I’ve tried both [Lemmy and PieFed], and the UX is incredibly unintuitive and unpleasant. The main problem is that it’s quite hard to discover content you want while avoiding content you don’t, Bluesky at least has really good custom feeds that are easy to add (the default feed sucks). Another big issue is the general site layout, it’s hard to figure out how to do things as simple as saving a post for later or how to go back to the feed without being redirected back to the post I’m trying to exit.
Maybe they didn’t see the “Feeds” feature in PieFed? The top navigation menus in PieFed are a bit messy. Although shareable blocklists could be cool too, or maybe toxic?
That’s excluding the horrible lack of contrast most frontends use, which makes reading and parsing the site elements unnecessarily difficult (no Lemmy, grey text on a grey background is not good for readability).
I like the Lemmy colors, but maybe it should be easier to change, because they might like the darkly-pureblack theme.
Fediverse feels slower, but not in a good way. More of a ‘if I don’t use this for a week, I’ll see new things’. If I log in after 2 or 3 days, I’ll scroll for 10 minutes and see the stuff I saw last time.
Maybe this is a UX issue of not finding the right feed they would like.
I’ve tried using lemmy and have exactly the same issue. After blocking all the politics stuff, left wing meme stuff and tankie stuff there’s bugger all remaining. Even with all the blocks I’ve made it just seems to be a bunch of toxic left wing people calling each other fascist because of some minor difference in opinion.
I also want nsfw stuff now and then. I hate how censored the internet has become, at least with reddit if I want to see a bit of porn, I can.
Again maybe a UX issue of not presenting what communities they could subscribe to.
I tried twice to join those forums within the Fediverse and I can’t get past the captcha test. The fact that you need approval to validate your access doesn’t seem designed to encourage you to recommend it.
The captchas on Lemmy are AWFUL, I can’t do them either.
(that’s the “Medium” difficulty)
Lemmy v1.0 is adding the ability to do invites, so maybe there will be an invite-only instance that gets some momentum, that could be cool. Invite sites seems like a cool old-internet type of culture.
The fediverse stuff is way too complicated for me, Reddit is very easily accessible and actually has active communities for the topics I’m interested in.
Of course these are naturally going to be all negative because they’re users that bounced off the Threadiverse, but there’s probably hints to what can be improved
Are they using a 3rd party app like Voyager? It makes a big difference.
Even if they aren’t. The interface isn’t that bad. More just different. It takes some adjustment. Although there 100% is an old threaded like interface for lemmy at least. But that’s an issue for Discovery and presentation.
I use Voyager and I feel like it’s easy enough to use and has a great UI.
Sometimes I just use Lemmy with Firefox and that’s when I feel a tad lost. It’s still useable if you put the effort, but it’s clearly not as intuitive as Voyager.
So maybe the Lemmy browser UI should be improved. Also it would be good to have an official Lemmy app for mobile phones as people can get lost with choices.
The problem with the Fediverse is always the onboarding and understanding the basics. Peertube or Lemmy are great but really intimidating for non geeky people.
Also the lack of some content can be problematic. On Lemmy I can find almost everything I want even if some comminities are almost dead, but on Peertube I can only satisfy 1 out of my 4 point of interest (Basketball, Cars and game reviews being the missing one and Linux being the fullfiled one).
most of them no, which is maybe another issue of not showing that’s an option, but really the default UIs need to be good
The reddit UI sucked in the past and sucks more now. The main reason that reddit grew was because of the incredible apps that 3rd parties made like RiF.
Lemmy now has a bunch of mature and efficient apps that are easy to use.
RiF is the worst example possible of better UI and “incredible”, it was always the ugliest and least nice to use reddit app by far, IMO.
I seriously don’t understand how anyone could stand it, it was like trying to use some shitty win95 shovelware compared to most others. Easily one of the ugliest apps I’ve ever seen too.
A couple of the apps were even made by reddit app devs that abandoned the platform. So some of the lemmy/piefed apps are literally those remade.
Well, the platform abandoned them.