Fedibridge

It's a website dedicated to searching alternatives for those unaware.

I was invited to comment here by u/BlazeAlt on Reddit last week regarding ways to lower the barriers to joining the Fediverse for average users — so here I go.

I'm sure a lot of this has been discussed ad nauseam, but I do have some specific starting suggestions at the end.

With corporate, single-instance social media, there's one place you go sign up, and you're in. You can find things that interest you with a simple search, and you can find people you know either by their names (Facebook) or by a very simple handle ([at]nickname). And if you're trying to build up an online identity — say, for your new podcast — if you're handle is unique enough you can end each episode with "and you can find us at MyNewPodcast on all the socials!"

Federated social media requires you to choose an instance before you can even sign up. But...

[average user voice]

• What the hell's an "instance"?
• How do I choose one?
• Why do I have to choose one?
• What do their names mean?
• What does the instance I choose say about me? -Does choosing one over another have any effect on the experience I will have?
• How does someone on another instance find me?
• How do I find someone on another instance?
• How do I find topics on another instance? -Does my choice of instance affect my access to those topics?
• Are the rules different on each instance?
• Who sets the rules?
• Where do I find them?
• What if I want to change instances?
• Will anyone be able to find me?
• How will they know I'm still me?

[/end average user voice]

Federated social media also requires weirdly complicated handles. [average user voice]

• Why are there two @ signs?
• What does it mean if there's a "!" instead of a "@" at the beginning?
• What the hell are all these weird domain names?
• Why can't I be just [at]TheSameHandleIUsedOnTwitter?
• If I'm trying to create an online identity, what's to stop someone from using [at]MyHandle[at]SomeOtherInstance.url and posing as me?
• What's the Lemmy equivalent of a blue check?
• If there isn't one, how can anyone be sure someone on Lemmy saying they're me really is me? -I mean, other than starting my own instance with recognizable name — but then I have to learn how to host my own instance.

[/end average user voice]

To be clear: I'm not literally asking these questions. I'm just illustrating some of the hurdles to adoption I described above, and some of the ways in which federated social media is exponentially more complicated than corporate social media.

As for solutions, I don't have an all-encompassing proposal at the moment. But a good place to start would be to agree upon a single default instance for new users to sign up, so that instead of being faced with "first choose an instance," it would be...

Welcome to Lemmy.URL, where you can join Lemmy communities for any topic, all over the world! What do you want your username to be?

• [____________]

OK, do you want your username to use a common lemmy "instance," like...

• [ ] ____________ [at] lemmy.URL
• [ ] ____________ [at] lemm.ee
• [ ] ____________ [at] etc.

OR would you like more custom username connected to a particular Lemmy community, like...

• [ ] ____________ [at] sci-fi-fans.url
• [ ] ____________[at] knittingnuts.url
• [find Lemmy instances where your username is available]
• [I know which Lemmy instance I want to join first]

Choosing a community-based username doesn't affect how you use Lemmy — no matter what community you chose, you'll have access to all the same content, communities, users, and feeds.

The [find Lemmy instances] button would lead to a page where you check off various areas of interest to then get a curated subset of relevant instances with a reasonable amount of information about them to help new users select one.

The [I know which instance] button would have you fill in the name of the instance, check if your username is available, then take you to that sign-up page.

So...something akin to join-lemmy.org, but with a flow closers to what I've described above, with very few, easy, "common" default choices, and a little more help through the process of choosing a specialized instance (if you want one).

This onboarding suggestion doesn't solve most of the problems/questions in my bullet lists (ideas still forming), but it would help prevent what happened to me the first few times I looked into Lemmy, which was that as soon as I saw I had to choose an instance before I did anything else — with pretty much zero information on what that meant or how it would affect my use of Lemmy — I said, "I don't have the time for this."

BTW, as I write this, my first Lemmy post, I will also add that the comment fields need to be WYSIWYG for if Lemmy ever hopes to be populated by refugees from Reddit, etc. Creating the quote section above was a huge pain in the ass, that required multiple rounds of [Preview] [Edit] [Preview] [Edit] [Preview] [Edit] [Preview] [Edit].

Food for thought. Cheers.

The pinned thread on r/RedditAlternatives is over a year old: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1anols3/social_websites_with_nested_comments_v7/

A few issues I've identified:

• Only the largest Lemmy instance (LemmyWorld) is listed.
• Some sites like kbin, tipestry, and pcmemes have shut down since the thread was posted.
• I'm not convinced that sorting by 'Similarweb Rank' is that useful. I think a metric like 'Monthly Active Users' would be more meaningful.

Can we compile better, more up-to-date info?

Does anyone know if sites like Discuit, Disqus, Raddle, Saidit, Tildes, etc. publish MAU statistics?

[email protected]

• LW has a 3 days delay with aussie.zone https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40460535
• lemmy.ml is known for arbitrary instance bans: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
• [email protected] has a single mod, and not willing to create meta posts to call for more
• other fediverse communities are inactive

One thing to note is that this community being on Piefed allows us to use some unique Piefed features, such as only subscribers to the community being able to downvote.

I think people who want to signup for something will not ask this many questions, they will just jump in. These are often just excuses to stay complacent on Reddit.

Edit: they signed up! They were just being analytical I guess.

