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

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.
- i dont have money, happy without constantly being reminded.
- Some surveillance capitalism would be nice too. That way I know I'm wanted. /s
- Spez, I mean, he gets us. /s

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'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.

- 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.
  
  In theory, custom CSS is a neat idea, but it’s typically a one-and-done project that is difficult to update, and in most cases, an inadvertent “fuck you” to users who rely on the built-in accessibility of native elements.
  Also, custom CSS by users is effectively them placing a code freeze on the frontend.
  If a better way of doing things comes along (which is a given in the tech world), you either improve the core site CSS and break the customizations (and hear all about it from your users); improve both (which is a ton of work with no tangible difference in what’s rendered to the page), but now the people who made those customizations need to up their CSS game (which rarely happens); or you do nothing and let entropy run its course and do a total rewrite some day. The last one is literally what happened with new Reddit.

I like the deisgn and layout of Lemmy a lot. It reminds me a lot of old.reddit.com
- Yeah, as a diehard old.reddit and non-app user, the design here has been very easy for me to adapt to

"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...

The basic platforms are more successful. They are faster and less user hostile.
old.reddit.com Hacker News Old Digg Old Fark

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.

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

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

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.

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 URL starts with: https://lemmy.world/comment
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%; }

Wouldn't put too much thought into it. Most of the shills are bots.
- I still find it amusing I was banned from r/worldnews for a day for calling a russian shill a shill.
  
  I saw a comment on a news youtube channel saying: "Nothing new in Russia". Got ridiculed for "generalising". This sort of patronising bs is so common in mainstream media. It is horrible and sabotaging any meaningful discussion and they are getting away with it.

I'm pretty sure Reddit UI/UX isn't very well designed either lol. Especially new reddit.
- New reddit tried to fix something nobody thought was broken. New reddit and its app was meanwhile annoying and broken as fuck.
  
  Agreed. I clung to the old reddit and swore to quit Reddit once they took that away.
  Turns out they managed to make me quit before that happened lol.

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
- It does look old but old is talking about basic html and css with reasonable amounts of scripting. I like this over the over designed UI of Reddit, gmail, protonmail, etc.
  Craigslist was the only other big place I go to a lot that has a slim interface, but recently they’ve started making a lot of changes to make it feel modern and it’s a good example of how even modern implementations can go wrong.
  Reminds as well of the early iOS days when the UI was dead simple.
  I think the nice part about Lemmy is that it has what it needs and nothing else. We’re going to get more and more features over time and not all of them will be popular or well liked. I’d rather people complain about what isn’t here than what is I guess.

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

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.

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.

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.

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).
- MOST current internet users didn't grow up in the days of forums.
  
  Yea that’s true. Definitely not fair to single them out.

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.
- Looks good, but there's no dark theme for it (yet?).
- thanks!

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 whoring. 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
- I am on Lemmy, but I really like how Kbin has a lot of customization settings that are all pretty tasteful.

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.)

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.

I use a grease monkey script to make it basically identically to old Reddit. It’s wonderful. Highly recommended
- Got any links for how to do this?
  
  https://github.com/soundjester/lemmy_monkey is what I use.
  This assumes you have something like the firefox addon "Greasemonkey" installed. Anything that supports userscripts will work.
  (edit -- https://www.tampermonkey.net/ for Chrome/Edge, apparently. I just looked it up. If you need more help, just ask.)
  
  This is what I've been using for a few days: https://github.com/soundjester/lemmy_monkey
- Which script do you like?
  
  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%
  
  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.

I love Lemmy's layout. Too much clutter is an eyesore.

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.

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

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

"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.

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.

- 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.

Personally I like the custom CSS each subreddit could apply but to each their own I guess.
- Yep, I usually turn it off, but for particularly inspired ones I like to leave it on, like the reddit sub (mildlyinfuriating I think?) where the text is slightly crooked and there is a hair in the background.

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 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

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.

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.
- They look the same?
- 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.

Yeah, I'm over here writing CSS to remove junk (avatar icons, sidebars, etc, bump up nested comment indent, yada yada) from Lemmy pages because it's not text-only enough.
It's cool that others like a fancier view. I want it to be almost nothing but text.

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

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
- I also didn't like Lemmy's default UI. But even as the early wave of Reddit refugees started trickling in a couple of weeks ago, there have already been custom CSS and custom scripts made to customize Lemmy, like the one I'm using right now:
  No comment about the performance though. I think Lemmy just wasn't ready when the blackouts happened. There just wasn't enough time to prepare. It's understandable that their current focus is, well, making sure that things keep running smoothly under increased load. In time, I hope Lemmy gets to optimizing their browser performance.

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.

Ah, a preview of people defending Reddit for removing old.reddit eventually.
- I mean, I started to use reddit in it's new stage, and only discovered, started using old.reddit much later and gotta admit it's a wee bit clunky around the edges compared to the new version.
  I love Lemmy interface, it's a modern look of old.reddit.

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

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.

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.

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.

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…

Idk, customized accents and images/identity is an accessibility thing for a lot of people, helps them have a sense of being where they're intending to be & not lost in the content soup, which I do think a lot of decentralized projects do fall a little flat. It's a tough line to toe!
(edit: i think i maybe misunderstood some here, but imo lemmy's ui could use a little more clarity and polish, but ultimately like its lighter load visually)

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 good. Thunder is ok. But for me, nothing beats mobile web. Install it as a PWA via Native Alpha (or Firefox). It’s clean, bug free, and I get the same exact experience on my Android and iPhone.
- 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.
- I'm using Jerboa* (android, idk if it's on iOS). It definitely has some quirks but overall it has been a decent enough experience!
  *typo
  
  it is on fdroid. 1 click. lets give a try!

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!

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.
  
  I would love to see the Settings menu and sections achieve the level of UI customization as the Apollo app.
  Instead of gripes like “too much whitespace” or “needs more rounded corners” or “text is too small” and committing to a single combination of all these complex conditions as “the official design,” every user should be able to customize the UI exactly how they like it.
  I would love to disable everything but text on the page: no avatars; no scores; no icons; no buttons except “Post,” “Reply,” and “Report”; light/dark mode inherited from system/device preference. That’s it. Boom! Done.
  But you need robust HTML and CSS for this, and it is insanely difficult to find frontend devs who actually truly deeply know HTML, CSS, and JS. There are plenty of frontend devs making nice-looking sites, but those sites are typically unmaintainable in terms of CSS, are full of inaccessible nested tag soup in terms of HTML, and are locked into unremovable technical debt from the get-go via JS frameworks that will inevitably go out of vogue (as they all do).
  Something as simple as native aspect ratios for thumbnail images is broken on kbin, so we immediately know that the HTML and CSS for this site are not in good shape, and until those things are addressed with growth and change in mind (and not just closing out bugs or hitting a launch date), it’s all going to fall apart eventually.
  
  That's an option on kbin.social. I'm not sure if it's the same for all kbins, still not %100 on how well this works. It was actually on by default and it took me rooting around in the settings to find there were avatars at all

No. I like functionality, I don't care how it looks.

That's also the beauty of Lemmy... they can host an instance of their own, and customize it to their hearts content, while still having access to the broader community's content!