As a strong supporter of open-source and community-funded projects like Lemmy, which prioritize serving users over investors, I believe Lemmy has significant potential, and that’s why I am here. However, it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form. Despite the surge in users following Reddit’s API changes, Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users, and those accustomed to old Reddit. For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience, meaningful changes are necessary.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter. This same ease of use is what Mastodon lacked, leading to its initial hype fading quickly. The average user is unlikely to adapt to something that feels complicated or unfamiliar, and this challenge also applies to Lemmy.
As someone who started as an average Reddit user and became more tech-savvy over time, I can confidently say that first impressions matter. When users first visit lemmy.world, the default UI is often enough to discourage them from staying. Most will not explore the homepage sidebar to explore, figure out and switch to one of the alternative UIs available, which is unfortunate because a better UI could make a huge difference.
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface. Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit. It makes excellent use of screen space and provides customization options like compact and cozy views. Unlike some other alternative UIs, Photon is actively maintained and ready for widespread use, although in no way is it perfect, this can also help bring in more contributors to the project development.
While it is important to continue offering other UIs as options, I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user. First impressions are crucial, and the current default UI has turned off many potential users. If we want Lemmy to succeed as a true Reddit alternative, we need to prioritize user experience and accessibility. Thankfully today, Lemmy still continues to be THE biggest Reddit alternative, while our userbase is still considerably smaller than Reddit, it’s the biggest of any alternatives, and Lemmy continues to somewhat be in the spotlight for those seeking alternatives, we can’t let growth stagnate, it’s high time we make the platform more welcoming and appealing for the average joe.
EDIT: The image I attached is from photon.lemmy.world, which I just realized is using the outdated version of Photon, I have updated the image to the updated current photon version from phtn.app. There are a lot of improvements made.
I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.
How are you supporting that belief? Any data? Any A/B testing?
I don’t want to sound too harsh, but you have sort of marked yourself as a representative of “average OG ex-redditor” or “average joe”. Actually, you refer to “average” quite a lot. But honestly, without any supporting evidence, it’s just words to make the proposal more appealing or relevant. If we remove all this cruft (which might be supported by anecdotal study, but that should barely count, if even), what arguments are here that actually remain?
Don’t get me wrong, if you said that you like “something like Photon” more than the current default UI, then great! It is awesome that other alternatives exist and when people find them, it’s great to share the review. (It’s how I have discovered so much of great software!) But then again, it’s all subjective, right? In your proposal, you seem to tend to state lot of these subjective opinions as if they were objective, which to me makes the proposal just far less convincing.
Hi everyone, I’m the dev. Reading all these comments really hurts when it’s something you’ve poured your heart and soul into for over a year.
There’s reasons I do everything I do in this UI, and my primary goal is to make Lemmy accessible for everyone.
This is the “cozy” view as well, but there’s a “compact” view for people like me who enjoy more information density. Again, my end goal is to make Lemmy accessible. I don’t do this for the sidebars for convoluted reasons I won’t get into.
I’m not the one trying to advertise it, and I’ve never really tried to because of the fear of disapproval. I think I should advertise it myself now because then I can showcase the best parts and not get misunderstood. This screenshot uses the “list” view, imo the worst one, with some cursed chrome scrollbars.
Now that I see that the majority of users believe this sucks, I’m not sure if my mission is worth it or if I’m even doing it right.
I’m probably being too sensitive to criticism which I should expect from any project. But this project is the only one I used to feel proud of, then people chiming in claiming it’s the ugliest thing they’ve seen. I don’t know im blind to design which is the only thing I considered myself “good” at in terms of web dev.
Hey man you and the team did a great job. Love the default UI. It’s all open source yeah? So they can change what they want. Kinda like what semaphore social did with mastodon.
Don’t be disheartened. You did a great job with your version.
People complain about Apple and Google UIs that they spend hundreds of millions on creating and user-testing. There’s no one-fits-all in UI or UX.
Dude UI (and anything to do with looks) is always a subjective thing. Some people will like it and some people will hate it. I know every dev wants their UI to be loved by everyone but that’s a fools errand as there are always people with opposing opinions. What matters is that
thatyou like what you have created. Also know that there are people like me and many others who use photon daily and love the design. Don’t let subjective opinions get you down.I haven’t met a single person that didn’t like Photon. Photon is the only reason I started browsing on desktop regularly. It’s lean, clean, and packed with gorgeous transitions; I’ve rarely ever found a project that gets form and function right.
The internet is a shitty place. I’m not surprised that on Lemmy we have shit like
- “client with no JS when?”
