I made the mistake of checking Reddit (using my last few days of Apollo) and came across a complaint about Lemmy that flabbergasted me

The reason I used Reddit is Fun WAS because of its stripped down, bare bones style. I only wanted to read thoughts and opinions, and choose to view images/video/ads when I wanted to. This is absolutely a feature of Jerboa (and Lemmy) for me
- I don't know the background of OP so this is just an opinion: I feel that modern UX have become so ubiquitous and streamlined for content consumption that users who aren't used to old-styled UIs see the lack of "sleek" design as lesser. It works doubly so that users aren't willing to venture outside of their ecosystems and will put up with anything regardless if it's detrimental to their experience.
  Compare users of new reddit and the official app vs. users of old reddit and 3PA. I used 3PA because there wasn't an official app and RiF matched what I was used to. It's a similar phenomena to Apple users vs Windows/Android. People are just used to a streamlined sleek experience (which to be fair has it's merits) but to say it's superior or that the alternative is lesser is a large misstep in thinking.
  It takes effort to go out of your comfort zone but it's saddening to see users mindlessly, for lack of a better terms, consume

I think Lemmy could use some more ads. I feel like I don't have enough material things, and I don't know what to buy. /s
- I also would like to have content that makes people angry shoved in my face to keep me engaged.
- Some surveillance capitalism would be nice too. That way I know I'm wanted. /s

"The hosts are too lazy" says the person whining about it without doing anything.
Try switching to a platform you've never used before and making a community out of nothing, or host the Lemmy instance and be forced to deal with thousands of new users daily. Lazy my ass...

I'm here to read think and talk. I like it simple.
- Yeah, for real. "But there's no fun awards and bubbly icons and bright colors."
  Well then, go back to kindergarten.
- Same, was using old.Reddit before and plan on figuring out how to use the tools I saw to redo lemmy to page layout on no stupid questions.

I think the more they removed about Reddit alternatives, the more people will be reminded that there are alternatives to Reddit.

It feels familiar to old.reddit so i like it. Squabbles has an interesting approach to displaying posts + comments tho
- I tried Squabbles and got so confused. Took me forever to realize that the post was on the left column and the replies were on the right column. I stupidly thought Squabbles was combining Twitter and Reddit and thought the two columns were completely independent from one another. It makes sense to me now, but my simple brain likes this layout.

If you don't like the UI, you can always download a browser extension that change the CSS of the website. However, if this is the main criticism people do to Lemmy, I would say that's not bad for a relatively new platform

It's about personal preference. It's important to have a user interface that's modular and comfortable for the end user and manageable for the devs. Options are always the answer, the ability to enable or disable certain aspect or details is what drives me towards one app or the other. (This is coming from someone who used Infinity for Reddit for the past 4 years.)
- It just seems incredibly nitpicky to call alternatives lazy for not having all of the modularity of a decade+ old platform.
  ”Reddit is imploding, and the CEO is being terrible to users, and the native app is super intrusive and inefficient but ugh the alternatives have square buttons.”
  Just really weird that the lack of visual bells and whistles is something to even talk about at the moment. Just a little lower in the thread, the same person complained about lack of gilding. Just, really weird complaints.
  
  I'm happy to have people like that stay on reddit. They can stagnate along with the dying platform and their stupid round buttons.
  
  I hear you. I agree that it's silly to complain about that stuff right now, to the person who isn't satisfied, instead why not post a feature request on the github and continue browsing reddit for now?

I'm not really sure, I think some of them might which is weird. Though I think a lot of them are just trying to find reasons to complain about Lemmy because they are addicted to reddit, don't want to make the switch and they know that if people start leaving Reddit they're going to have to switch to something else and that scares the shit out of them. So they're going to complain about Lemmy or the alternatives because they desperately don't want to lose Reddit, their source of dopamine and fulfillment.
- Though I think a lot of them are just trying to find reasons to complain about Lemmy because they are addicted to reddit, don't want to make the switch and they know that if people start leaving Reddit they're going to have to switch to something else and that scares the shit out of them.
  It sometimes amazes me how opposed to change people can sometimes be. Yeah sure Lemmy is different, but not radically so.

