As a strong supporter of open-source and community-funded projects like Lemmy, which prioritize serving users over investors, I believe Lemmy has significant potential, and that’s why I am here. However, it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form. Despite the surge in users following Reddit’s API changes, Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users, and those accustomed to old Reddit. For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience, meaningful changes are necessary.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter. This same ease of use is what Mastodon lacked, leading to its initial hype fading quickly. The average user is unlikely to adapt to something that feels complicated or unfamiliar, and this challenge also applies to Lemmy.
As someone who started as an average Reddit user and became more tech-savvy over time, I can confidently say that first impressions matter. When users first visit lemmy.world, the default UI is often enough to discourage them from staying. Most will not explore the homepage sidebar to explore, figure out and switch to one of the alternative UIs available, which is unfortunate because a better UI could make a huge difference.
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface. Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit. It makes excellent use of screen space and provides customization options like compact and cozy views. Unlike some other alternative UIs, Photon is actively maintained and ready for widespread use, although in no way is it perfect, this can also help bring in more contributors to the project development.
While it is important to continue offering other UIs as options, I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user. First impressions are crucial, and the current default UI has turned off many potential users. If we want Lemmy to succeed as a true Reddit alternative, we need to prioritize user experience and accessibility. Thankfully today, Lemmy still continues to be THE biggest Reddit alternative, while our userbase is still considerably smaller than Reddit, it’s the biggest of any alternatives, and Lemmy continues to somewhat be in the spotlight for those seeking alternatives, we can’t let growth stagnate, it’s high time we make the platform more welcoming and appealing for the average joe.
EDIT: The image I attached is from photon.lemmy.world, which I just realized is using the outdated version of Photon, I have updated the image to the updated current photon version from phtn.app. There are a lot of improvements made.
That UI is dogshit. Lemmy is a link aggregator and you’re saying it should show 2 links on the screen at a time? New Reddit is shit for the same reason.
I see this issue through so many newer UIs. Sure it looks nice in a way. But it looses all functionality. We have an info dense application, pairing that with a infosparse UI just causes frustration and excessive scrolling and clicking. Info density matters.
Yea, I hate that trend. Especially when it’s used for information pages about products and you have to constantly scroll around and deal with weird slideshow things to find what you’re looking for (if useful information is even present at all).
It’s got a compact view that is pretty much why I’d be using if I started. I think it makes sense to default to the “cozy” view, even if that is the most bass ackwards naming I’ve seen. The reason being is that “most” people prefer that view and are the same people that wouldn’t bother looking for a setting to change, they’d just nope on out because they got overwhelmed.
Default “cozy” in desktop mode
“compact” in desktop mode
I think compact looks decent in mobile view as well, but since the parent post is about desktop UI that’s what I’m showing.
Compact is certainly better than what OP showed. Frankly I’m fine with driving everyone that thinks the “cozy” view is acceptable away from this platform. I’m not interested in whatever other terrible opinions they’d be sharing here.
For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience
Fucking capitalists will enshitify this also.
How will they? A new UI adaptation won’t change the fact that Lemmy is community-run, federated/decentralized and not owned by a corporation?
reach the broader average general audience
That’s quite a novel way of saying “I don’t know what enshitification is actually about, nor do I understand why broad adoption is critical for protecting the long-term existence of community maintained software”. Kudos on your creativity!
Seriously though, “keeping good things small for the sake of keeping them free of interference by capitalist interests” is misguided. Quite the contrary, leaving a large audience on the table is a surefire way to guarantee that an opportunistic capitalist will capture that market and drive community maintained options into obscurity.
That’s quite a novel way of saying, “I don’t know what capitalism is actually about, nor do I understand why broad adoption destroys individual choices.”
Kudos on your capitalism. Hopefully, we don’t extend our violent means to neoliberals.
Yeah, its sad that wikipedia becoming one of the biggest sites in the world turned it into a over monetised hellscape, but that’s just what happens inevitably when you grow big, the capitalists get you.
So, why in the everliving fuck would anyone rationalize a UI change with appeal to a broader audience?
Even after all this time very few seem to understand what happened between hexbear and almost all other instances: They didn’t want neoliberal drivel to destroy what they’d built. They even made the vast majority think it their own idea to leave them alone.
LMAO this chump thinks hexbear is a good example of…well, of anything, really.
Go circlejerk in your little group of isolationists if you want but please stop telling the rest of us about it. You sound like a weird voyeur
I agree on the UI front, making things more like reddits awful new ui is just a bad idea. Just that your premise for justifying that is wrong.