- “I don’t want normies anyway”
- “I’m too old to appreciate a modern-looking UI”
- “eww I don’t like this thing that carries subjective opinions, let’s never let anyone use this.”
The troll energy is strong, but it doesn’t change that this is a great project. Alternative UI’s are what make Lemmy unique, and you’re doing your part. That’s appreciated.
I’m not surprised that on Lemmy we have shit like
That’s indeed unfortunate
Never used your project but don’t let this thread get you down.
Clearly OP loves it - don’t let those who don’t know it or don’t like it be the voices that ring loudest in your ears even if they hurt the most.
I worked professionally in open source at a company with lots of funding. The tools I worked on were used by millions and millions.
Every negative comment hurt so much. Every angry user I wanted to talk to. Most of them wanted to TALK AT me. It all hurt. And I was being paid. The engineers on my teams were burnt by the community time and time again.
If you love what you’re doing and you have a growing or happy audience - stay the course. Listen to criticism, decide if you agree (and maybe take some time when it hurts because the criticism might be valid), make a decision and move on.
Also, and this is going to be tough, maybe think about expanding or modifying what you mean when you say making Lemmy accessible for everyone.
Do you mean making a UI that will become the majority default or making a UI that brings some features (or perspective) for users who see value in those features? Trying to make something for everyone in a pond as small as the fediverse, where there are already a plethora of options is a big lift.
Above all, do you. And that includes this comment which I encourage you to promptly ignore. ;)
Well said.
I for one am a fan of everybody doing UI Fediverse improvements. It is very literally paving the future of the internet, because the future of the internet is not corporate bullshit. The Fediverse needs to be as slick as possible, and more people working on that is sorely, sorely needed!
Don’t take it that way. I find the default UI horrible and primarily use Lemmy on Voyager on my phone because of it. Finding this thread let me find that I can comfortably use Lemmy on desktop too! 🥳
I didn’t join Lemmy for a while because I liked the “new” reddit UI better and found Lemmy too different to use easily. I tried all the different options and I didn’t like them. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED ON DESKTOP!
And remember survivorship bias. The ones that can put up with the Lemmy UI, or switch to something they like better, are (for the most part) the only ones here now giving feedback.
Hello @Xylight@lemm.ee ,
First of all, really sorry that you took it that way. A few comments were indeed harsh, and I guess people were just focused on the interface and forgot that there’s actually someone behind it.
I personally value Photon a lot, it definitely helps a lot of people who prefer this type of interfaces.
I think I should advertise it myself now because then I can showcase the best parts and not get misunderstood.
I think you don’t even need to advertise it that much. We have Photon as an alternative frontend on one of the instances I follow, and people regularly bug the admin to update it because they like it!
The negativity this post received is probably because interfaces are a very personal matter, and trying to uniformize the default interface is always going to lead to heated discussions
Take care, you are doing an amazing job.
The reason why Reddit killing third-party apps is an issue is that everyone has an opinion on UI, and all of them are correct. The perfect UI for one person will be terrible for another. Don’t take what others are saying too harshly. Make the UI that you think is best and there will be other users who agree and want it too. If you make something where you’re trying to please everyone you’ll end up making something no one likes.
Photon is amazing, and I use it daily. I love it. I’m sorry about the users in the comments that don’t understand what “subjective” means.
Thank you for all your work, and keep doing what you’re doing!
My other comment was blunt so here’s my attempt to be more constructive, this is all my personal opinion and my reaction was in response to making it the default I don’t think that you should stop working on it or even that I am objectively correct.
There is way too much empty space. I don’t use it but from OPs screenshot it appears this is to allow for larger thumbnails. It would be better to have them smaller and expandable if someone finds one interesting. Moving the thumbnails to the left of the text would eliminate all the blank space your eyes have to travel across to view them as well.
Shitty microsoft paint edits to demonstrate what I’m trying to say:
Freed up space in green:
That’s an option. You can change the thumbnail alignment to the left, then use compact instead of list mode. OP is using bad settings.
OP is using bad settings.
That’s very important
Just played around with it a little and it is much more tolerable than OP makes it look like. I wasn’t able to get it as compact as the default view but I don’t hate it.
don’t worry, you’re doing fine
I assume you mean the dev of Photon UI?
An important thing to remember when it comes to feedback is that there are different audiences. The only feedback you’ll get here is from Lemmy users, the people already here, the grognards, the Linux heads who don’t understand why anyone would need a GUI at all when the terminal is right there! All to say, a bunch of wads who would rather leave a big community for a smaller one that suits their preferences. They don’t know jack all about jack shit when it comes to designing for a general audience.
