The linked post shows how most non-tech people’s understanding of email is very very different from most of the people here.

  • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
    102·
    5 days ago

    People have been using email since they were five and all modern lives depend on it. If they don’t understand federation they will just be confused why they can’t see the content and leave. “I didn’t understand it and it didn’t work” is one of the more commons reasons I’ve seen on Reddit for failing lemmy

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
      71·
      5 days ago

      The entire world relies on email but you can blow people’s minds if you tell them you can read Outlook emails in Gmail or read Gmail mailboxes in Outlook. The days of everyone having a local email client are long behind us, people don’t know the difference between apps and servers anymore.

      “It works like email” means “oh, so I need to create a new account, like when I installed the Outlook app” to most people. Shockingly few people know the bare basics of how email works. You’ll be surprised how many people I’ve spoken to don’t understand that [email protected] isn’t the same person as [email protected]. I have been called a liar and a hacker for demonstrating I could send an email from [email protected]. Whatever you think the base level of technological knowledge the average person has, it’s ten times higher than what people actually know, and that includes young people.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      Doesn’t it default to All? Or at least Local? Shouldn’t they just see a feed of everything if they go to the main page?

      The experience is almost exactly the same as Reddit if you don’t worry about federation or technicalities.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          But they should still see content, even if they don’t understand anything.

          The only way they won’t is if the admins decided users shouldn’t see anything without first subscribing to something, which is a terrible way to ease people in to the service. There needs to be a default feed so normies can use it too!

          • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            Unless an instance enrolls in Lemmy-federate, the default behavior is that a user, even on the /all view, will only see local communities, and outside communities that another local user has sought out and subscribed to.

            If a newbie joins a small instance and doesn’t know how to seek out communities that interest them with lemmyverse.net, they would likely have a very small range of content in their feed.

            Lemmy-federate helps by auto subscribing an instance to participating communities, seeding a wide range of content immediately.

            A large instance would offer a good experience either way, but would encourage centralization without Lemmy-federate existing.