What is the difference between
- (A) - an opportunistic capitalist capturing the market and drive community maintained options into obscurity
- and (B) - someone trying to convince a small community to change, purportedly in order to avoid (A)?
If you trying to protecting a small community, but your solution somehow requires that community to be more like the big ones, then I guess you don’t understand the point why small communities even exist in the first place.
It’s like coming to a small coffee shop somewhere in a side street of Prague and arguing that the shop should be more like Starbucks, because if you don’t become more like Starbucks, Starbucks will win. Win what? If all you care is money then yes, but again, that’s not why small businesses exist. (Which is what (pseudo-)capitalists and tech bros find so impossible to understand.)
Human greed is not inherently bad, greed can often be legit justified as attempt to safeguard for future. That’s fine, we should do that, but it becomes destructive when it’s not balanced with the reasons behind why things are the way they are now.
If the goal of Lemmy - and specifically lemmy.world is to be a boutique, niche aggregator then fine. But that is explicitly NOT the goal. That may be what some users want but they are free to go form their own small servers and isolate as much as they want
I am not suggesting that every community needs to be growth-oriented. Small groups are great.
But they are also weak, and virtually incapable of creating and maintaining the systemic change required to protect themselves long term.
If the attitude is “let the capitalists take over everything else, I’m happy with my underground movement that struggles to survive” then that’s honestly bordering on selfish. “I’m happy so I don’t care about what happens to others. They can figure out how to find us and do what we do or get fucked” kind of energy. It’s privileged in the extreme
The best way for small communities to thrive is through collective action. And in order for that to happen there need to be enough small communities to have any sort of influence as a collective. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be an entry-point into the collective that is accessible to newcomers.
That is what Lemmy - and especially lemmy.world - have positioned themselves to be. It’s not dissimilar to Mastodon(.social)
I think a good attitude is “let there be a thousand boutiques” and “let everyone know there is choice, and let’s work together the choice is real (ie. as little lock-in as possible)”. It’s not necessarily bad if there is one or few big ones. I’m perfectly fine with people going to Starbucks (heck, even I used to, before I moved to a place where there’s a superior small coffee shop right next to my house).
I don’t think the point about “weakness” of small groups is a very strong one. (No pun intended.) What other types of small groups are weak? Are music bands also weak? Maybe not Metallica, but what about your local alt rock band? What about families, are they also weak?
The “weakness” is relevant if we’re thinking about the potential of other subjects abusing or exploiting them (an boy do we know how capitalism excels at this game). That’s why we should have systems in place which serve to protect them: not just merely on the basis that they are weak, but on the basis that the diversity is good, if not necessary, for the society as a whole.
But back to Lemmy: well, I agree with basically all your points, but do we agree on what constitutes “accessible to newcomers”? We might not.
Personally I think current UI is pretty close to perfect: things like zoom, middle click (to open new tab) just work, it does not run too much Javascript, the text editor is responsive, layout of the page is obvious and efficient, overall there is not too much clutter–for me those things are SO much essential in how welcome I’m going to feel here.
And well, people will often say that maybe my tastes are niche because I’m a tech-savvy user or whatnot, I’m tired of that BS already. I don’t think my mom would prefer cluttered, unreliable page which breaks or loses focus the moment you dare to zoom or change width of the window (eg. by flipping phone on a side). (Here I’m not at all describing Photon at all, I’m merely listing things that annoy me on so many other pages, while current Lemmy UI just gets them right.)
If people want change, they should back it up with more than what I see in this thread, most of which boils down to
- “I like Photon more” – fine (also subjective),
- “I think (it its obvious that) newcomers will like Photon more” – sure, but kinda arrogant to push that too hard without a really good evidence.
- “The other [insert some big site which is a BS comparison as their success heavily relies on lock-in or marketing] page looks more like Photon, and that means they are good to newcomers, we should mimic that (…lest we perish)!”, yeah, let’s be a cargo-cult.
I think we have far more that we agree on in this conversation than we disagree on. We can get into the minutiae of specific UIs but that probably misses the point.
Where I agree with OP is on the first impression of the default Lemmy UI to users trying to migrate from big-corpo products
For better or worse, these folks have come to believe that “slick looking” = thoughtfully designed = featureful and advanced. And that “sterile/boring looking” = amateur UX design = complicated and difficult
We can’t break that mentality in the general public by simply repeating over and over that they’re wrong. It just doesn’t work that way, sadly.
On my Mastodon server, we have the Elk frontend available and have it listed prominently right next to the sign-up/sign-in button as a “Twitter-friendly UI experience” (also on our About page). Then, we periodically throw up an announcement telling users that apps, Elk, etc don’t provide all of the features available on the modified webUI/PWA, along with a list of what they’re missing and how to learn more.
