find a list of communities they could like (something like this post https://feddit.org/post/6554534, but should be there as a default)
browse All and stumble upon all the news, political and tech that we know (https://lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&sort=TopDay)

In order to avoid this, what would you think of having a "new joiners" instance, where

hexbear, lemmygrad and ml would be defederated
politics and news communities would be blocked at the instance level

That could help to onboard people, so that the first time they look around, they see more gardening, cute comics and casual conversation rather than another set of depressing memes.

Disclaimer: politics and societal issues are important and should be discussed extensively (they are quite popular on Lemmy, let's be honest). I'm not advocating to hide them all, just to not show them as the first content people potentially interested in Lemmy would see.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The onboarding issue isn't politics or which instances are federated, it's that federations exist for all to see when it's something that should impact the server side only and users should come to Lemmy and feel like they're joining just any other centralized website.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

they’re joining just any other centralized website.

That's not the case. Users have to attach themselves to an instance or another, and the content they will be able to see will change accordingly. That's how ActivityPub works

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

I know that's not the case, I'm saying that's much more of an issue when it comes to onboarding than anything else that was mentioned in the OP.

Instances will be what keeps Lemmy from ever becoming a true Reddit alternative.