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timothyjchambers · 2 days ago

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The Seven Deadly Fediverse UX Sins Part 2: The Road To Redemption

So you made it through the first fiery sermon. Trust me—I didn’t enjoy preaching it any more than you enjoyed reading it. But every word came from a place of love—for the Fediverse, and for what it still could become.

But fear not, dear reader: as the preacher once said, salvation is within your reach.

And to reward you for slogging through that earlier wall of hard truths, here’s your moment of grace. We’re keeping the cute animal theme going, so here you go:

(insert animal pic, obviously)

The grim part’s over. Truly. From here on out, it’s all hope and possibility. Not even kidding.

Because here’s the good news:

Each of the Seven Deadly UX Sins is fixable—not through divine fiat, but through thoughtful, realistic iteration. And probably by far fewer developers than you’d expect. Many of them are already out there fighting the good fight (though they could always use more encouragement—and dare I say it, a little Patreon love).

What follows is the path to redemption.

A roadmap of what could be—if we want it badly enough.

If you’re building any of these fixes: reach out. I’m happy to offer free, detailed suggestions—no patents, no strings, no license required. Just one ask: drop a little nod in a JavaScript comment or server-side file somewhere so I can brag about it to nobody in particular. I’m a simple man.

And if you’ve got better ideas than mine? Even better. Especially if they’re practical, near-term, and close to ship-ready. My DMs are open. Let’s make this thing work.

Let’s dig in. Get a coffee as this may be a long-ish read.

1️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin One: One Single Social Home to Join, Many Doors to Explore Later.

Rather than the status quo across much of the Fediverse’s onboarding UX—asking new users to choose from 8,000 server names they don’t understand—what about this wild idea:

Offer just one default, trustworthy, well-run server community to start. Which, honestly, is what most people are looking for.

Yes—just one. Not a wizard. Not a choose-your-own-server adventure that most newbies abandon a third of the way through.

One. Am I clear?

For most people joining the Fediverse, simply offer them a single, well-maintained, general-purpose on-ramp to their new social home.

Make it dead simple onboarding—with as few steps as needed to get them going - and not a single click more.

Localized to the user’s preferred language. Seamless. Thoughtful.

Pair that with a short, clear explanation of why it’s the recommended path, and what makes it a good place to begin and links to the friendly local admin. And sure—add a clearly marked, clearly optional toggle: “Choose a different community server,” for the curious and confident.

And please—for the love of onboarding UX: Drop the engineering-speak. Swap “instance” for server community. Make the copy human. Friendly. Clear. Onboarding should take 60 seconds, not 60 decisions.

Yes, Mastodon’s official mobile apps mostly do this already—inspired by Mammoth app, RIP.

Now cue the predictable guy in the back row who rightly asks:

“How does this not just re-centralize the beloved decentralized Fediverse we’re fighting for?”

Simple.

Under the hood, the magic stays decentralized.

Unbeknownst to new users, the onboarding software quietly runs a curated round robin of trustworthy servers—offering just one at random to each new user.

We gave some ideas on how one could choose this trusted set serers for the Mastodon platform here but similar metrics could be created for any Fediverse platform.

Maybe that means the software is choosing from between three trusted community servers in the round robin. Maybe it means dozens. But the user never sees that. That random round robin is being done under the hood.

Users see just one served up to them to join —and that’s the point.

The key: no single server gets favored. New users get distributed, not funneled into a single mothership.

🟨 Decentralization: preserved. 🟨 Friction: dramatically reduced.

Plenty of time to educate folks on the joys of migrating to other community servers later should they choose to. It’s not rocket science. Friends and I proposed this years ago. Still waiting on someone to take it across the finish line.

Pixelfed. Mastodon. Bonfire. Friendica. Misskey. PeerTube. Bookwyrm. Patchwork. Warfn. Snort. Bleeb. (Just made up those last two to see if you were still paying attention)

But to that whole crew above and others… Let’s make it a race. Let’s see who nails this first—and shows the rest of the web how it’s done.

