Not just Lemmy, but all Fediverse frontends: it’s confusing and cumbersome. I’ve been here for 2 years and I still find that it’s very much lacking in the “user experience” department. I have add-ons and scripts to ‘patch’ things that ought not to need patching. I don’t know if it’s possible for this to happen given the nature of Fedi, but it should be the case that a new user would find it works more or less the same as non-Fedi software and not have to juggle instances and type hideous and long URLs into the search bar. Instance names and stuff like that should be available to people who want to see them, but by default there’s little reason to frighten new users with it. Make it be under-the-hood type stuff. One follow button that works for your home instance regardless of where you are on the Fediverse would be a nice start.
Also, privacy needs to be handled better. Again, not sure if that’s possible because of the nature of Fedi, but Lemmy should make users feel more secure than reddit or Twitter, not less. Like, it’s bizarre that reddit protects my privacy more than Lemmy does, given that reddit doesn’t really protect my privacy much at all.
Arguably, lemmy is going to be more private than reddit because your data are being queried, refined, quantified and categorised by reddit to be sold off to the highest bidder. If a different actor is just scraping activitypub they need to do all of that themselves.
More generally, I’m not sure if we should ever think about something posted online as being private. You can post form data that is secured to your bank or whatever but they are analysing all of that data on their side. Similarly the large email providers are aware of the contents of all your emails.
Arguably, lemmy is going to be more private than reddit because your data are being queried, refined, quantified and categorised by reddit to be sold off to the highest bidder. If a different actor is just scraping activitypub they need to do all of that themselves.
I don’t think there’s any “arguably” that Lemmy is more private, it’s a completely open platform. Sure Reddit is a closed platform that can sell data to whoever, but Fediverse data is freely accessible to anyone who just has a bit of technical know-how to set up an instance, after which they can query, refine, quantify, and categorize it all they want. If there’s profit to be made with that data, someone will do it. I am assuming that our info is already being collected by both private interests and governments.
Instance names and stuff like that should be available to people who want to see them, but by default there’s little reason to frighten new users with it.
Not just Lemmy, but all Fediverse frontends: it’s confusing and cumbersome. I’ve been here for 2 years and I still find that it’s very much lacking in the “user experience” department. I have add-ons and scripts to ‘patch’ things that ought not to need patching. I don’t know if it’s possible for this to happen given the nature of Fedi, but it should be the case that a new user would find it works more or less the same as non-Fedi software and not have to juggle instances and type hideous and long URLs into the search bar. Instance names and stuff like that should be available to people who want to see them, but by default there’s little reason to frighten new users with it. Make it be under-the-hood type stuff. One follow button that works for your home instance regardless of where you are on the Fediverse would be a nice start.
Also, privacy needs to be handled better. Again, not sure if that’s possible because of the nature of Fedi, but Lemmy should make users feel more secure than reddit or Twitter, not less. Like, it’s bizarre that reddit protects my privacy more than Lemmy does, given that reddit doesn’t really protect my privacy much at all.
Arguably, lemmy is going to be more private than reddit because your data are being queried, refined, quantified and categorised by reddit to be sold off to the highest bidder. If a different actor is just scraping activitypub they need to do all of that themselves.
More generally, I’m not sure if we should ever think about something posted online as being private. You can post form data that is secured to your bank or whatever but they are analysing all of that data on their side. Similarly the large email providers are aware of the contents of all your emails.
I don’t think there’s any “arguably” that Lemmy is more private, it’s a completely open platform. Sure Reddit is a closed platform that can sell data to whoever, but Fediverse data is freely accessible to anyone who just has a bit of technical know-how to set up an instance, after which they can query, refine, quantify, and categorize it all they want. If there’s profit to be made with that data, someone will do it. I am assuming that our info is already being collected by both private interests and governments.
https://piefed.social/ hides the instance name of communities in the feed