[rant] Why is this so hard for people?

It is confusing. Simple as. I have an account on lemmy dot ca, but I don't understand how to view or participate in kbin content so I just don't

Most people don't really want to move off Reddit. They might see how shitty spez is being, but moving off Reddit will be a big shake up to their online life. So any excuse they can find to stay on Reddit is something they will latch on to. "It's too complicated" is a good one, because there's some truth to it, and it's pretty subjective anyway, so it's hard to argue with.

Fortunately, there is a small percent of people who embrace new things like the Fediverse, especially if there is good reason to overcome some of the obstacles and make it work. Without those people, we would end up stuck.

Trying to help people move over is a good thing, but it's not worth getting frustrated with them if they find reasons not to do it. In my view, we're seeing the end of the current era of the internet (where corporate social media dominates), and moving into a new one (where decentralisation wins out). The people stuck on Reddit will realise this one day, just maybe not today.

I think I can understand how confusing this is for people. It took me a while to get used to Reddit originally, and now it is another different environment.

I am kind of running to here because I tried going to Discord and found myself getting rather confused with the many channels/servers (?). I am a tech-idiot. I just like to be in a place where I could see interesting threads to join and chat. I used to go to forums, but those forums slowly died after social media platforms came into prominence. I miss those friendly forum environment, and I struggle to keep afloat in a world that seemed to be moving a lot faster than my brain can follow. :(

>sign up for reddit just fine
>claims signing up for kbin.social is too hard
???? it's the same process???

Honestly, I agree. I am not tech savvy, I am actually a pretty basic user of the internet. I just followed the link provided in a post, registered on Kbin, and started enjoying it.

Now, Lemmy did give me more trouble, and it's the reason I am on Kbin, but even then it was more a matter of having to wait for confirmation. By the time it came I found I preferred Kbin "graphics" (don't know how to explain it better).

Really can't understand what people find so difficult. Even the fediverse isn't a difficult concept: you sign up in one site, you can see posts from other sites too. Simple as that. There's nothing complicated if you're just an user and not someone who has to make it work

Ok, I get that the fediverse is complicated if you think deeply about all the interconnectivity and federation etc, but there is no reason you even have to think about any of it

you must be kidding. there is no reason to think about that?

to find communities/magazines you have to use some 3rd party tools (you may be lucky and see something in the "all" feed, but that is not guaranteed), then when you find it, you can't just click subscribe, you have to grab the url, go back to another tab where you are logged into your instance and subscribe by manually constructing the url, or pasting the url somewhere (maybe, haven't tried that way).

don't take me wrong, i am fan of open source, which is why i am here, but if you don't see how this is complicated for average non-tech-savy user, then i am not sure what to tell you.

A few weeks ago my neighbor (a nice older woman in her 60s) asked me to fix her TV. I walked into her living room and pushed the power button on the remote.

Sometimes it do be like that.

For a lot of people, anything new means stress. So their willingness to put up with that new thing and the amount of perceived stress will almost always hinge on the potential (personal) benefits. And the benefits will initially be perceived as not very high. So the willingness to overcome the hurdle/endure stress will be pretty low.

So don't be too harsh on those people. They'll join once they perceive it as beneficial enough. ;-)

I don't properly understand how all of this works.

But signing up to kbin on the weekend was just like signing up for anything else online.

And once I did, replying to posts - like this one - was more or less the same as replying on any other discussion forum.

So....I don't get it, what's so hard? Do you really need to understand the technical details underneath to start using this place?

That said, I would like to grasp this whole thing a little better. But I figured the best way to do that is to jump straight in and go from there! :)

The stoics (ancient philosophers) say: control what you can, but don't worry about what you cannot.

It's their approach to life, and it will bite them in the butt eventually, but there's little you can do about it, so focus on what you CAN do instead?

e.g. you could tell your MIL, patiently (b/c otherwise she'll feel disrespected & angry & won't learn), "here, let me help you so that you'll know in the future: you gotta press this button HERE, and make sure to aim the remote THERE, not over there where you had it pointed, b/c that's how the signal gets established and it knows what you want it to do". That's the other, major part too - putting yourself in their shoes, like she probably knows what button to press, but it wasn't working, so she immediately turned to you, and since you apparently will cave & do it, why shouldn't she? IT WORKS!?:-) She may still get angry even then, but if she learns... then you accomplished what you set out to do? :-) But remember that you can't control whether she learns - only how you offer to teach.