All to say, if what you want to design is accessibility… solicit feedback from people who need and understand accessibility features. I have no idea where those people are but I bet you’re savvy enough to find them.
If you can design something that looks like OP’s screenshot (and better, based on your comment), you straight up need not concern yourself with the negative feedback on this thread. Bunch of wankers. Continue being awesome and making awesome stuff!
deleted by creator
Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users
You say that like it’s bad 😊
Your points are valid, but you do run on the assumption that growth is good, which is not an universal truth IMO.
As someone trying to keep the non-tech communities active, having a few active posters would definitely be an improvement
Yes, I just want to point out that opening the floodgates will get you the fish, but also a lot of mud.
What communities do you manage?
Personally I think the day to day UX is fine, but finding communities is the real mess.
Thanks!
About link for finding new communities, I worded my request badly, I am not interested in finding new communities, I’m interested in finding specific communities. Thanks though!
Newcommunities has posts where the active communities on a topic are posted, so that can help
Sure, but it’s impractical when you search for a community.
Edit: tried your link, but the search function doesn’t seem to work. I searched for “art” and got technology, world news & shit post.
I just tried, art indeed seems too broad for some reason.
I just tried “television” and got relevant results. “video games” and “trains” work too
There was this post from 4 months ago, I’ll start a new one today: https://lemmy.world/post/19101266
I’m fine with having less normies and an non-algorithmichal echo chamber of fellow leftists and tech savvy persons. These are my homies.
I love the Lemmy UI.
But I’m a gen Xer.
There’s some great analysis floating around of how different generations actually interpret UIs (and make decisions about how or whether to engage with them) very differently. So there is no “one size fits all” that will make everybody happy. Change the Lemmy UI to something like Photon and I’d be like… “this is dumb.” Making a bunch of very different options is a lot of work. If you want to do it… no one is stopping you. The Lemmy project is opensource and you could go start contributing and making pull requests today. You could go run your own instance and make it look like whatever you want and get the average redditors to join that. I run my own instance. We have a whole two users. It works exactly the way I want it to and federates with exactly who I want it to.
Frankly, I’m not sure Lemmy needs to go out of it’s way to appeal to the average redditor in order to have a thriving, healthy community. Sure, there are some things I miss about having a giant user base to engage with, but honestly, I’ll trade them for the MUCH MUCH lower toxicity. I don’t know that “growing Lemmy” should be our focus. It’s not like we’re getting paid.
I love the Lemmy UI.
But I’m a gen Xer.
So what?
I’m sure you know that the value of a user or an opinion has nothing to do with their age.
Why be ageist to yourself?
I think you badly misunderstood my take.
I think you badly misunderstood my take.
Nah I just responded to a minor part (which I might have misunderstood). Sorry … 😈 🤣 .
I actually agree with everything in your post.
I love the Lemmy UI, and am a Gen Z. There’s nothing worse than a UI that’s slow, takes more time than necessary to load and is overloaded. I would much rather have bare HTTP forms or just make curl calls than using (new) reddit or Photon.
Millenial here, Fuck Brutalist Modern and Responsive Web Design! If they ever dumb down the interface: I’m out of here.
I don’t love the default Lemmy web UI, but I agree with the sentiment of preferring a lighter, faster UI…Which makes me surprised to read that you love it.
I don’t know why, but it occasionally slows way down for me when signed in and browsing. It’s nearly driven me to switching interfaces to see if they’re any better with performance.
genz here too, lemmy ui with the thumbnail (if explicitly posted, not auto generated from an article) full screen size by default would be the best of both worlds
This is a good take.
Speaking from the same neutral pragmatism, it makes sense to let the default Lemmy web UI be a lightweight, actually-mobile-friendly derivative of old.reddit, rather than a more committed default like Alexandrite or Photon.
Keeping things similar is a good jumping-off point, and if we do want to make some large change, different generations and cultures have heavily varying default preferences. Wouldn’t it be wiser to pick a common ground, something these differing peoples have grown used to, as opposed to some new style A or B or C likes?
(Fun fact: if you think that ppl sticking to old designs is silly, Panasonic has a whole $$ niche in Japan selling modern-internal, vintage-external laptops with DVD drives and old-style keyboards. https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/v0t06p literally has both a VGA and a thunderbolt lol)
Fun fact: if you think that ppl sticking to old designs is silly, Panasonic has a whole $$ niche in Japan selling modern-internal, vintage-external laptops with DVD drives and old-style keyboards. https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/v0t06p literally has both a VGA and a thunderbolt lol
Just in Japan?? I’ll buy one of these right now!
