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.

  • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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    13 days ago

    most users don’t really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings.

    Usually I just recommend

    They can figure the rest themselves later, but that’s usually a good way to set people up

    • ilhamagh@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      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

        • ilhamagh@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          What’s the consequences with disabled down voting? Is there any difference on how the post displayed ?

          • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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            12 days ago

            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).

            • ilhamagh@lemmy.world
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              12 days ago

              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.