And if you’re running a non-general purpose server, say, a cool, niche-focused server community like the affore mentioned Jazztodon? Or other fun topic focused ones? You’re not out in the cold on this fix. It already exists for Mastodon just to share a link like this - rather than sending them to some more global sign up.

It already uses the same model: a clean, direct onboarding flow with just one server—yours. Invite your people, your way.

No dropdown menus. No guesswork. Just:

“Join our space. Let’s go.”

2️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin Two: One Feed To Rule Them All (at First).

Let’s be honest: per UX Sin Two: most users—especially new ones—don’t care or are abjectly confused about the metaphysical distinctions between Home, Local, and Federated feeds. Mashing them together under a “Live Feeds” menu isn’t the solution IMHO.

So here’s crazy talk: don’t confuse them and upon first arrival, only feature ONE feed. Just one feed. Simple. Personal. Familiar.

Call it Home. Just the people you follow. Just what you asked for. That’s what every user expects—and what feels safe, legible, and human.

If they’re not following many folks yet? Nudge them gently: “Here are some great active accounts to get you started.” Different Fediverse platforms do this to mixed results, all can do better.

Once they’re settled, expand the horizon—progressively:

A few days in, they see this on their home feed from their friendly local admin account:

“Want to check out what is trending people nearby on your server are talking about?”

A week later from same:

“Curious about the chatter across the Fediverse? (Warning: it gets weird—in a good way.)”

You get it. This is called progressive disclosure—a fancy UX term for “don’t drop the entire buffet on someone who just asked for toast.”

Game designers do it, allowing characters to “level up” as they go. We should too. And when you do introduce content or users from the Local and Federated views, make them feel like power-ups, not puzzles.

Let people toggle. Let them filter. Let them filter, and sort with easy tools as they explore. But start with clarity, not complexity.

As with Redemption #1, this fix doesn’t require much complex backend wizardry. No protocol overhauls needed. Just frontend compassion. The equivalent of a cron script and some solid user experience design dust.

Honestly? Elk, Phanpy, or Patchwork could probably ship a beta v1 of this idea before you finish reading this post. Let’s go.

3️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin Three: Remote Actions Redeemed

You know the sin already. We covered it in Sin #3: Remote Interaction Purgatory back in Part 1 of this series. So let’s skip the anatomy of the pain and get straight to the path out of this hell.

And yes—apps like Ivory, Mona, and Ice Cubes? They largely sidestep this sin. Good for them. But the Open Social Web is, you know, about the web.

And for the millions of people trying to explore the Fediverse in a plain ol’ browser, this is one of the worst and thorniest of UX offenses.

I’ll spare the gory details, but it boils down to one thing: Browsers support a standard called “protocol handlers.” Or more accurately, how some browsers don’t.

If you’ve ever clicked a mailto: link and your email app just opens, that’s a protocol handler. In a perfect Open Web, it would be just as easy:

Set your home server once (prompt ed to do so during onboarding – or at worst when you engage on another server).

From then on? Follows, replies, boosts—across any server—just work.

Folks (myself included) have been hashing over what magical incantation should be used to actually make this work:

“Use web+ap!” “No, fedi+ap!” “Wait, what about activity+magic?”

Germanic feuding tribes settled things faster than this.

And yes, browser support used to be completely hot garbage. But here’s the twist: it’s not nearly as bad anymore. As of now, almost 90% of users from desktop browsers but still sadly with almost zero mobile browser support.

When you look at users of Mastodon as an example, that maths out to about half of all users could use this solution now.

That is enough for making this far better for so many today, and with a bit of JavaScript fallback, we can cover everyone else.

We’re not waiting on a miracle. We just need to create and ship. Here’s the redemption arc for this UX sin in two steps.

When a user first interacts with a remote server (a post, a profile, anything), the code will prompt them once to confirm this Fediverse protocol handler.

✅ One click.

✅ One prompt.

✅ Done. Forever done.

Guy in the back, raising hand, rightly: “But what about all the browsers that don’t support handlers?”

Relax. We got them too. Just drop in a lightweight JavaScript snippet on that server that:

Asks (once) what the user’s home server is. And at worst only gets one more aks form their home server “are you sure?”

