Should we revisit the instance picker to have an easier default choice? (thelemmy.club)

submitted 1 day ago by Blaze@piefed.zip to c/piefed_meta@piefed.social

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Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1quso40/european_reddit_alternative_piefed_users_surge/o3cfxy9/

Also found in a !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com post by @biltong@piefed.co.za : https://piefed.co.za/c/fedibridge/p/22233/post-on-r-buyfromeu-on-the-recent-surge-of-users-to-piefed

I like the way Voyager does it:

https://vger.app/profile

DeltaChat also has a very easy onboarding process: you just put your name, and that's it. The app creates the password in the background and allows you to switch servers easily. That really helps with onboarding new joiners.

Piefed.zip could be a nice default choice. If there are others you see, feel free to suggest.

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[-] Auster@thebrainbin.org 1 points 9 hours ago

As for a specific instance, maybe point to medium-sized servers, so bigger ones don't get more stressed than they already are, and the user isn't greeted by a barren default feed were they to join a smaller one?

[-] laranis@lemmy.zip 4 points 21 hours ago

Gonna say it again, but I like there being a minor barrier to entry on Lemmy. Like, if you can't even be bothered to pick a server then we don't want you here. If you want your social media to be spoon fed to you, fuck right off. If you want a reddit or Facebook clone, you're part of the problem.

Having a basic understanding of the Fediverse should be a prerequisite. Having to choose a server is a feature, a bare minimum. And as much as I want to see more content and more engagement here, I don't want to see it dumbed down either.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

This person is bordering on willfully obstinate. Any time you sign up for a service there are choices to be made. Social media will ask you to pick people or subjects to follow, sites will want you to pick communications preferences, etc.

Pick one server. Make the account. Don’t like it? Pick another. It doesn’t matter, there’s no karma here to hoard. Abandon that account you don’t like. Pick three. It’s like people can’t handle the freedom of choice.

[-] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Modern Web has spoiled the average user. You never have to choose a server.

Need an account? Link your gmail/meta/whatever.

If there is a little bit of friction, the average user won't use it because corpos made sure that everything is a one click setup. And Lemmy is different in that regard, a bit old school.

[-] ManaYoodSushai@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Making choices is inherently stressful. Particularly if you don't know how much the choice matters. If your goal is to onboard as many people as possible (which it may well not be) then reducing the number of choices is always preferred.

[-] bilouba@jlai.lu 1 points 23 hours ago

Shouldn't the closest server be suggested?

[-] Skavau@piefed.social 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Sorry, but some of the people in that thread arguing about federation (something they still don't understand) are not interested in finding out how it works.

You could literally make them an account on piefed.social, and they would still be confused on account of all of the communities and usernames from different servers.

I truly think it's best to not put too much stock in one obstinate user arguing about it when 10 others quietly sign up and try it out with no hand-holding needed.

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 11 points 1 day ago

There is definitely some bad faith among a few of those commenters.

However, we should probably try to still improve the signup process. As I said in the OP, Voyager's works already better, and that's a Fediverse app.

[-] Skavau@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago

One user in particular. And nothing will ever satisfy them.

"I don't want a solution. I just want to be mad" if you are familiar with that mini comic

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[-] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 22 points 1 day ago

We should add a button that says "I don't care, choose for me" that chooses a random server. Some of them will end up on Chinese Piefed, but most will be happy with their choice, and hopefully we can give the other two buttons good names that help people choose.

[-] cabbage@piefed.social 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Judging by the discussion OP links to the text should probably read something like "I don't understand the question, just sign me up".

And those users need to be signed up to the site they are currently on, because that's where they will return to to sign in later on. If you forward them somewhere else they'll have no idea what's going on.

It's incredible how terrifying the prospect of a choice can apparently be to people who have grown up without any.

[-] cile.sb@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

The problem isn’t the choice itself – it’s that we don’t understand what we’re gaining or losing when picking a server. There’s no explanation of what a server is on the selection page. Does it really not matter which server I choose? Are the communities the same across all servers? If someone posts something on one server, will it be synced to all servers? My wife doesn’t know what the word “server” means, and I think most people are the same. Or are we expecting only IT folks to use the platform?