Someone didn't grow up during the days of forums.
But as a designer, I understand where they're coming from. Especially if they were using the new reddit design on the web and Apollo on mobile. At the very least though, I think Lemmy's default UI looks much better than old.reddit (and I say that as someone who still uses old.reddit).

I prefer clean interfaces and thus far haven't been disappointed. Just gimme a dark theme option and I'm (mostly) happy.
- dark mode goes a long way making a site look good
  
  life pro tip for every company on earth.

"Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter?" Hell nah! Polar opposite here.
I absolutely hate it when sites randomly redesign to look "modern" and "hip" or whatever you want to call it. Forcefully adding flashy, colorful stuff that you can't turn off again or opt out of is a surefire way for me to dislike the site in question immediatly. Emojis, animated smileys, glitter effects, neon-colored letters, autoplay-animations, and worst of all: sound effects! Nope. Nu-uh. Get that sh*t away from me. I like my black-squared, simple layout and silent browsing experience, thank you very much.

One thing I do dislike, the post width on desktop is limited. Between the sidebar always being shown and the container being 1140 px wide, the comment section ends up only being 760 px wide; way too narrow for me.
I wrote a Stylus script for Firefox to make the posts full-width.
URL starts with: https://lemmy.world/post
Script:

.container, .container-lg, .container-md, .container-sm, .container-xl { max-width: 100%; } .col-md-8 { flex: 0 0 80%; max-width: 80%; } .col-md-4 { flex: 0 0 20%; max-width: 20%; }

I'm ok with the Lemmy plain designs.
- I'm just glad it defaults to dark mode. Any site that defaults to light mode can go straight to hell.
  
  It doesn’t default to dark mode, it defaults to the system setting. It’s light on my device.
  Which any self respecting site should be doing either way, it’s not difficult to implement, at all.

There's a lot of bullshit being posted about Lemmy over there, but lots of folks spreading the good word of the Fediverse as well. I'm doing my part until Bacon Reader stops working.
- Dude what that's that's gotta be a reddit plant or something lmao, the main nsfw instance, lemmynsfw, two weeks in banned anything that depicts someone underage, even manga and other animated mediums, like people are self regulating these things to NOT have cp

I definitely choose my social media based on round edges and opaque tiles. Don't you? It definitely isn't for the content or discussion.

The color schemes seem good enough to me. I mean, sure it could perhaps be more interesting or vibrant but ehh. There are way more important issues to focus on, in my opinion.
- Kbin has support for custom CSS. There are still some bugs and plenty of things to iron out, but once the platform matures, expect there to be plenty of color and vibrance haha.

I'm pretty sure Reddit UI/UX isn't very well designed either lol. Especially new reddit.

Reddit's UI and performance was pretty horrible for me in the browser. That being said, I find Lemmy's UI and performance worse. 😢
They definitely need to hire a real designer and work on performance. It's pretty bad when I try to subscribe to a community on lemmy.ml from lemmy.world. It takes like minutes for me for the request to go through.
The contrast between white and lime green is pretty bad too. The design makes the app feel cheap. That matters for a lot of people.
I'm hopeful Lemmy will get better over time. 👍
- Everything looks better on Jerboa. I went back on the browser to see what you're talking about and immediately saw what you're talking about!
  Shouldn't be too hard to change the CSS, but I wish this isn't the default. Even grey would look better.
  I hope the devs check these posts out.
  
  I honestly have a hard time using it outside of Jerboa. It's not just UI, but functionality issues as well. I don't blame people for being turned off. It's a big part of the reason why I don't think we'll see large scale adoption. And I don't even think the current way things are set up can handle large scale.
  Lemmy is a good experiment, but I'm not sure this form of federation is going to work.
- Lemmy hosters don't need to use the official UI, it's just the only one that currently exists, we just need a better front end developed by someone

Dark grays, blues? Squared? Good. I love simplicity! Not to mention, Reddit started out like that too, and among the older wave of users old.reddit was still a favorite for that reason.