If you still have a Reddit account, feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the Digg relaunch compared to Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed :)

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1jizbyz/reddits_new_block_update_will_adversely_affect/

https://old.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1jg6r8o/reddit_isnt_safe/mj6qhaw/?context=10000

Already signed up. Got the login verification email, followed through and did the security thing, “type the word from our sidebar below” passed all that and can not login.

I appreciate that but don’t bother. I tried with the instance listed in this post and still got the same login issues even after receiving the email to login and passing the security check etc. I deleted the app. I’ve tried enough times and never had any success so I won’t be trying again.

I think they signed up at 50501.chat.

It's a shame that Lemmy is missing out on new users just due to signup issues.

Some account lists to help people get started on Mastodon/Sharkey

Some accounts to get your feed going

I put together and made public several lists of accounts by topic to try to help newcomers to Mastodon/Sharkey. It may be more useful to people on some of the *key instances, but it's closer to home this way regardless.

As I mention, I tried to keep this to non-personal accounts to not bother people, so many of the options are larger media outlets that some may not care for. However that's not unlike some of the big social media sites, so nothing new there.

If you've found this helpful, pass it along, or better still: if you're on one of the *key instances, put together and publish some lists of your own (with individuals' permission if including them) to help others.

@[email protected]

#Fediverse #Feditips #Fediblog

[email protected]

A lot of us are in tech and we come across these problems and just troubleshoot our way around them and don't really think about them, so I figured a "case study" might be helpful. ~~Image unrelated.~~

Anyway, yesterday I tried making an alt account on lemmy.world. When last we left the situation, I had been notified that my registration application had been denied, but I'd been asked to confirm my email and https://lemmy.world/u/sergio had been created. A couple helpful commenters suggested my account might still be under review.

• Today I tried logging in again. But when I entered my username and password, I got a popup that said "incorrect login credentials". Maybe I needed to verify my email again? I went to my email, clicked the "verify your email" link, and just got a page with text that said "verify email" and nothing else. Maybe it didn't like me using my username to log in? So I tried logging in with my EMAIL and my password, and still got that "incorrect login credentials".
• Maybe something's wrong with my password? I'm using a password manager but OK, let's just try changing my password. I clicked on the "forgot email" link on the login page. I entered my email address and clicked "reset password"... and nothing happens. No feedback, and I don't get an email. (10 minutes so far).
• maybe I should check https://lemmy.world/u/sergio ? Hey, that's no longer there, I just get an error! I check the user page of another lemmy.world user and it works, so it's not a server problem. Maybe my application really was denied? Was it really reviewed? What do I do now?

(my intuition is to try again with a different username, email address, computer, and browser from a different location at a different time of day...)

So I post a fair number of links to youtube videos on [email protected] and [email protected] and sometimes a couple of movie-related comms. Anyway, recently lemmy.world updated their server software and the way that they handle youtube thumbnails. So I wanted to check it out.

So I went to create an account on lemmy.world. So I entered my email info, and where it asked for an explanation I explained that this is [email protected] wanting to post to those communities.

• First of all, their captcha is really difficult. I could not figure out the first 3 that it presented so I kept hitting the icon to get a new one. The 4th one I thought I knew so I entered it.

• So I tried to log in and it said "did not verify email." OK, so I go to my email, find the link, click it and enter my password and it says "registration application denied"

I'm not complaining about either one. I don't really mind having a tough captcha if it keeps out bots. I guess I don't mind having my registration application denied, though I wish it told me why. Did I get the captcha wrong? Did I say something wrong in my application text? Should I try again later? Weirdly enough, https://lemmy.world/u/sergio does exist and it was created at the time that I signed up for that account.

Anyway, that's one example of the problems a new user can have trying to join lemmy.

Although ActivityPub does a lot to help share content across federated sites, it goes without saying it doesn't always go smoothly for a variety of reasons. Different post formatting, different overall focus and structure of other software, and so on.

With that in mind, it's as important to create different local accounts both on the same software (at times) and on other software to help polish up the content sharing.

As an immediately obvious example in the case of Lemmy: creating other accounts to help moderate a remote community due to issues of cross-site moderation.

However, it can go beyond that. Due to the minimal algorithmic design of a lot of federated software, many across these sites may not even be aware of some of the others. Some using Mastodon or a *key variant may have no idea of Lemmy, Mbin, or Piefed and vice versa, so may still be using corporate alternatives.

This means that it may also be beneficial for those trying to grow these respective communities to create accounts on Mastodon, *key, etc. sites and share links from Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed there, or vice versa. It's by no means ideal, but it's the reality of the situation at the moment.

Speaking of multiple accounts, it's important to try to correct misconceptions of only needing one account for this very reason.

For the moment, if you want to participate on federated forums, it's better to make an account on whichever site software supports it (like Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed), largely the same with federated microblogs (like Akkoma/*key/Mastodon), and so on.

Ultimately despite some of the inconveniences, taking this approach may at least be less of an uphill battle than navigating the increasingly closed corporate networks trying to keep people trapped there. Across the federated sites one may find more receptive audiences to checking out other open social networks that they may have completely overlooked.

Note that r/coolguides is a very "normie" subreddit and may require extra handholding. There are a lot of people who don't seem to understand what "open source" means. Some looking for "The Lemmy app" etc. Be patient and helpful!