How did Lemmy.world become more popular than Lemmy.ml?

gylotip@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 470 points –

I don't understand how Lemmy.world developers managed to surpass both Lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org instances in user activity.

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Idk about other people, but I don't really know how the instances work and the lemmy.world instance name seems the least abstract. Beehaw was confusing because it's not called lemmy so idk if it's a different thing or what, and idk what .ml means or stands for. Lemmy.world just looks like it's the default lemmy instance to me as a dunce who doesn't know how lemmy works.

I think you nailed it. It comes down to usability and user experience. Migrating from Reddit and not knowing shit about fuck, I obviously choose the largest sounding instance (.world). I still haven’t understood the whole thing yet, but the novelty is exciting and I’m willing to learn. Mass adoption needs a more streamlined experience though.

Honestly going for the 'largest' instance is kind of dumb naive. Smaller, faster instances provide a much better experience. Bigger is not better in the fediverse.

The whole point is to decentralise power away from a single instance, CEO or monopoly. If you're on a small instance you can still see all the content you want from all the other instances and you might even get a meaningful say in how your experience develops.

We don't want to build another Reddit we want to build an alternative that is better structured.

Honestly going for the ‘largest’ instance is kind of dumb. Smaller, faster instances provide a much better experience. Bigger is not better in the fediverse.

Ok, but how is a new user supposed to know that?

Then there should be a single unified sign up page that sends you to a random instance or something. You still need an easy onboarding process for less technical people

I don't know, I kind of like that it's something new to get your head around. It's a pretty fundamentally different type of internet than what we have now. It reminds me of what it was like back in dial up days.

Is it really that dumb though? Small instances might provide a better experience until they close down.

But small instances are very low cost to run, so much so that a few donations from their users is usually enough to cover the costs and upkeep.

I signed up on lemmy.ca but their sublemmys aren't as populated as here. Plus jerboa let's me pick different instances.

I too do not know shit about fuck.

Ya it has a great domain name and didn't require an email when I signed up at least. I'm thinking about spinning up my own instance on AWS though since the lag and "bad gateway" stuff is annoying.