Lemmy UI has a ton of issues
- top hour is broken for me because it constantly populated with every new post. Completely broken.

I was able to get over the majority of the style issues on Lemmy by adding the extension Stylus and installing this theme. https://userstyles.world/style/10440/rediggit-for-lemmy
Hopefully that helps some that want the old.reddit look.
- thanks!

Web design is important. It's part of grievances against reddit with the app and old reddit. It took me awhile to accept new Reddit design.
With Lemmy my biggest issues:
Often slow to respond and sometimes return undeclared error (just html value,,.etc). Likely due to traffic coping.
A bit harder to navigate, I'm not sure yet how to go to kbin and join. When I search I get meta.
Though this place is very promising attempt compared to past ones.

In the middle of 2010, "Due to a controversial redesign brought on by Digg, disgruntled users declared a "Quit Digg" day where they posted links to Reddit and left Digg behind to join Reddit. Reddit subsequently overtook Digg in search popularity. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Reddit
Here's what Reddit looked like on August 7, 2010
https://web.archive.org/web/20100807085503/http://www.reddit.com/
This is what Digg looked like on August 7, 2010
https://web.archive.org/web/20100807080410/http://digg.com/
Reddit's had 18 years to tweak the user interface. Lemmy's Initial release was May 5, 2019; 4 years ago. Honestly, I have no issue with Lemmy's interface, but I feel confident in saying that given another 14 years of development, Lemmy will probably not look like it does today.
- You can also make it look any way you want b/c it's open source
  
  Reddit used to be open source as well
- Reddit still looks pretty much the same as that to me whenever I connect to it. RES probably helps though.
- By that logic nobody should ever switch to lemmy because it'll always be a decade behind the times.
  
  Unless Tomorrow's Reddit becomes Today's Digg. Once hot, now not.

Yes people do like nice design and user interfaces. Apple managed to grab a large market share by understanding that.
It doesn't have to be cluttered but it doesn't have to be ... this.
If you want things to improve, you are going to have to accept criticism that your current crush isn’t perfect. There is already a lot of the toxic Reddit’ness that has come over, we don't need more.
- I was just talking in another thread with a guy about how people will downvote a helpful comment just because they don't agree with the content. I was hoping Lemmy would be like old Reddit. Back when we encouraged thoughtful, helpful, discussion. But it looks like Lemmy is just gonna be people being snarky and upvote removed. I assumed not having karma would have prevented that.
  
  Karma or points system gives incentive to contribute. Best of both worlds is if ppl comment/post to engage in discussion and contribute and the points are an afterthought/added value rather than as a vehicle to gain more points clout or whatever but i think we need to accept there will always be some who value "the game" over everything else

Honestly dig it, reminds me of the early days of reddit when it was more of a community than an advertising platform. People are just looking for any little thing at this point.

TBF Lemmy UI/UX is horrible. So is Reddit's IMO, for completely different reasons, but still. It's a valid criticism, it's just also not an endorsement of Reddit.
- Yeah, Lemmy is still a bit rough around the edges in a lot of ways. I hope the surge in users brings some frontend devs over.
  The new apps should help a lot, but it's still a bit of a pain to use on PC. I also have issues with the feed just going wild and poping in new posts so fast I can't read anything on the web.
  Lemmy needs work, but I'm not here for the design. I'm here to wrestle control away from corporations. Anyone that doesn't understand that is a bot.
  
  I also have issues with the feed just going wild and poping in new posts so fast I can't read anything on the web.
  Oh yeah I saw that last night too. Lemmy is relatively new, and will get better in time. I'm excited for sync to be released. Slide might get re-purposed for lemmy too.

Simple and clean UIs are an improvement over what's now considered "modern web design" meant to manipulate your attention to particular things. It feels like the agency is taken away from the user. I am loving the fediverse for this reason and have been a fan and user of FOSS apps for over a decade because the design goals of the software match the actual use-case of the app without trying to tie you in to something else. No distractions, no advertisements, no walled gardens. Just, here's the app, here's the functionality, it's been delivered. Now use it as you see fit without an ulterior motive from the developer or their investors (or lack thereof.)