Then it does the following in the background under the hood:

Rewrites all remote follow/reply/engagement links in the background automagically.

And then for every user and every post on that server —✨it just works✨ forevermore.

No more “open in your instance” dead ends. No more copy-paste drama.

Are you the kind of masochist who wants the gory details of this idea? No kink-shaming here. Dig in (including code you can steal):

👉 The Remote Fedi UX Protocol Handler Plan™

OK so I think that solution is pretty good - at least a ton better – but what if we know that we could count on server code to do some of the lifting? Could we go even better from a UX perspective?

That might take more time to do: but if Mastodon, or Pixelfed, or Peertube servers got in on the act and added some custom code there - I think we might be able to make that JavaScript failover code actually be ZERO prompts. See the later more exploratory “Option C” part of this proposal - FediDev’s and JavaScript folks and see if I got that wrong. Or if my crazy talk for Option C might work. I haven’t seen a show-stopper yet.

But all options of what I am proposing above should be able to work on any fediverse platform.

And yes—to the true believers out there, rightly working on the true end goal of getting a single protocol handler as a canonical standard adopted by all browser vendors: thank you. You are doing the Lord’s work.

But for the rest of us? We don’t have to wait. Even the basic version of the idea here takes a few paragraphs of code, not divine intervention.

It’s just… basic UX hygiene. Who’s going to dig in, proof case this, and ship it first?

Once one of you does—and the sky doesn’t fall—the rest will follow like dominoes.

4️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin 4: Direct Messages that Aren’t a Death Trap

As I wrote in Sin 4 in the previous blog post: sending a DM in the fediverse are confusing UX experience, that basically are a panic attack waiting to happen.

So let’s fix it. Developers:

Build a real DM composer. Not a slightly tweaked post box. Not “just set visibility to Direct.” A separate space. Different UI. And make it glaringly visually different - no subtle mild color difference or tiny visual flare. Make it as obvious a purpose as a Chernobyl button to empty out fuel.

Slap a giant banner across the top if encryption isn’t available. If it’s not secure, say so—loudly.

Throw a confirmation modal any time someone flips visibility to or from “Direct.” Yes, every time. One bad toggle should never equal public humiliation.

Color-code visibility tiers like your reputation depends on it:

🔓 Public. 👀 Followers-only. 🙈 Unlisted. 🔒 DM.

You know—something humans can actually see and understand.

And for the love of privacy, label every DM with “Not Encrypted” right in the message window. Not in the fine print. Not in the docs. Right there. Every time. Forever.

Because this isn’t overkill. This is respecting boundaries. This is basic UX dignity.

⚡️ And in case you think this is all pie in the sky—guess what?

Chee Anne at Phanpy already did nearly all of this.

Separate composer, clear dramatically, unmissable different visual distinctions for DM’s, safer flows. They moved private messages into their own tab by itself, away from the others and away from the Main Feed. It’s thoughtful, it’s sane, and it’s live.

Here is another great example from an upcoming Newsmast and Channels App UX:

The rest of you: copy their homework. The answers are right there.

5️⃣ Redemption for Sin 5: Search Without Surveillance

Search shouldn’t feel like shouting into the void—or worse, like you’re being punished just for asking.

To be fair, Mastodon’s search system on paper rocks. PixelFed and PeerTube’s federated search? Same.

But here’s the problem: for these—and many other federated platforms—search is opt-out by default per user, and that opt-in option for users to turn on if they choose is buried.

Meanwhile, other fediverse platforms like Misskey, Frendica, Lemmy and Hubzilla made different choices: making it so all public posts on those spaces are by default searchable. In essence defaulting to opt-in for search unless users individually opt-out. That worked for them.

But across Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others?

Search is locked behind obscure settings and rarely explained consent screens. Most users don’t even know search opt-in is a thing.

Right now, federated search is like a power tool buried in a locked cabinet,

down a hallway, behind a curtain labeled: “Don’t Worry About It.”

Here’s the good news: We don’t need to replicate Big Social’s surveillance dragnet to make discovery delightful. We can do this while also respecting user consent and privacy. The backend tech? Mostly done from a tech point of view.

