested to hear what they got to say…

        (And the downvoting here is just silly. I also think it’s way more pronounced than on Reddit. I regularly see urban legends getting upvoted. While nuanced and longer perspectives get punished. And being human surely includes ignorance. It just doesn’t help anything once it gets part of the dynamics.)

      • @angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com
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        122 days ago

        I ultimately believe “everything is political” is true in the sense that everything interfaces with and influences the political system…but some people just use it to devalue any discussion that does not mention governorship, and any stories that are not propaganda.

    • cbAnon0
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      423 days ago

      Politics is big on instances like ‘world’ (which, despite the name, seems very US-centric), but others I have an account on its less of a thing.

      • @Paradachshund@lemmy.today
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        323 days ago

        I have a mostly politics free feed that I’ve cultivated. Some always leaks in here and there, but if it’s an account that only posts that kind of content I just block them.

        I definitely can see how relentless the politics posting is when I go to all, though.

    • @radiohead37@lemmy.world
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      423 days ago

      At least I feel like I’m heard here. I posted comments so many times on Reddit and I rarely get any engagement. It feels like talking to yourself among an absurdly large and loud crowd.

  • Libb
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    4723 days ago

    As a non-US user myself, beside the lack of participation on Lemmy, I think the kind of replies and the instant escalation to this comment, in this very thread is a great example of why Lemmy can suck, hard.

    The world, exactly like the Internet, does not end at the US borders.

    And yep, even though many US citizens seem to be on the verge of slicing each other throats, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world should behave the same. Lemmy users should still be able to discuss freely even between people of varying opinions, or even of completely opposite opinions.

    • Captain Poofter
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      23 days ago

      It’s funny, cuz i remember tons of responses like that when i used Reddit, too. But the onslaught was often worse cuz the larger user base had more power to bombard you with insults about how wrong you are, and give you 49 downvotes in 10 minutes just cuz you give some criticisms about a popular game you didn’t happen to enjoy and forgot to add reluctant praise to (“i recognize it’s a great game and well made, but its just not for me sad face.”)

      I think this is just a bad part of the internet, in general. Similar things would even happen in AOL chatrooms if someone voiced a disliked opinion, I remember Diamond chat would get crazy

      • UltraHamster64
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        1123 days ago

        To be fair it kinda is a bad part of even real world communities. Try going to a biker bar, animecon or any other community and saying “Gosh darn I don’t like ____”. Best case people would look at you funny and leave, worst - you getting a knuckle sandwich

    • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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      823 days ago

      As a US user, with a bit of an organization compulsion, I do wish it was a little more structured.

      The problem is not that community x is us-centric, but that it’s not called x.us

  • @QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world
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    4323 days ago

    If a post is deleted for any reason it nukes everything, even the comments.

    I can’t go back and view any comments that I was replying to or that I had saved, I can only see my own comment.

  • @LouNeko@lemmy.world
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    3723 days ago

    Not enough video game communities. I think that was a huge part of Reddits initial success. Even to this day I still search “Problem + /reddit” on google whenever I have issues in a game. Reddit often holds the core community off a video game. It’s often detrimental to a games success to have a Reddit community. Lemmy has communities for some games, but they are mostly inactive or have only 10-60 users. So don’t even have the latest patch notes posted.

  • @rovingnothing29@lemmy.world
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    3723 days ago

    Its always about one of two things:

    1. Instances going down forever. - kbin, even though its not lemmy, had a more appealing UI to me and my little brother. We’re on fedia now, but I only really use it to lurk when Lemmy.world won’t load randomly. I don’t think he even uses it at all anymore.

    2. De-federation. - Beehaw caused several other people I know IRL to go back to reddit within a week. The timing was so perfect to wreck the API boycott that I’m almost convinced the Beehaw mods work for reddit. “Everything was broken” and now lemmy is dead and gone forever in their eyes, some even assuming the whole thing is literally gone now. They’re not willing to try again.

    • @glimse@lemmy.world
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      1123 days ago

      Nah, I have a different gripe:

      When the reddit exodus happened, Lemmy was flooded with copycat communities for every popular subreddit. That’s fine with me. But what’s not fine is that very few of these communities use the same posting rules (if any at all) so they’re homogenized. Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?