They had me at dark grey and blue

I like the deisgn and layout of Lemmy a lot. It reminds me a lot of old.reddit.com

I use a grease monkey script to make it basically identically to old Reddit. It’s wonderful. Highly recommended
- Which script do you like?
  
  I'm using the compact version of lemmy_monkey and a script I wrote to force external links to open in new tabs (reddit did this automatically so I constantly forget to press the middle mouse button and then get annoyed that my lemmy scrolling is gone)
  Compact lemmy_monkey: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469093-compact-lemmy-to-old-reddit-re-format-observer GM-Open-NewTab: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469196-gm-lemmy-newtab
  Both observe on all http*:/// but they both use the same "isLemmy" check to determine if any logic should actually execute, so while it seems a bit rough at first they are not doing anything nefarious or unnecessary besides a single js comparison of the head elements.
  
  These are the most important ones I use.
  Kbin Enhancement Script User: @SirPsychoMantis
  Add domains to magazines and users for federated content
  Collapse comments
  Collapse replies
  Replies start collapsed
  Move comment box to top
  Fix comment buttons and add a cancel button
  Blur / Hide NSFW domains (thanks to u/leel)
  Hide random posts
  OP tag in comments
  All features can be toggled on and off
  Improved Collapsible Comments User: @artillect
  Improves the comment tree layout and adds a line that lets you collapse replies
  Floating Subs List User: @raltsm4k
  Adds a floating subscriptions pane to kbin similar to Reddit
  Supports filtering by name and sorting by subscribe date (default) or alphabetically
  Kbin-Unsquash User: @shazbot
  Unsquash inline images in threads by replacing with source image and downscaling to 50%
- Got any links for how to do this?
  
  This is what I've been using for a few days: https://github.com/soundjester/lemmy_monkey

Form over function, it's been all over the place for the last few years.
Right now I can see buttons I may not use immediately in the interface… to me it's fine. To modern designer these must be hidden and only show up contextually or with an hover, and keep the space empty otherwise.
I don't really like modern design, but it is true that a lot of people (mainly younger people or old people that never really looked at internet much before) really enjoy the "simplicity and lean look". These people also enjoy interfaces that requires a lot of waiting and moving around to do simple thing, so…

I'm especially annoyed by the way videos are shown on every Lemmy UI, I can't be bothered to click on a link every time there's video content on my feed
- This is a highly requested feature and in the process of being implemented. I believe it will be available next update.

This is an actual use case for 'the customer is always right'. No matter how much you prefer the layout, there will be others that prefer something else. And if we want to attract more users, that's something that we'll need to consider.
By far the most off-putting thing about lemmy is how people think themselves too good to consider the preferences and experiences of the average user coming from reddit.
- Personally, I love the clutter-free design of lemmy.world it's a good mix of looking pretty without being too empty.
  That being said, this is a refreshing take after reading through some of the top comments. I wish more people were a little more level-headed like this.
  Maybe there could be other instances with different themes that appeal more to the casual reddit user? I'm still not sure how the themes work when it comes to Lemmy and its instances.
- "The customer is always right, except in matters of taste" is the full quote I believe.
  I love the homogenized look. If any chances are made I would hope they'd be optional so people who want the current look can keep it.
  
  The customer is always right, ~~except~~ in matters of taste
  You got the quote exactly backwards

I've noticed my friends my age (late teens/ early 20s) say that lemmy and kbin look old. They also are new reddit users so they are probably used to the social media, ads before content approach of modern websites compare to those who enjoyed more simple site designs that were functional

I think it's clear that reddit employees are working overtime for damage control, and you can easily tell when they flood a comment section with their identical silly talking points, a bunch of whiny naysayers who never care about anything, except licking boot. they love to cry about UX and protests being an inconvenience, but never about censorship or the fucked up things reddit does. another thing they do is constantly bring up Musk all the time for no reason and distract from spez. seriously those comments are like a plague over there, it's insane. imagine trying to make the crashing and burning of reddit, somehow about another guy, that has nothing to do with any of it. while Twitter is just doing its thing and they don't even give a shit. tl;dr: fuck spez

Are those points meant to be bad things?
Using Kbin, and the default minimalistic design with everything in discrete text-boxes reminds me much more of older forum's than Reddit ever did. I like it!

