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
This is completely bananas to me, given the Reddit UI…
yea it’s awful but they’re used to it lol
Stockholm syndrome to the max
Or they’ve already invested effort into figuring out ways around it - like old reddit+RES. Whereas for Lemmy there is less content overall and it’s a change that they haven’t yet seen the value in making the switch.
And also Stockholm syndrome to the max:-)
On UI: dunno if it’s a me thing, but it would seem to me as that every site’s bad until you get used to it. Piefed for example I find kinda bloated but once I learned where to look, it became much easier to use.
On avoiding content: yeah, requires some patience people usually don’t have to block everyone and every place that lowers the quality of the user’s feed.
On slower feeds: maybe an autism thing, or maybe because in Mbin, I consume both threads and microblogs, but I feel the opposite, too much to see, enough that I am forced to curate.
On seeing posts again: a bit of a tangent, but both Lemmy and Piefed have post-hiding features. The option is “hidden” in the 3 dots menu of each post, which would imply people are forgetting these 3 dots mean “more options”? Perhaps in this line, having a “more” button like on Mbin would be better?
On porn: FediNSFW. 🕵♂
On being complicated: migrating and integrating usually is, but if you do, you need to bear with it.
Would make those comments there if I still had access to my account. Oh well.
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.
Lol. This part rings so true!
I’ve tried both [Lemmy and PieFed], and the UX is […]
That’s excluding the horrible lack of contrast most frontends use, which makes […]
IMO both of the UIs are going to feel weird and limited to someone coming from Reddit / Instagram etc. I find that custom front ends like Photon are a lot better for newcomers.
I know Lemmy is working on a completely new frontend.
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.
I have a constant flow of new content, and see something new every time I open it (which is often, after years of having that muscle memory from reddit).
I’m subscribed to a lot of communities + using scaled sort
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.
This one was weird to me. I remember seeing complaints that reddit has been banning and shutting down its NSFW side, while it’s accessible here.
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.
I want Lemmy to support HCaptcha
Past that, most people are ok with applications once you explain why they’re necessary.
Also a lot of social media platforms started out as invite only as marketing strategy lol
I think it’s the default as “active” that screws people up. They think it’s stale because they’ve probably not seen any new content for hours.
My favourite “feature” is sorting by Top 6 hours and Top 12 hours and actually seeing an end of content
I do that as a 20 min recap at the end of the day.
Are they using a 3rd party app like Voyager? It makes a big difference.
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.
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.
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).
Btw PieFed has more or less solved the onboarding problem. Seriously, pick one and make an account even if solely to go through the onboarding wizard and you will be amazed.
Those categories of communities, which are user-customizable and shareable Topic Feeds, are also hella useful, even if only to help you discover communities that you want to subscribe to in your existing account.
Realistically, PieFed is running circles around Lemmy in terms of features. And now PyLova is moving even faster than it (but they mostly tend to share).
A lot of these Reddit comments are from people that seemed to put zero effort into understanding anything. Or perhaps they simply aren’t expressing their thoughts well: like those organized Topic Feeds are not difficult to use at all, making one wonder if they didn’t bother poking around to click on menus enough to know that they are there, or realize that by subscribing to communities that they like, their main Subscribed Feed would be affected. Such people not coming here may be no great loss?
Well you convinced me to give it a try! I hope I’ll be able to interoperate with Lemmy and also export some of my settings.
PieFed interoperates pretty much seamlessly with Lemmy - some post types Lemmy does not support (like user polls) so occasionally you’ll see something in PieFed but not Lemmy, though never the other way around.
Settings Export & Import should work perfectly as well, definitely from Lemmy to PieFed though I never tried that in reverse.
You should really enjoy it!! Anyway, you always have your Lemmy to fall back onto… like during maintenance or whatever.
That’s my first comment since you convinced me to try PieFed.
You said I’d occasionally see something on PieFed and not on Lemmy, but for now it’s quite the other way around. I noticed a crosspost between Peertube@lemmy.ml and Fediverse@lemmy.world isn’t showing at all.
