this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Even finding Lemmy was not easy. Just doing a search brought up Lemmy from Motörhead. Talented guy, but not really what I wanted. It took me awhile before I even found an instance, and that was only because of a YT video. Most folks will just use the first page of their chosen search engine, and then give up.
Then signing up to… pretty much anything federated is a confusing experience for new users. Trying to wrap your head around instances, communities, and so on. “Why does there have to be an XYZ community at Example instance, when there already is one on ABC Instance? Can’t they just merge? What’s the point? What if I want to be a part of example instance, but want to subscribe to communities on the ABC instance?“
When signup is done, but you then enabled 2FA. You input the string on your app, click apply. Then when you try to log back in, you find you’re logged out, and don’t know why. It’s because Lemmy is one of the few services to use SHA256, and not SHA1. So it doesn’t work with something like Bitwarden. I had to find a GitHub post to find out why this was happening. Not a good first impression.
Then when you subscribe to communities they’re either lacking in content, or reposting, sometimes from another instance.
There seems to be issues with posting media, and the whole integration with other ActivityPub seems to need some work.
Overall I think all this is growing pains. I wouldn’t say the service is ready, but I don’t think it’ll be ready, until it onboards new users. However I don’t think many new users (non-technical users especially) will stay, due to the issues above.
I'm still struggling with it. I clicked on a post that looked interesting and it took me to a server I didn't have a logon to. I wanted to leave a comment but I couldn't. Was I banned? Nope, I finally realized I'd been directed to a different server. Now imagine someone with zero IT background trying to deal with this. They'd probably just quit it.
It is interesting to be on the ground floor of something new though.
That is generally really annoying, when on desktop. Consider looking for an Android/iOS app. The app will keep track of your account, and you won’t really have that issue anymore. I use Thunder, and find it a decent experience on both platforms.