For the other, I'm not sure I know, b/c most people seem to not care about what happened at all, but for those who legit want to come here, maybe make a video walking through the entire sign-in process? "Click here, input stuff there, this is what it looks like"? There may be legit stuff stopping them though - I'm constantly seeing server outages, I had to try multiple times to make my own account even last week before the huge influx, and it's legit a bit confusing to see all the stuff that's constantly broken, or named differently or whatever. But if they can SEE it, it would boost confidence.

Though more likely they just don't want to do it and it's a mere excuse to begin with - and even once they create the account they'll still barely use it after that, so again don't worry about what is outside of your control.:-)

Did they initiate the process and ask for help or did you offer?

I've been teaching twenty years. If students get themselves to the point of coming with a question based on experience, odds are excellent that they will listen to what I'm saying. If they do something at my suggestion, they are not engaged and do not retain. Same is surely true for learning to use a new website.

So I dunno if this is a suggestion for you or other people reading this post, but consider directing them to magazines/communities that are an actual draw, since people are the actual draw. When they find they cannot post, then they will have incentive to pay attention.

This is so far true for "what is a photon", "what is consciousness", "how do you do a kick", and "why are most metals thermally conductive" so I suspect this isn't a unique thing. Dangle the incentive, then wait for them to ask how to get involved.

Again, not criticizing especially since I don't know your approach, hopefully this can help others. The draw is the community and posts, so highlight that way before they ever see a signup page. They can browse the site without an account.

They are coming here because they are angry at Reddit. They are still angry when they get here. Being angry is not conducive to having a good experience of something new, especially if they didn't want to leave Reddit in the first place. Kbin/Lemmy is being sold as a forced upgrade. It's like if your word processor has all its icons moved around and put into a side bar that's hidden until you know where to click. Why the fuck did they do that? We all hate that sort of shit, and that's what it feels like being forced to come here.

If you are going to promote Kbin/Lemmy, you need to change their mindset before they get here or they will just see a forced downgrade onto a broken Reddit clone.

I just made an account and started browsing the threads. Easy. I still have absolutely no idea how any of this works. The info diagram that was posted around a week or two ago was not very helpful.

but 4 out of 5 times people can’t

...or don't want to

Edit: For what it's worth, posted this comment a few days ago.

In my experience, many people resist change (consciously or otherwise). I think they're finding it hard to move out of their comfort zone and/or apprehensive about something new/unfamiliar. A few have legit concerns, and those have to be addressed. But for the others, you may have to be patient with them.

Do you want those people who can't even make an account here anyway? Lol
In all seriousness, SSO is a thing and maybe the devs are already looking into it. Google, Facebook. Git, and more all have ways to sign in to services for you. I wouldn't vote to use them given the ideals of why people are moving to these platforms, but if someone wants to use their apple account to sign in here and that makes it easy for them. I'd be happy for it's implementation.

I hear you. People have very little pain/change tolerance. Humans want things easy the first time. Those who stick around the fediverse have higher pain tolerance. They are more cognitively flexible. They are principled. There's a short time of adjustment that one has to tolerate.

I'm thankful for all those who have the strength to say "NO" to the likes of /spez. It's a small thing but it shows some determination and character.

When one user is having problems, the problem is the user. When it's multiple users, it's a pattern and problem with the design.

The problem is that people don't want to dedicate time to learn new, foreign things, they just want them to work. Because that's how it is with the stuff they're used to. Those things just work.

Also, fediverse isn't ready. Servers aren't always responding, design isn't finished etc. So it's no wonder people find it hard to use -- because it's an unfinished house or maybe more aptly a village.

Let me put it...indelicately. We are filtering out idiots with nothing to share and who aren't willing to put in effort.

That's fine. Keep chugging along

You're speaking my language.

When people from other services come around and they complain about how hard it is to be on the fediverse, I'm like "What, like running an instance?" because there's nothing hard about joining an already existing instance!

And to be honest, even running instances isn't that bad. I've got like 5, and I'm just some idiot on the Internet!

@McBinary What you're describing is one of the issues with the entire fediverse and it is the on boarding process.

A centralized social network just makes you go to Facebook (dot) com, then put your mail and password. Done!

But the fediverse isn't easier. People not only need to learn their username and password, also need to learn their server's name. Why? Because isn't the same to try to log in in lemmy.xyz than log in on lemmy.zyx

That makes non technical users get lost.