It’s an “abopt, extend, extinguish” approach and it works. There’s a reason corporate enshitification pioneered that strategy. We can use it too, but for good :)
You really trying to convince us with a screenshot of the ugliest ui i ever seen huh
Yeah I used old Reddit. I don’t want something that looks like new Reddit
You both aren’t wrong… But this isn’t about you.
If it’s not about me then why does it exist.
.world in a nutshell
better than whatever the fuck .ml in a nutshell is.
The void at the center of the page is whispering things to me.
I absolutely hate it so much
Personally, I think this looks great. I love the command palate and the display modes, and it checks the other boxes, for me at least.
BTW I actually used an outdated version of Photon on the screenshot, looks like lemmy.world haven’t updated their photon version, I have updated the post with the updated current Photon UI, I think more people will like it. It’s an improvement from the older version.
- With what I think are near enough default settings, Voyager shows me about 9 stories. It doesn’t feel cramped and the layout is regular, everything lines up.
- With what I think are near enough default settings, my browser here shows me 14 stories, with a good accessible font size by default and me easily zooming out to 80%. It doesn’t feel cramped and the layout is regular, everything lines up.
- I can see 2 stories in that screenshot. Why would I want to have something that’s at least 5 times worse, it feels cramped and parts of it line up I guess?
I might have missed it, but why is it clear that lemmy is reaching a plateau of users?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
First graph
I’m on Eternity for lemmy. Best app cause I came from Infinity for reddit
Nah
Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit.
What about Tesseract?
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface.
That’s something to be discussed per server. You should maybe ask LW staff to open a poll on their announcements community
I basically only use mobile apps, so I don’t even remember what the desktop UI looks like. But if you say so!
Yup. Voyager/Wefwef is basically the new Apollo. It’s not 100% there in terms of feature parity, but it’s damned close and is being actively developed.
I just use the Voyager app, which has a great UI, with no need to visit the website at all.
I should mention this is mainly for desktop users :), but even for mobile users, people usually check the website first before downloading apps.
Voyager also has a web version web version
I love Voyager on mobile but feel constrained by it on desktop. (It reminds me of using Gnome, which is not my personal preference.)
I don’t think it was ever supposed to be used on desktop, it is made for touchscreen so the experience is suboptimal on desktop
Voyager FTW, imo
I’m on Fedia. It’s pretty solid, UI-wise. I actually find it more usable than Reddit and its terrible way of trimming down threads by default.
What I’ve seen of Lemmy does seem a bit messier to read, though.
Yeah that’s the Mbin UI in general as opposed to Lemmy’s. Mbin is definitely taking its own approach UI-wise.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter.
I think many people use Bluesky instead of Mastodon because of its UX, not its UI. Both looks great (I think Mastodon even nicer!).
I personally use Mastodon, but I’ve seen people complain about their experience with it.
The ootb experience is what matters to most. As people seem to just want it to work. I personally love the bare bones… but most users don’t really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings. I would be fine with polished and basic settings complemented with an advanced settings menu and other apps.
most users don’t really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings.
Usually I just recommend
- one instance: https://discuss.online/
- one app: Voyager
They can figure the rest themselves later, but that’s usually a good way to set people up
Great advice, didn’t know about discuss.online.
Is there any other “human-readable” instance out there?The question I usually get is “what is Lemmy?” when sharing a post
jlai.lu is basically reddit (as “read it”) but written in French
Probably https://reddthat.com/
Be cautious, downvotes are disabled
What’s the consequences with disabled down voting? Is there any difference on how the post displayed ?
Yes, downvotes will be ignored. On the other hand, you can’t downvote any post. This comes from a time where there was no option to disable downvotes display at a user level (came in 0.19.4 I think, LW is still on 0.19.3, so you probably never tried it out).
Got it! Thanks.
I’ve been planning to move from world but apparently there’s no easy way to migrate with everything intact yet afaik.
For those who may not be aware there are alternative front ends available for Lemmy.
MLMYM is like old reddit. You can see what it looks like here:
mlmym.walledgarden.xyz
Voyager is multi platform interface that also offers a Lemmy frontend. Our implementation is here:
voyager.walledgarden.xyz
I am not as tech savvy as most people on Lemmy and I use voyager without any issues. I thought it was quite easy to get up and running.
This UI is so beautiful
/me pines for the days of protocol over interface. NNTP + killfiles were the bees knees. Then we could just all pick our own interface to connect to any lemmy host.