I’m gonna keep comparing Lemmy and PieFed and then choose one at one point.
Missing posts happen all the time on Lemmy as well - those phenomena are related to the per-instance dynamics (e.g. PieFed.social vs. PieFed.ca vs. PieFed.World, etc.), not the per-software differences (Lemmy vs. PieFed vs. Mbin).
Reasons this can happen include:
- major network delays - this is much more rare these days, but a bot attack could cause a temporary issue, or if you know about mander.xyz (a Lemmy instance dedicated to scientific content) that one is pretty much just gone for now (the backup is super old so admin is waiting, hoping it will come back rather than the most recent few months merely being permanently gone)
- if the poster is blocked on your instance, for being a known troll (or the instance admin felt that way, whether overzealous in that opinion or no)
- for Lemmy, at least pre-v1.0 that hasn’t been released yet, at least one person needs to to sign up to a community first, before content will start being pulled in from it for everyone else; although I thought PieFed did away with the requirement so this should not be an issue for you
Taking a quick look, PeerTube@lemmy.ml looks pretty dead - sorted by time there’s one post from 2 days ago, before that only 2 posts in the last month, the next post 3 months ago, then others 7-8 months ago. And looking from a guest/anonymous account, that’s identically what I see on PieFed.social as well (barring some slight time reporting differences e.g. 2 vs. 3 months but the poster name matches) at https://piefed.social/c/peertube@lemmy.ml, and I also confirmed the same at https://piefed.ca/c/peertube@lemmy.ml.
So I wonder if PieFed.social is now user-blocking lemmy.ml automatically. To confirm: did you add any kind of blocking for lemmy.ml communities or users? On a desktop machine, go into your Account, Blocks & Filters, scroll down to the Blocks section and look especially at the Instances section - does it have lemmy.ml in it, or is it empty?
Of course if you are using a 3rd-party app, that could be a factor as well. In that case, first I suggest to confirm that you can see the posts that you are wanting to see from a desktop with your logged-in PieFed.social account, and then deal with whatever may be going on with the app.
Is there a certain post in particular that you were hoping to see? (or at least using it as a way to understand what it is that you are seeing) That would help me to diagnose, like especially if it is super-old, like years, that could help explain what is going on?
well to be honest, I haven’t done any thorough research on the topic, but I know I haven’t personnaly blocked anyone on PieFed since it was my first day and my first post on it.
For now, especially because I can’t find a mobile app with an UI similar to Voyager, I think I’ll stay on Lemmy unless PieFed makes major progress.
Edit: although I’m now noticing that the Progressive Web App has an UI I appreciate more than Interstellar’s, so I’ll give it a shot😇
Edit2: it turns out that PieFed was already blocking 4 instances without me doing anything, so that’s why some comments were missing.
It hasn’t started well for now.
First instance I tried said they were taking more people when the main Piefed page said they were.
And now, I’ve been waiting for 2 days for an answer from another instance…
If the answer is negative again or if I get none, I’ll go for the biggest instance available, but I’ll give up after this…
This would be way too much for someone who would just give a try to the Fediverse…
Yeah the entire onboarding experience is a mess for the whole Threadiverse - both Lemmy and PieFed.
Most people that talk poorly about us on Reddit or Bluesky or X claim to have had accounts here for several years, so it does not seem to get better even after making an account.
We here still perpetually need to have the early adopter mindset, which seems like it will never go away.
Bro Reddit has horrible UI/UX
I agree, but what do I know? I’ve only got a master’s in UX.
I genuinely don’t care what their feedback is. lol
it’s kinda funny how they’re freaking out over Lemmy and Piefed’s “incredibly unintuitive and unpleasant” UX compared to… Reddit?
If they really love the ads, bots, and default feed of Reddit then I’m happy they’re staying there. I just hope for their sake they don’t get site-banned by an overzealous AI moderator.
that’s not UX
It sure is and it impacts your experience as a user, which is literally what UX stands for.
interesting, I always thought the placement of UI/UX meant UX had to be closely related. i mean it still is closely related to UI but it’s less closely-related than I thought