I don’t think the problem is the UI. Fediverse is more complex by nature than a centralized platform.
You have to choose a server, then an app to visualize (not only online but on the phone too) and there’s plenty of alternatives.
If everybody joined the same server we end up with a centralized system and if every large server has to use specific UI what’s the point on decentralizing?
I also thought that fediverse had to try to be easier to use but the point is that it’s more complicated precisely because the user has more power and hence has to do more decisions.
And I think people have to understand the basics of the fediverse, otherwise people will not stay precisely because it’s more complicated. If I didn’t care a bit I would be on Reddit not here and I’m currently using both because there’s simply much more content there and hopefully with time I can use Lemmy more and less reddit. I’m willing to do the effort of slowly transitioning because I believe in this but people who doesn’t care won’t stick around.
Lol no. We need a UI that doesn’t require JavaScript.
I think we need many UIs to cater for lots of different types of users and then you just choose the one you want.
Everyone having to use the same thing is what killed reddit for most of us.
Agreed, but we dont have a UI for users without JS
I disagree. I spent some time earlier this year working on a BlueSky client that would work completely without JavaScript. Working without JavaScript means it has to run on a web server somewhere. Using JavaScript means the client can run entirely on your computer with the only dependency being the Lemmy server you connect to. And since there are many Lemmy servers, this means no single entity that can pull the plug on you.
The only alternative I see is a native app that runs a non-JS client on your computer, or maybe WebAssembly? Seriously though, modern JavaScript is actually very capable. You might be dismissing it only because it’s popular to hate on JavaScript or maybe the current Lemmy clients aren’t good. That doesn’t mean the underlying issue is JavaScript.
I’ve abandoned my BlueSky client to work on a Lemmy client that will be written in JS but can run entirely on your computer.
This is a design flaw. The service that your JS queries can return HTML just as easily as it can return json that gets rendered on the page with JavaScript.
Write a letter to the lemmy devs and ask them to rewrite the backend to use htmx.
Everyone who has actually interacted with the Lemmy devs knows that they’re rude assholes that dont listen to their community.
Apparently butthurt as well if you check out the UI developer response.
And in doing so it would lock everyone using that service into a single UI. Structured data is better. You have an irrational fear of an extremely basic web technology.
Yeah I mean if you really want a UI with no JavaScript you can still use one, it’s really just a case of better defaults here (and I totally agree).
Can you link me to a Lemmy UI that doesn’t require JS?
I don’t think it’s possible to have a Lemmy UI without JS because it serves up JSON not rendered pages. You could sign up on a kbin/mbin instance though to get a static frontend.
Of course its possible, but Lemmy needs to fix this design flaw first
can we be best friends please?
Different OG ex-redditor here. I think Lemmy’s UI is vastly superior. But full disclosure, I used old reddit.
How is it clear that Lemmy’s growth is nearing a plateau? And why does Lemmy need broader growth? That seems like a solution in search of a problem. A major advantage of not being a corporate social media property is not having to think like one.
Nice! But the average users graph shows continual staggering growth, no sign of a plateau.
45k monthly active users on 14 October
44k monthly active users on 11 DecemberThe first graph is generally considered the most relevant to assess the activity on the platform
On a longer time scale the monthly active users has been steadily trending down for 4 months, from 48k to 44k. But the users per day has been steadily growing - apart from whatever TF happened on Oct 14 when it suddenly dropped by 50k if I’m reading it right. Database problem?
I’m kind of curious how these readings are taken. The Fox News claim of being “America’s most watched cable news network” is based on a Neilson rating that records TVs multiple times a day, which heavily overweights ones people keep on it all day whether they’re watching or not. Fox does much worse on another Neilson stat called the “qume” which only records one hit per day per TV if that TV was tuned to a channel at all during that day - a much better indicator that people deliberately switched to a channel to watch it for a while. I don’t suppose we know how these Lemmy averages are arrived at.
Anyway, the posts and comments per day - which to me defines “activity” better than number of users, are both steady upward lines - unless fewer users who are more active is a bad trend.
There’s a lot of discussion about the “comments and posts per days” metrics, the consensus seems to be that they should be “total” rather than “per day”
https://lemmy.world/comment/13761285
People are posting the same, the graphs just go up because they are about the total number of comments and posts, not daily.
Meaning that we indeed have hit a plateau of 44k monthly active users.