The real challenge now? UX. This is an opt-in problem—and we already have the tools to fix it.

Here’s the better path forward:

✅ Nudge users early. And often. Make the choice to opt-in to search unmissable during onboarding. Then reinforce it gently and re-prompt users to opt in - every time a user tries to search.

Give them clear, kind, privacy-respecting language:

“Search helps others find your public posts. It never touches your private ones. Want in?”

Let them decline, sure. Let them silence future prompts. But always give them the why.

✅ Enrich search NOW with these great hand-chosen feeds.

Curated topic feeds? Already out there. Newsmast, Flipboard, Surf, and others are curating hundreds of quality feed lists right now.

Let’s plug these in like power cables into a server rack—directly into federated search engines of today and into Fediscovery search as it launches - and into all key relay servers to boot. Make 100% sure these are all findable, and featured, beyond just being “public” as they are now. Let the good, human-curated stuff shine inside search.

✅Nudge admins to help, too.

If a server’s opt-in rate is low, send a prompt to encourage the admin to reach out to their users. Give them a clean, pre-written nudge. Include a one-tap opt-in button to opt-in they can share. Most folks just need to know it’s an option and a simple way to say yes.

🛠️ Mid-Term Fixes Worth Considering

🟨 Consider building into future search features that let server admins choose the default search opt-in state appropriate for their community - and that might be defaulting new users to opt-in for some. where it fits their needs.

This one might be controversial, but I just put on my fireproof gear and am ready - it’s worth a serious look.

Every server has its own culture. So let the server set appropriate call for their community: Opt-in by default, or Opt-out by default. But in all cases, the user has final say. As long as consent is respected, flexibility is strength in my book. Far better than a divine fiat across the whole Fediverse.

🟨 Watch this space: Federated Auxiliary Services Providers (FASP- a tech acronym that just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?) But the first FASP based offering to go live will be Search - is coming soon! Early tests are in sight!

This project will launch a unified, cross-platform search layer—exactly what the fediverse ecosystem needs. That promises to be a game changer. Here’s hoping.

But while we wait?

Most of the groundwork is already laid. Most of the wins are low lift. We have what we need to make federated search feel like a superpower.

We just need to unlock it—for everyone.

Let’s get to the point where people say:

“Wait… why didn’t I turn this on sooner?”**

5️⃣ Redemption for Sin 5: Filling in the Blanks of Ghost Conversations

The bad news: this one’s not just a superficial fix. It needs real backend plumbing—deeper stuff that most Fediverse mortals can’t DIY.

(Though it is not rocket science level - users like this have shown how it’s done in miniature form)

The good news: it’s already underway at Mastodon. And not in the “quote-posts-have-been-in-the-works-since-2019” sense of being underway. We’re talking real commits. Real work. This year.

➡️ When a user opens a post, their server begins fetching the surrounding context—replies, parent posts, and profiles—automagically. The UX then should immediately let users know - fetching posts is underway…so don’t panic, wait a second and all will be well.

Want to peek under the hood? The dev threads on GitHub are alive with it. Feature merged into Mastodon upcoming release. See for yourself:

🔧 Thread fetching on Mastodon GitHub

Merged in and closed. On the runway for a near term Mastodon release.

Some other Fediverse platforms are also working on this problem for their platforms —most notably NodeBB, Discourse, Wordpress, Frequency, Mitra and Streams. Everyone else: please take notes from what works. Fork it. Build it. Improve it. Help other to do the same.

This one fix could massively reduce confusion, dead-end threads, and ghost replies.

Meanwhile, for client apps:

Elk, Phanpy, IceCubes, Ivory, Mona, Newsmast Mobile —can you lend a hand here? Even while we wait for the full back-end fix, you can improve the experience with a few thoughtful touches:

If a reply or profile can’t be fetched, show a friendly, clear placeholder:

“👻 *Reply not federated here yet. Want us to try to get it updated?”

Let users tap to fetch it manually, if needed. But make it clear what is up.

Show when a profile is incomplete and offer to sync to the latest and greatest.

