this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
110 points (84.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43833 readers
780 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Open license software will never beat paid software in the consumer space. I know that’s a controversial opinion, but it’s been proven a thousand times. There’s no way to beat the user experience of Reddit when they have a hundred experienced UX designers doing nothing but optimising for engagement. We think the overall experience is worse, which is why we’re here, but we are the minority. Lemmy still hasn’t figured out basic problems like what happens to the user experience when an instance defederates from another. The user had no control over that, but suddenly their subscribed communities have disappeared without notice or explanation. Now they have to find another instance to subscribe to, and they lose their entire Lemmy identity.
I generally agree, but one counter example I keep thinking of is Wikipedia. Massively successful site with few rivals despite being a nonprofit. I imagine a social media app could build some degree of success with that model. The main obstacles to my mind are a good UI/UX and a community funding approach sufficient to keep ahead of growth. It’s not yet clear whether Lemmy is “the one” to provide either. As great as the fediverse concept is, it’s harder to use and to consolidate funding for than it perhaps should be.
Wikipedia is a good example but they actually employ designers and developers. I think the secret sauce is paying people to build great software. So a non-profit with donations could absolutely work.