🧵 1 / 2

It reminds me so much of my 70/y old mother-in-law not immediately knowing how to work a tv remote and shoving it at me after 1.5 seconds saying "here, I can't figure this out". When in reality all she had to do was press the fucking big red button...

It's not just you, the one who is helping us, feeling like this. It's us feeling like this too... or atleast I feel like this.

Suddenly, I'm no longer the technologically sound person that I used to be. I'm overwhelmed. My hectic schedule and paucity of free time is not helping the case, either. There's just too much to read about; figure out... Took me a good hour or so just to create an account. Then another good few minutes to login, when it asked "instances" or something that I wanted to login into.

It's quite different from what I'm used to. I'm feeling as though there's so much that I'm being forced to learn. And I'm annoyed, extremely annoyed, that I've been forced to leave the one place I used to enjoy. I miss the content that I used to enjoy on reddit.

People like yourself, ones taking time out of their day to help us, are really a boon right now. For days (really, a couple hours spread across days), I searched for alternatives to reddit. Tried to read and grasp a couple of guides before I made-up my mind to take that plunge.

I see where you're coming from. And all I can say is, maybe once people get into the head-space to finally migrate, they may be more open to learning. They may still rage a bit about it - I know I am. But they may be open to learn.

Just want you to know that these guides and helps are most welcome right now. Thank you for helping us.

I was unsure of which instance to go with, but I got on Kbin as soon as I saw that it had Oauth. (just don't want to deal with it)

I can only assume that the people having trouble understanding kbin/lemmy are either relatively young, or relatively inexperienced with technology. Basically those people whose online experience really only started in the era of Reddit/Facebook/Twitter/etc. Those of us who were online in the early 2000s are familiar with web forums. Kbin Magazines/Lemmy Communities are basically just web forums that can be interacted with from any kbin or Lemmy instance that's federated. Those of us who are even older and were online in the 90s (or earlier) are familiar with Usenet. Kbin Magazines/Lemmy Communities are basically Usenet newsgroups, with the particular instance you're on essentially the same as your Usenet provider. Or for the really old folks like me, instances are like BBSes that are connected to each other with FidoNet.

It reminds me of people who get confused getting on Discord for the first time, when it's really just a modern incarnation of chat-rooms or IRC. None of these ideas are new, and people were able to figure out these core concepts decades ago.

Why is this so hard for people?

One thing I want people to leave behind when they unplug from reddit is the clickbait titles:

"Look what my sister just did!"

"Was it really so simple?"

"I should have seen it coming [wholesome]"

Surprise titles are the worst. They really make me feel that the author is just using the tool as his toy. There will be thousands of people like you, what do you think will happen when all the titles will look like yours?

Most people are really dumb when it comes to technology.

I gotta be honest, I'm a tech person myself and I was also slightly confused when I checked out Lemmy for the first time. There were three major things I had to grasp before I felt like I understood the whole concept:

1. Browsing "All" shows content from all federated instances
2. Most big instances are already federated, so chosing the right instance is not really that important
3. You can participate in other instances with the account of your "home" instance by turning foreigninstance.com/c/Community into homeinstance.com/c/Community@foreigninstance.com, which is a kinda cumbersome process right now, but I'm sure some wily developer will come up with an elegant solution for that in the future (like having the option to automatically turn URLs from foreign instances into home instance URLs).

It kind of makes me want to learn coding, so I can participate and make Lemmy better and better, lol.

I don't blame anyone for getting frustrated. The whole concept of the fediverse is quite confusing to someone that knew nothinf about it prior, and I myself am only just starting to get a grasp on things. The whole experience reminds me of the first time i heard about bitcoin and trying to wrap head around the blockchain.

I (and i assume many others) have been unhappy with reddit's direction for some time now, and forcedully ending the life of my third party app of choice (RIF) just happened to be the straw that broke the camels back.

To many of us this is the last straw, but to many others who may be newer users, or may have already been using the official Reddit app this probably does not seem like a huge deal.

Only time will tell if the folks leaving were generating the lions share of the worthwhile content, or if we are just the vocal minority and life will go on. Some folks aren't looking for a new home, and even if these events are what lead to Reddit's eventual demise it will take years for said demise to play out.

I keep clicking links on one fediverse and somehow I become on a different instance and thus logged out, kbin seems promising but no mobile app, Jerboa is glitchy and very WIP. It is hard to grasp. The first time I tried using it I just ended up on different instances and couldn't log in again, not realising that I was somehow brought to a different instance instead of viewing the post in my instance

If the super-easy signup process is a barrier to entry for someone, is that person really worth having here? This may sound crazy, but I want barriers to entry.