Consider a simple age warning: “Heads up: this might be old or partial. Click here to refresh and update.

Even these little affordances make a big difference. They tell users:

“No, you’re not crazy. The Fediverse just hasn’t pulled this in yet.”

And for anyone out there grumbling that Mastodon (orny platform) isn’t moving fast enough—maybe skip the subtweets and fund them.

(And here are a few helpful links in this regard.)

A few dollars a month moves roadmaps more than a thousand hot takes.

Oh, and speaking of hot takes, here is one: If you are a coder, maybe roll up your sleeves and pitch in. Perfect example: The initial contribution for the Mastodon fix for fixing and filling in ghost conversations came from Jonny - neuromatch.social/@jonny Who was a new Ruby coder at the time but didn’t let that hold them back - and they sparked this crucial addition.

Give them some thanks and netfame online!

6️⃣ Redemption for Sin 6: Make Great Content Unmissable

Let’s be honest: even outside of search, the Fediverse still fumbles content discovery (See Sin 6) But buck up: There are a thousand ways we could help users find the posts, people, and conversations they actually care about—without building a surveillance dragnet or rage-bait machine.

It’s time to bring back and scale up old fashioned human editorial discovery.*

(Remember “blog rings”? OK, most folks under 50 don’t—but trust me, they worked way better than they had any right to.)

Let’s revive human-curated content—with a Fediverse twist. The good news? We already have an embarrassment of riches just waiting to surface—if we design for it with some smart, consent-respecting UX.

So why is this stuff still so hard to find?

🟨 Federated well moderated groups from upvoting platforms like Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin are already bubbling up top posts, voted on by real people. Why not spotlight them?

(Note, Piefed is already got the ball rolling with their version of feeds)

🟨 From Redemption Path Five, remember these? We already have hundreds of hand-picked thematic feeds from:

Newsmast

Flipboard’s federated magazines

Flipboard’s News Desks

Individual curators building focused feeds

Surf’s Social Feeds (soon to be federated!)

These are not theoretical. They’re already open web content. Usable right now. So let’s feature them. Pipe them into onboarding, trending views, search, suggested follows—anywhere users might want to find signal in the noise.

💡 Slightly mid-term idea:

🟨 What if the current public server directories from each community server became feed actors too? Hear me out on this one.

Most Fediverse servers already show off public profiles—and many expose each public user posts via RSS. Given that RSS can be turned into a Mastodon bot in no time, we are more than half way there.

Let’s evolve that: turn each server’s local public post stream into a followable ActivityPub actor. A single, followable automated account for all voices on a server. Make it so each admin can opt out - like some opt out of making their public feed visible now. Make it so they can configure their own ServerBot to only boost posts with certain engagement, or set filters on it and all that good moderating stuff.

I, for one, welcome our new ServerBot overlords.

These kinds of curated “boosting bots” are how Newsmast Channel feed accounts work. Could a standard protocol for feeds be better? Hells, ya. Working group folks are on that.

But until then - this works TODAY. And then notice how all such ServerBots are followable immediately. And remixable and addable into other feeds, etc. These are all lego blocks building on each other.

Browsing remote public feeds: Apps are already hacking toward this with clunky workarounds. People want this. Let’s make it work on the web, too. Smooth. Intentional.

Someone smarter than me, help prototype this one. I’ll talk you up, I promise.

All these ideas—both near-term and mid-term—are really just about one thing: curated feed accounts. Most of them already exist. They just need the spotlight.

So what now?

📍 Index them in existing search. All of them. Prepare to index them into the Fedisovery FASP once that launches. Stat.

📍 Evolve feed standards to make easier to build and make them remixable—so apps like Surf, Flipboard, Newsmast and others can feature them and and build on them.

📍 Pull them into big relay hubs to boost visibility across the network.

Done right, great public content starts to feel everywhere. No tracking. No noise. No black-box algorithms.The Fediverse is overflowing with public posts that people want to be seen.

Let’s help them be seen—while respecting server context and dramatically improving discoverability.

Let’s make great content… unmissable.

