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.
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?
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.
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.
Weber’s Iron Cage and the history of enshitification of technology beg to differ.