I think they mentioned this on the WAN show were we had an unusual length of time where things were stable. We used to pick up and drop websites all the time. Facebook, Twitter and Reddit’s dominance was great stability in a time when things were constantly changing.

I emphasize with the writers viewpoint of a space where everyone is on, but all three have been shown to be run by what seems to be people with dubious judgement (putting it lightly).

I think these changes are long overdue.

Some good points by the author, especially around us likely being in a state of flux in the social aspect of the Internet.

One thing that I don’t agree with is that lemmy and other fediverse options have “a long way to go” to shore up the onboarding process. Sure, the concept of the fediverse is fairly unfamiliar to people. And yes it’s currently a little clunky to sign up…

But with some honestly pretty minor handholding added to the onboarding process, and some nice polish, people would have no problem picking an instance and signing up; “tell us your interests and we’ll show you some home bases for you to pick from.” And then boom, they’re in!

Default to “all” rather than “local”, and people will be able to ease in to this new experience without too much delta from what they’re used to–and people can onboard without ever needing to learn about the unfamiliar fediverse concept. They can learn that on their own time, after finding content and a community that speaks to them.

At least in my experience (which is admittedly limited in the fediverse at this point), it seems to be that the concept that lemmy is hard to onboard is because we’re trying to teach people about the underlying tech during the onboarding process rather than helping people get through the door to a familiar experience.