7️⃣ Redemption for User Discovery Hell: UX for People Finding

Let’s imagine a world where we’ve fixed all the other sins. Welcome to Fediverse Narnia. Content is rich. Discovery is delightful. Search is humane and powerful. Great.

But even in that better world, Sin #7 still haunts us: finding people. Not just content—people. Friends. Experts. Communities. Shared interests. It’s a related beast, but a distinct one.

So here’s how we begin to tame it—mostly with smart UX and a little coordination:

🟨 Give server profile directories a real UX overhaul.

Make them sortable and filterable and searchable:

By interest or profile tags

By post recency

By community role

And auto-hide inactive accounts unless the user asks to see them

And for Mastodon, do the same for the Explore People tab. And make the Explore Hashtags page so that each tag is foldable with one click. Other Fedi platforms: do similar tune ups.

Right now, many server directories are just flat walls with limited sorting or browsing. Let’s turn them into useful, browsable, followable entry points to the community.

🟨 Pipe local community server profiles into opt-in Fediverse-wide discovery hubs. Simply making them an ActivityPub actor alone would get you more than halfway there. Just like we suggested for public posts in Sin 6—let’s do the same with people. Let users opt in to be featured in thematic discovery feeds or server-based “people to follow” hubs. Let this be federated.

Fediscovery once it launches should be a playground to try this out - and should be an early thing to try.

But until then: Here too I’ll bet Patchwork, Pleroma, Misskey or others could do this quickly and lessons adopted by everyone else.

🟨 Fix follower/following graph federation. Once Sin 5 (the federation of follows/followers content) is fixed, you’ll actually be able to see who someone follows across instances. You find someone awesome? You can actually explore their social graph—just like you expect in every other social app. This fix is foundational. And these fixes all build on each other.

Also, wait for it:

💡 Mid-term idea: Federated Starter Packs Are Coming

Bluesky got this one mostly right: give new users a thoughtfully curated “starter pack” of people to follow. It eases onboarding, sparks connection, and gets feeds flowing fast.*

But Bluesky they left out pesky things like security - their version left out any means to get yourself off of a list you don’t care to be associated with.

Now imagine a Fediverse version that’s got a bit more privacy respect to keep you off of starter packs you don’t want to be on. It’s on its way from a few places. Here is one in the works from Mastodon, and here is another.

I’d offer some other notes: Fedi Starter Packs could live at either the user but also discoverable integrated at the server level, too.

Like Surf Social App does today with BlueSky Starter packs, they need to be remixable into other feeds by curators, Maybe in some fashion they could be shared as ActivityPub actors themselves—just like a feed. (See a pattern forming?)

✨ The goal for all of these ways of fixing account discovery? Make discovering people feel effortless, inviting, and safe.

Because the open social web isn’t just about finding content. It’s about finding each other**.**

🌀 OK let’s bring this two part series in for a landing:

Here’s the real punchline:

Almost none of the short term fixes I listed above require:

Rewriting the protocol - no need to wait for longer term fixes. (Though we love improved protocols ,too)

They don’t need a governance working group. (But might inform them)

They don’t need VC funding.

They mostly don’t even need big backend changes beyond what is already done.

What they do need?

What they need is focus. What they need is momentum.

The willingness to say “good enough” isn’t good enough if it leaves people confused, invisible, or gone.

Most of these paths out of UX Hell are:

Mostly Frontend tweaks and updates

Smarter federation fetches - and some manual bandaids to tide us over for a few months

Rediscovered ideas from the early web implemented with the raw materials we have

And a dash of UX love

The Fediverse already has what most platforms spend billions for and can’t buy:

🫀 We have the passion. 🧭 We have the values. 👥 We have a community that actually gives a damn.

Now it just needs the polish—and a collective push to make great user experience a first-class priority.

Thus endeth the sermon. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Let’s get to work.

This was the Final Part 2 of my two-part series on the Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse. No more sequels. This is it for th3e series. But will chat it up in comments.

Missed Part 1? Go read it—or send it to that friend still wondering why their cat memes don’t federate properly. And if you’re building any of these fixes: DM me. I’ve got free suggestions, zero patents, and endless opinions.

