some feedback about Lemmy/PieFed from Reddit users
I’ve tried both [Lemmy and PieFed], and the UX is incredibly unintuitive and unpleasant. The main problem is that it’s quite hard to discover content you want while avoiding content you don’t, Bluesky at least has really good custom feeds that are easy to add (the default feed sucks). Another big issue is the general site layout, it’s hard to figure out how to do things as simple as saving a post for later or how to go back to the feed without being redirected back to the post I’m trying to exit.
Maybe they didn’t see the “Feeds” feature in PieFed? The top navigation menus in PieFed are a bit messy. Although shareable blocklists could be cool too, or maybe toxic?
That’s excluding the horrible lack of contrast most frontends use, which makes reading and parsing the site elements unnecessarily difficult (no Lemmy, grey text on a grey background is not good for readability).
I like the Lemmy colors, but maybe it should be easier to change, because they might like the darkly-pureblack theme.
Fediverse feels slower, but not in a good way. More of a ‘if I don’t use this for a week, I’ll see new things’. If I log in after 2 or 3 days, I’ll scroll for 10 minutes and see the stuff I saw last time.
Maybe this is a UX issue of not finding the right feed they would like.
I also want nsfw stuff now and then. I hate how censored the internet has become, at least with reddit if I want to see a bit of porn, I can.
Again maybe a UX issue of not presenting what communities they could subscribe to.
I tried twice to join those forums within the Fediverse and I can’t get past the captcha test. The fact that you need approval to validate your access doesn’t seem designed to encourage you to recommend it.
The captchas on Lemmy are AWFUL, I can’t do them either.
(that’s the “Medium” difficulty)
Lemmy v1.0 is adding the ability to do invites, so maybe there will be an invite-only instance that gets some momentum, that could be cool. Invite sites seems like a cool old-internet type of culture.
The fediverse stuff is way too complicated for me, Reddit is very easily accessible and actually has active communities for the topics I’m interested in.
Of course these are naturally going to be all negative because they’re users that bounced off the Threadiverse, but there’s probably hints to what can be improved
None of them miss the ads? Weird.
As for the NSFW, I don’t blame most instance admins for banning it. There IS an NSFW instance, and .world allows softcore stuff. On the actual NSFW instance, there are a few users who post fauxbait exclusively. That is to say, adult women who try to make themselves look like teenagers/prepubescent children. No ink, no piercings, waxed genitals, and completely or nearly flat-chested. Sure, there are legitimate adult women who fit some of those, but do they also wear their hair in pigtails, clutch stuffies or a blankie, or other childlike behaviour? Generally no. I saw an interview with a very interesting young lady who looks 10 or 11 but is in her 20s, and she fights every day to be recognised as a valid adult. I think there are a few people who have illegal content on their drives and they are very careful about what they actually post, and maybe some illegal stuff does get through… IMO, they make the entire NSFW scene look bad, and they are the reason for the ‘censorship’.