Nah, the current UI is fine. We don’t need fancy shit on a link aggregator. Reddit went to shit after “updating” the UI.
Your opinions of “good” or “best” aren’t the same for everyone.
it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form.
Good! Lemmy doesn’t need to become big, especially since the less techy masses will likely put loads of load on privately hosted instances without bothering to donate.
The growth could actually kill Lemmy.I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.
Please no!
Eh, i agree that lemmy shouldn’t grow too big (Reddit is an example of why, feels like a circlejerk of bots and reposts), but the userbase feels too small currently. On a lot of communities, The activity is 1-2 posts a week, which makes it feel quite dead. And I especially miss the niche communities that you could join on reddit, for small games or obscure topics.
I think the goal should be slow continuous growth. It’s a social media tool and that requires enough engaged users so it doesn’t feel dead. As you pointed out, we’re not there yet. I also think a huge jump in new users would be detrimental. Without central leadership of traffic and hardware Lemmy requires longer to respond to changes in user load. Nothing would be more detrimental to adding long term engaged users than an influx of new users that caused infrastructure overloading.
We’re very spoiled with reliability these days. People are not interested in unreliable access to their doom scrolling (myself included, unfortunately).
Oh, definitely. Lemmy may be smaller than most communities, but it feels organic, and more tight-knit. You see many recognizable users, there are a lot of great threads, and i think the community is pretty healthy. Other social medias may have millions of active users, but they are more focused on collecting as much internet points as possible and making their post hit off, instead of interaction with people. And it makes it feel repetitive and artificial. Main reason why i quit twitter, tired of seeing the most subpar posts from a random user with 100k likes.
And yeah, we’re more spoiled nowadays, unfortunately. When i joined lemmy, i was bored due to the low amount of daily posts, unlike reddit. I still think it’s a problem and we need more MAU, but we should also somewhat get used to it, too. Probably healthier for all of us.
Yeah I remember instance hopping when I first joined Lemmy, part of the flood of new users when Reddit announced the API changes that killed mobile apps. Not one instance was working 100% of the time; I signed up on at least 4 different ones and had to keep swapping between them.
Niche communities happened naturally over time on reddit as well. You need to grow the larger base communities first, since you’ll be gathering the numbers there. Then you branch off. The only other option is for you yourself to build up the niche communities by posting more often, it’s a lot of work.
Yeah, i think in general even the big communities aren’t too active, but they are the most active. We aren’t ready for niches and such. Such is the life of a lemming :(
We’re at 44k monthly active users https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
100k or 200k wouldn’t kill the platform
I mean, yes. And I also like the oldschool interface, it does have its iffy corners but the overall layout and UX is great.
That said, there’s a difference between “avoid (success at all costs)” and “(avoid success) at all cost”. We should be making lemmy better for the purpose of making lemmy better, we shouldn’t be changing it just to please random people so they come over.
When the front page doesn’t have posts from over 2 days ago on it then I might say Lemmy is a good size, but it’s a pretty stagnate site.
I basically only use mobile apps, so I don’t even remember what the desktop UI looks like. But if you say so!
Yup. Voyager/Wefwef is basically the new Apollo. It’s not 100% there in terms of feature parity, but it’s damned close and is being actively developed.
But I like the current UI…
For those who may not be aware there are alternative front ends available for Lemmy.
MLMYM is like old reddit. You can see what it looks like here:
mlmym.walledgarden.xyz
Voyager is multi platform interface that also offers a Lemmy frontend. Our implementation is here:
voyager.walledgarden.xyz
I am not as tech savvy as most people on Lemmy and I use voyager without any issues. I thought it was quite easy to get up and running.
Lemmy isn’t a UI, it’s just data. Each app that connects to lemmy (not instances in the fediverse, but apps that let you sign into a lemmy account) has their own interface. A person can (and probably has) made an app with a modern interface for lemmy.
We are not confined to a specific app or interface, anyone can interface with Lemmy and present the data in their own way.
The most used UI for Lemmy is developed by the Lemmy project. Lemmy UI is modular, but Lemmy is definitely also a UI.
I forget people look at Lemmy on desktop/laptops. I just assume everyone has 15 minutes to kill and picks up there phone and opens the app they prefer, that they put on the second screen, 3rd row, 3rd column from the bottom where it belongs. If you have it somewhere else… Well maybe you have 5 columns instead of 4, or are wrong. But never on the first page … that would be obsessive. It has to hide, lurking on that second page laying in wait. For its 15 mins to shine
I don’t think Reddit’s redesign is a good thing to aim for.