Anyone recall how much better the internet was when it cost a few thousand bucks, and a bit of technical know-how, to even get online? It was no utopia, but it also wasn't everyone's Aunt Betty, who can't operate a toaster, on her iPhone screaming "5G gives you covid DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!1"

After finding the voting system better than Slashdot's, I was on Reddit for 14 years; I fell in love with it at the start, and slowly fell out of love each time they dumbed the site down, in order to lower the barrier to entry. It went from a forum for a community of nerds, to a Facebook meme image board, and each step was a painful reminder of Eternal September in action.

The Fediverse still has that old feeling of community, and I don't want Eternal September to happen here (and it is happening, but not to a terrible extent, yet). I wish signing up really was confusing. Nothing good will come from adding training wheels for Aunt Betty.

Yeah I won’t lie I’m… very confused but I’m kinda just rolling with it and hoping I figure it out along the way. I can’t speak for others but I find myself generally comfortable with computers and willing to try things out and see what I can do. Some people are afraid to do that and idk how to change it

It is just plain comfortness. Sometimes people can be completely helpless if you switch an option or an app around, even though it is just by one position or even just change the design a bit. So is it with /kbin. It completely looks like and works like Reddit, yet it is different.

Back in my day we had to walk uphill both ways to sign up for BBS forums. Kids these days.

Lol yep, my wife uses reddit and when I started explaining it she just stopped listening. I'm like and case and point.

Though it took a bit of reading to figure it out for myself, I had the desire to do so. Whereas those who don't really care will continue to browse reddit or whatever imo.

Hopefully it becomes easier to get setup and more elegant solutions are found.

Seriously, the Internet was better before it was so accessible. I might sound arrogant, but I don't care. I want people here who actually have half a clue about how to operate a computer. If someone doesn't even know how to sign up to a website and rage quits, I'm quite glad they aren't here.

My hot take: I'm okay with a barrier to entry (right now).

Getting setup on the fediverse isn't necessarily a super simple process and there is a bit of learning curve for how it works.

That's okay. I actually like it. Here's why.

It means the people here want to be here. It means the people here understand what it is and more importantly what it isn't. It's not a reddit clone. It's not even old school forums. It's this.

And "this" isn't even it's final form. I fully expect for the fediverse to evolve over the next few months and years. As a community develops and the technology is refined, I am sure it will all get simpler as we knock off the rough edges.

In the mean time, this tiny barrier to entry keeps a lot of the whiners and naysayers away. It keeps people that only want a reddit clone, away. If you want reddit, use reddit. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

It's a balancing act, because we don't want to turn so many people away that we can't build a reasonable community, but you also don't want a bad copy of a system people are leaving.

I get both sides. Just the act of having to create a new login/password is too much for many who've gotten used to signing in with their Facebook or Google accounts and they want things to be as friction free as possible and I think that's fair enough. Personally I really enjoyed the process of learning about the Fediverse, figuring out how Lemmy works and understanding its strengths and limitations. But that's not most people. I know one redditor I tried to describe it to said they gave up after the first sentence. If I really simplified it they will understand but in doing so you might misslead them about the world of instances, how they can all differ slightly, how they may or may not fully interact with each other. Me, I'm like holy crap! I'm on this tiny little instance in a corner of the world and I can not only read but like, comment and subscribe to all these other much bigger communities!? Let alone interact with kbin.social which isn't even Lemmy at all!? It just works! But I'm also very tollerant of times when things may not work as expected, but I don't care, because at least it's not reddit ;-)

The majority of people out there are plain dumb bud. Don't get angry is a normal rate in the human race.

Anyone got a good tutorial to share for folks who want to jump?

Eh, fuck 'em. There's only so much you can do, and it sounds like you've made it very easy. Move on and spend your time on those who are out of the loop but of a growth mindset. Who do you really want here anyway?

Two examples:

when you're browsing your follows on mastodon, and click on their follows, the list is not true to their follows (because your server hasn't fetched them).

and, when you first subscribe to someone's posts, you can't see older posts (say they've got 100, but you see zero).

I'm aware that there are technical reasons (you weren't subscribed), and open source reasons (nobody has the time to volunteer to fix it), but these are insufficient to help an anxious new user who's undecided about the platform.

That's only Mastodon, which has 7 years of refinement. Don't get me started on the litany of federation-related edge cases of Lemmy's UX failings.