[Ferkv]

> Nobody wants to choose a server. We just want reddit without the bullshit.

* If you choose reddit you are choosing reddit's server.

* If you choose ycombinator, you are choosing ycombinator's server.

* If you choose facebook, you are choosing facebook's server.

Just because those are not federated doesn't mean the user doesn't have to deal with the bullshit of having to choose to create and manage an account in one (or more) of them. Or possibly having to look for other alternatives (like many are doing now apparently).

You can just enter lemmy.ml or mastodon.social in the browser, press "create an account" in each of them and you'd never even need to know or care whether those federate among themselves or not.

Federation is optional from a user perspective. You could still have separate accounts in beehaw.org, mastodon.org.uk, veganism.social and mastodon.social if you wanted. You are not forced to look for content outside your instance. The same as you can have an account in reddit, another one in facebook and another one in ycombinator without ever mixing them up.

The difference is that in the fediverse you can merge them if you want to. Even if all new users exclusively used mastodon.social resulting in more de-facto centralization, I still don't think that's a big deal, personally. Just the fact that federation is possible at all as an option still provides more software freedom than Twitter, even if you don't care for federation or even know what it is.

Do you think that email being federated makes it less attractive for the average user? do they find it more complicated? ...I don't think the average user cares at all, all they know is they have a gmail or hotmail account.

[Gareth321]

All of this is technically correct, but it's communicated really badly to the end user. If there is to be any success for Lemmy in the wake of Reddit shooting itself in the foot, it needs to make the federation part completely invisible and transparent, unless someone intentionally seeks it out. join-lemmy.org makes me choose from a list of servers before I can sign up (https://join-lemmy.org/instances). Without having a really solid understanding of how and why I need to choose a server, I'd be surprised if the conversion rate is higher than 5%.

Lemmy.ml is the largest instance, but it's already straining under the weight of a few thousand users (https://lemmy.ml/post/1147770?scrollToComments=true). I think what is needed now is someone with a big budget to purchase some server space and delete any mention of federation from the UX. It's just unclear how they will recoup their investment.

[berniedurfee]

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