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.
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 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 :)