      I have another one that’s not specific to Lemmy but absolutely applies: meme “communities” where it’s all reposted content. I used community in quotes because these communities/subreddits/Instagram accounts are just…meme archives. You’ll find the same shit in every single meme archive on the internet. It feels like it’s less about sharing and more about having the biggest bucket.

      • Blaze (he/him)
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        223 days ago

        Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?

        On Reddit at least, NSQ was supposed to have a “well, that might seem a stupid question” gist to it. But I agree that nowadays on Lemmy they are the same.

      • @rovingnothing29@lemmy.world
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        023 days ago

        Reddit means pointless or stupid repetition (I forget which). I guess that whole homogenized thing is baked in if they were to migrate.

        • @glimse@lemmy.world
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          423 days ago

          As much as I hate what reddit has become, it was a LOT less of a problem over there. And despite its reputation for having power tripping mods, the communities with strictest rules were almost always the best ones

          A well-moderated community is a good community online. Self policing doesn’t work when it’s thousands of strangers

  • Lemminary
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    2923 days ago

    It’s my own observation, but a lot of people on Lemmy are smug assholes, including many mods.

  • bluGill
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    2523 days ago

    The politics is very left wing and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.

    • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      23 days ago

      if a “viewpoint” is based on lies coming from a convicted felon rapist traitor to the country, than anyone holding that viewpoint can actually go fuck themselves

      edit: as a reminder, we’re talking about people who cause and advocate for this

      • oce 🐆
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        23 days ago

        What a perfect example of what the top comment meant. “You either 100% agree with us or you are a trumpist/fascist/nazi”, no in-between, no nuance, no moderation allowed.

        • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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          723 days ago

          “You either 100% agree with us or you are a trumpist/fascist/nazi”

          if someone’s voting for trump, then yea. that’s exactly what they are.

          if you sit down to dinner with 8 people and one of them is a nazi, then you’re eating with 8 nazis

          maybe trump voters don’t come to lemmy because they know they’ll get shat on. they’re free to make an instance of their own like hexbear and lemmygrad.

          but the thing about trump voters is that you can’t have a rational discussion with them, because they throw everything they don’t like to hear out the window as “fake news”

          so yea. they can still go fuck themselves

          • bluGill
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            1623 days ago

            Not everyone who is right wing is voting for trump.

            • @sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              723 days ago

              Are you seeing Lemmy being intolerant of all right wing discussion, or just Maga bullshit like sol is railing against

              • oce 🐆
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                422 days ago

                No need to go right actually, even defending social democrate values may attract intolerant leftists on some instances.

              • bluGill
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                323 days ago

                Anytime you mention anything right wing you get a lot of downvotes and a lot of railing against MAGA. It is almost enough to make me vote for Trump just out of spite. There might be a “silent majority” that doesn’t do that, but the evidence that anyone can see: comments and votes are clearly intolerant of all right wing discussion.

                Just look at all the different replies I’ve got - most of them instead of looking at Lemmy in the mirror proved the point by jumping onto railing against MAGA.

                • @sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  23 days ago

                  To me, voting for Trump “out of spite” doesn’t sound like something a person would do if they cared about others. I hope you won’t do that.

                  I think the problem is more that maga has taken over the right wing, and instead of distancing themselves from maga, a lot of conservatives end up defending it. Which should not be tolerated imo.

                  If someone is intolerant of maga, what is so hard about saying “I don’t like them either”

                • I absolutely 100% get what you mean.

                  But I’d implore you to wait a Moment and think about it. Voting for Trump isn’t only going to “own the Tankies”, It will also damage everyone else, including you. Don’t let others bully you into voting for someone that doesn’t help you. Be egoistic, vote for someone who actually cares about you.

              • @FireTower@lemmy.world
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                322 days ago

                I see both. Even moderate conservative view point tend to get straw manned as being MAGA. Heck I see left leaning people who just didn’t like that Biden was running get bashed for suggesting the Democrats run a different candidate. Now I see the same on anything less the pro Kamala.

                If Harris anonymously posted a self criticism on here I wouldn’t be surprised if people called her MAGA. That’s not to say everyone here acts that way but a vocal percentage does.

            • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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              423 days ago

              oh that’s right-- conservatives also push for privatizing and deregulating everything, small government (except when it comes to gay marriage and gay books in the library), mandatory jesus for everyone, no taxes for billionaires, all the taxes for peasants, blaming all the world’s problems on mexicans-- what am i leaving out? oh yea, this

              • bluGill
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                523 days ago

                Let me head over to lemmy.ml and create a list of all the things the left wing stands for too. There is no particular agreement on any side on all issues. Governments have often done a poor job of what they should do, and when they do something you don’t get any options. There are many regulations causing more harm than good. And so on - there is plenty of observation and logic behind the various right wing positions - you don’t have to agree with them, but please start thinking about things from other points of view and understanding instead of attacking someone who makes one point on every possible thing you disagree with assuming they both support that other thing as well, and also that they are evil.

          • oce 🐆
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            My point is that there is a infinity of nuance between the far left and trumpist, but too many extreme leftists tend to consider anything right of them as far right, therefore forbidding discussion that doesn’t 100% go their preferred way. This is part of what makes a big chunk of Lemmy unwelcoming.

            • sunzu2
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              119 days ago

              They do the same even if people suggest vote 3p…

              Lemmy.world politics and news subs got deranged kamala zealots and dnc acolytes driving narratives. Peak elections got them spazzing extra hars too

      • Dark Arc
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        1723 days ago

        Staunch Obama and Biden supporter here … I’ve read Obama and Kamala’s most recent books…

        You do not need to be a Trumpie to get annoyed with the “everything is emshittified”, “fuck capitalism”, etc posts and comments.

      • Undearius
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        1223 days ago

        and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.

        Thank you for providing a great example of this

        • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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          223 days ago

          i mean, top comment started with a criticism that generalized the entirety of lemmy, so i understood it to be a thing that was totally fine in this thread

      • @blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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        823 days ago

        OP never stated what country they’re from, you’ve just gone on some rant about Trump without even thinking that they may not be from the US.

        Classic US defaultism.

    • oce 🐆
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      923 days ago

      Agreed, basically if you are moderate, you have to block 2 or 3 major instances to escape from extremist content. That’s very unwelcoming for new users.

  • @Pechente@feddit.org
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    2123 days ago

    The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting. Sure, there are great alternative interfaces but people will be turned off before they could check them out. Also, it’s usually the first thing you see when someone’s sharing a link.

    There not being an official app is also something that will confuse non-tech users.

    • oce 🐆
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      1223 days ago

      The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting.

      Disagree. I find it rather clean and functional, even on mobile. Maybe because I liked old reddit. Maybe younger people are used to Instagram-like feeds so they don’t like the compact forum style.

    • @DrunkenPirate@feddit.org
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      523 days ago

      Indeed an official app would ease the user on-boarding.

      I had to read through some articles first to get the concept of the fediverse first and the look out for my home instance. That’s way too techy

      • Sunshine (she/her)OP
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        223 days ago

        We need a guide to send perspective users to signup through Lemm.ee and voyager to onboard them.

        Original content could entice them to more willingly join Lemmy.

  • @MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
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    1723 days ago

    Many instances have domain names that look invalid and/or like scam sites to non-techies. Dot world? Dot social? Dot [obscure country TLD]? There’s also no guarantees that the domain will indicate that it’s a Lemmy site. Both of these become problematic with sharing, as the default (? been a while since I’ve used the web interface) share function links to the poster’s instance and not the community instance. A year and a half ago, the shared links section in my messenger was mostly a Reddit flood. Today, it looks like someone spilled alphabet soup.

  • @Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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    1723 days ago

    When they post asking for help with Windows and get an entire thread of answers from obnoxious elitist wankers who couldn’t even decide on a distro between them

  • @AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world
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    1723 days ago

    Can’t filter out non-English communities. On any given day, I could scroll through my feed and a third of them would be languages I can’t read. I wish I could, but I can’t.

    • @SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
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      722 days ago

      I have to block the subcommunities one by one, and then block them again and again for every other instance that hosts that sublemmy

    • Blaze (he/him)
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      623 days ago

      You can set your languages in the settings. As the warning say, make sure to keep “Undetermined” check along English

      • @AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world
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        122 days ago

        I use the Connect app to browse Lemmy and I didn’t see such a setting. I’m guessing I have to do this on desktop. I haven’t logged in through there since I signed up but I’ll check it out, thanks.

    • @steeznson@lemmy.world
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      122 days ago

      Personally quite like reading things in other languages, just like a paragraph or so, and then checking my comprehension afterwards with an online translator. Only really partially works for Western European languages though!