It's FOSS so someone will probably make what they want, if they just give it a sec to appear for free out of thin air then they'll have to come up with another excuse.

- Social platforms need people. this line of thinking immediatly kills any growing social platform
- Nah we need everyone we can get. Plus the more people we accomodate, the more options we get
  
  This brings up a good question: Do we really want everyone we can get?
  On one hand, it'd help flesh out fledgling communities and keep threads and feeds more active.
  On the other hand, the more people who come here, the more likely we are to see lower-effort, lower-value, and even counterproductive content and comments.
  There's probably some magic number, an adoption level where communities thrive but are not watered down. I have no idea what that is, though.

... have they seen the reddit apps?
Also color customization is definitely a post MVP thing usually. This platform is not mature

Was using Lemmy on my phone via browser, and I darn near swooned at how clean and tidy and useable it was.
- Agreed! I was thinking initially that an app would be nice since most websites kind of suck, but this looked great on mobile and I doubt an app is necessary if the clean trend continues.

Ah, a preview of people defending Reddit for removing old.reddit eventually.

Just wait till they have to use the reddit app only. Plus if these people want to they can invest there time and run a Lemmy instance. Develop their own tools to make it look the way the want. Rather than complaining about free too hosted freely by people who care.

Coming from apollo i could agree it could look alot better but its still miles above the native reddit app.
I don’t quite understand how we cant use kbin style on the rest of lemmy. Or hexbears super nice looking theme which is a fork of lemmy.

Lemmy clients could definetly benefit from more customization options. Let everyone have it as they want.
- try Jerboa

i agree. the only reason why i hae accounts on shit like this is to prepare for the VERY VERY MINISCULE chance that reddit will shut down due to them making shit decisions.
bring back css for every community

I think critiques are pretty helpful in the early stages of growth. There's several little UI/UX tweaks we can do to make these places feel more inviting.
Lots of people are listing bug reports or submitting PRs, I've got one going that'll add your profile image next to your name, something simple but nice to have.
image
With time these sites are all going to shine :)
- I’d rather see avatars removed entirely.

You can skin and theme an instance however you want, and the lemmi-ui code is open source so you can completely customize that side of things too. It's a complete non issue the instant someone with design capabilities contributes.

People are different. I never really liked or used Reddit, because it was a cluttered mess to me. This here? Nice, clean, resource efficient. I like Lemmy!

its beautiful. i used to read reddit through redreader. simple is good. is there any good lemmy app? im new here :)
- Jerboa is good, throws some errors sometimes, but that's probably because of the huge influx of members
  
  First reply in Jerboa. Functioning. ?)
- Jerboa is the way to go. Many other apps are in development for Lemmy as well. Sync, thunderbolt, lemmur revival, and plenty others I've seen. Jerboa is the best working one atm.

The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?
I agree. The content is key.

Lemmy is still a baby. I am sure we'll see tweaks/improvements over time. We'll also see scripts/extensions. Overall, I am enjoying my experience using Lemmy.

I hope we get a chance to customize to our liking at some point - but not like it matters that much to me anyway since I'm mostly mobile. I just hope my rif-like app comes soon enough.
Super strange though to complain from Reddit the lack of customization.
- Normal users don't want to spend time to customize! The site should just provide a few reasonable, good-looking options by default...
  People aren't like "oh this looks bad, I'm gonna make it look nice", they are more like "Oh this looks bad, so it must be a bad site, I'd better leave".

Strange, I think Lemmy highly resembles Reddit. Maybe this user is talking about an app? Ironically, the apps are what this is about.

All the real ones came from old.reddit anyway. Honestly with the amount of projects I see being started for these platforms I'd be surprised if we don't eventually see customization option updates from instances to communities. That complaint has an expiration date IMO.