[-] cabbage@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In case you are interested in the full story:

It does not matter much to the user, but it does matter a little. Which is also why it gets hard to find a good solution.

The communities are the same, and posts are synchronized. However, each server (also known as instance, to make it more complicated) is responsible for its own moderation.

Say for example that it turns out quokk.au is run by the absolute worst people, and that they start encouraging vile content and hate speech on their platform. Or simply that they don't moderate, and a lot of bad actors start signing up there and posting spam. Other servers might say in response that they don't want to keep seeing content from quokk.au, as bad content keeps coming from there. Of course that would affect the users of that instance.

To a degree, these problems can result from size. Lemmy.world is the biggest instance of Lemmy, and while it's generally decently moderated they have of course had greater challenges making sure their user base behaves decently as a result. So we want users to spread out so that each instance can have human moderators overseeing a manageable amount of human users.

This means that your instance can matter: if it is particularly poorly managed, you might be cut off from parts of the network as a result. And on the flip side, if you join an instance with stricter moderation, you might see less questionable content from elsewhere. Typical divides is whether Russia propaganda networks like lemmygrad.ml are blocked form joining the network, and whether porn is allowed.

The other big reason we want people to go to different instances is to keep the network healthy. If (almost) all of us are on the same site, that gets expensive to run, and leaves too much responsibility and power in the hands of the people running that site. If something happens to it it's a huge problem, if moderation fails it's a huge problem, and it's just generally a weakness. We want people to spread out to a bunch of different sites so that the network itself is robust.

Over on Mastodon, an anarchist instance hosted in America had the police raid their physical location and steal all the data off their server. Obviously we're also less vulnerable to these types of attacks if we spread out, though more often the problems are more boring and ordinary.

So in effect, when people ask to sign up at piefed.social, the good people at piefed.social wants people to join the network, but preferably the load should be put on some other server in that network in order to distribute the risk and workload, and strengthening the network as such. This is not primarily for the immediate benefit of the individual users—though it will materialize as such though more human moderation and admins that have the capacity to actually care about them—but for the benefit of the network.

So that's why we struggle to find a good way to ask people to pick a server. The choice is not super important for the user—the recommended instances are all decent, and the little information provided should be enough to make an informed enough decision—but it's important to the network that some users make a choice.

If you have any recommendations how to make this easier while distributing users around the different servers, feedback and ideas are super welcome.

[-] wjs018@piefed.wjs018.xyz 18 points 1 day ago

Something like that could be a good place to utilize "trusted instances." So, instead of just choosing a random instance of all of the piefediverse, it chooses a random trusted instance.

The feedback in this thread overall has been helpful.

[-] Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago

Asking "what topics are you interested in" / "what communities do you like" and "what's important to you" would also help.

Also, "I'm a returning user who did not like the first choice X because of Y" should be an option.

You didn't like the moderation? Too many defederations? Wrong kind of weird? Bad server performance?

Then try to pick something for them that fixes those problems

[-] Skavau@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago

This would also require many instances to set out in detail their location, focus etc and have a category system that recognises that.

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 5 points 1 day ago

https://join-lemmy.org/instances has exactly that.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The fediseer can help here both with the trusted instances and with finding servers based on tags

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[-] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 day ago

Keep it as-is specifically as a barrier to entry for reddit user "icankillpenguins"

[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 3 points 14 hours ago

They can try

[-] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

Is there a way to make it easier for literally everyone else but conversely making it significantly more complicated specifically for reddit user "icankillpenguins"?

[-] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

I don't like the idea of a default server, because someday it will be the wrong one.

Much like recommending Linux I'm sure to specify "Linux Mint" and when I recommend XMPP I'm sure to specify jabber.org.

But it sounds like we could just be pointing newbies to Voyager or Piefed for awhile? I like various apps having a default, because we can always start recommending different app, if there's issues.

[-] lemmyng@piefed.ca 19 points 1 day ago

Mastodon is working on addressing this on their side, by trying to recommend instances geographically close to the user. Perhaps a similar process could be used here?

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[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 16 points 1 day ago

I think the "it doesn't matter which server you pick" default reply should also be done away with, because it does matter. However, like e-mail, it allows you to communicate with every other server (unless you're in a server that's been widely banned for reasons) and can be online while other servers aren't.

[-] lemmyng@piefed.ca 1 points 1 day ago

The better message instead of "it doesn't matter what instance you pick" should be "your choice of instance is not permanent." With any product choice, the rule of thumb is that most consumers will switch products only when they perceive a 10x improvement. It is clear from many similar threads that the sign-up process is a barrier to such perception, because of the cognitive load of having to choose. To me, there's two ways to address this: offering fewer choices, or reducing the perceived cost of a choice. In particular, streamlining account out settings migration (eg via export/import tools) may make arbitrary server choices more appealing, as it then becomes easier to pack up and switch.

[-] cile.sb@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

So it does matter which server I choose? Will my choice mean I can’t see all the posts from every server?

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

I think there should be a review page for instances that allows comments. That would help immensely. The person reviewing has to have been, or is currently a subscriber and it's listed how long. The longer, the higher the review.

[-] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

The default choice is whatever instance you're currently on.

From https://piefed.social/auth/instance_chooser:

"I don't know, help me" scrolls you down to look at the instances (about 1cm, lol). I'm sure THAT could be more helpful!

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 6 points 1 day ago

Maybe the default join should be bigger, and leave the other options for people who really want to have a look.

Actually, now that I think about it, and based on the Voyager screenshot above, maybe it should be something like

Big visible button "Join CurrentServer"
Less visible button "Pick another server"

And then only if people pick the second option, then then list appears.

That would make it less confusing for new joiners (they would just go the default path), and still gives people the option to look around.

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[-] illi@piefed.social 11 points 1 day ago

I'm an European so I shouldn't agree I guess but I do. There should be a basic explanation on why a server has to be picked and having a "recommended" choice to pick could ease people in.

[-] artyom@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The problem with your suggestion is that it creates centralization. See Mastodon.social, matrix.org, etc.

The solution, I have posted before, is to ask instances to be opted into a directory, and then present the user with a random suggestion from that list. There should be some basic criteria like uptime and a proper set of rules laid out of course.

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[-] RareEarth@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

I work in design and animation, is there somewhere I could contact directly about helping in terms of design and Ui?

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[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

PieFed.zip would make an excellent default (as long as the admins are okay with such).

Later, additional work could be done as people are suggesting - picking based on user ping, weighted by things like overall stability (itself influenced by aspects such as newness), and with a trusted filter to avoid bad actors - but we don't seem really close to a need for that, I would guess, with the current levels of traffic? (It currently reports having only 164 MAUs, compared to PieFed.social's 1775 and PieFed.ca's 601.)

If PieFed.zip starts to become overwhelmed (although lemmy.zip never did? despite it being like the #5 instance with multiple thousands of MAUs, see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and then the sidebar of https://lemmynsfw.com/ making it the real #2 despite not showing on the former list), then we could pick another instance to recommend as the default.

I suppose the main question, besides whether PieFed.zip's admins are okay with this, is whether other instances would feel unfairly discriminated against? The other chief alternative, at least if the goal is to entice users from Reddit specifically, might be PieFed.world, although there are only 4 Topic areas listed at https://piefed.world/topics (and until recently I thought there were none) so I wonder how ready they would be for an influx if it were to happen immediately. Feddit.online gives me pause to see "Stability: Medium", others such as PieFed.ca are more regional, quokk.au and Blåhaj PieFed etc. are more topical than general-purpose, and so on.

So that is why I think PieFed.zip seems a nearly unquestioned winner for now (though PieFed.world and Feddit.online might become more ready very soon), and then perhaps additional filters could be added at the top, to aid in picking e.g. regional or topical themed instances, like a series of questions asked of the user rather than having to simply read through the listing one by one.

Also, yeah remove the unhelpful I don't know help me button, and I would add an explicit acknowledgement that those instances are sorted by ping? It really helps to know that one detail!! (Especially if someone is using a proxy, they may want to change those settings in such case.)

Edit: another thought, perhaps replace the icons that are not explained with more standardized and immediately recognizeable indicators, such as 2 green up arrows for rocketship 🚀, 1 up arrow for lightning bolt ⚡, etc.

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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026

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