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timothyjchambers · 8 days ago

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The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix)

So, confession time: I was recently helping a new client get set up on the Fediverse—guiding them through their first steps into our glorious decentralized galaxy. And seeing it all again through fresh eyes?

Reader, it was brutal.

So much of what should be table stakes for any social media UX in the year of our Lord 2025 still is missing or deeply broken still. I know progress has been made and a good fight, fought. But those of us who love the Open Social Web can get blinded to the rough edges not yet fixed or not having lived with them, start to consider them not so bad. Beloved, they are that bad. Still.

Let me be crystal clear before we begin: I say all of the below with love for the fediverse.. Deep, stubborn, open-source-loving, billionaire-eschewing love. I want the Open Social Web to win. But wanting it isn’t enough. If we want this thing to thrive we have to face the user experience sins head-on—and maybe even laugh at them a little along the way.

<Caveate>I love native apps like Ivory or Mona or custom web UX like Elk or Phanpy as much or more than any of you but those are all UX bandaids over things we have needed to fix in most cases for years. That time is now.</Caveate>

So I jotted down the seven things that make my clients’ eyes cross. And no, this isn’t me dunking on one app or interface. Pixelfed—you’re not off the hook. No snickering, Friendica. These are Fediverse-wide sins.

And don’t get smug, Bluesky. You’ve got some whoppers in your closet too—and I’m saving those for another article.

So grab a cup of coffee—or maybe the nearest comfort blanket—and let’s soberly and bravely take a cathartic journey through the Deadly Sins that plague the Fediverse’s web UX.

(And any I missed in the comments to this blog post)

1️⃣ The Sin of Overwhelming Complexity: Instance Selection Paralysis

Ah yes, we start the OG sin. This one’s been haunting the Fediverse since before most people even knew the Fediverse existed. Again see this with fresh eyes:

Imagine the moment you decide to join the Fediverse. You’re feeling a tad noble. Brave. Ready to reclaim your digital life from Big Tech’s clutches.

Then… boom. You’re confronted with a cryptic list of servers, each with a name that sounds like a cross between a startup pitch and a medieval tavern.

Wait, what? “social.town or lemmy.world? climatejustice.social or a server with a frog logo? What am I signing up for here?” No warm hand-holding, no curated suggestion. Just a buffet of options that would make even a seasoned sysadmin’s head spin.No wonder so many people bail before they even get started. It’s like trying to join a secret club when no one will tell you the handshake.

And even our terms “Server” Or “Instance” make sense in an engineering flowchart but why in all that is holy would we foist those onto users to pretend to understand? At the very least we should talk about new folks joining a “server community” of fellow users.

And here’s the harsh truth: even offering more than one onboarding “server community” choice is often one too many. Even the fix at JoinMastodon for the mobile app only not the web app - while admirable and going in the right direction. If your onboarding flow requires a glossary, a decision tree, and a four-part documentary on federation theory, something’s gone very wrong. A multi-step wizard isn’t going to save you—it’s just a fancier maze. We’ve seen flows that bleed 50% of users per screen. That’s not onboarding, that’s a prescription for a slow-motion rage quit.

“But what about decentralization?” someone valiantly cries from the back row.

Don’t worry: I’m not selling it out. I adore decentralization as much as you and trust me, we don’t have to throw that out to give users onboard for the first time only one server choice. I hear you audibly confused now but trust me, wait for it.

For now I think we can agree that new users to the Fedi need an onboarding experience that doesn’t feel like a grad school entrance exam. I believe a far better way is possible, and I’ll spill the beans in the next post.

2️⃣ The Sin of Inconsistent Navigation: Timeline Turmoil

Congrats, you survived the Great Instance Selection Gauntlet™. You’ve picked your server, verified your email, maybe even uploaded a profile pic. You’re finally ready to explore your new digital neighborhood.

And then—bam. Three timelines.

Not one. Not two. Three.

Home, Local, Federated—each more enigmatic than the last. The Fediverse’s multiple timelines are a beautiful idea in theory, but in practice?

Home: Hopefully your cozy friends’ chatter.

Local: Pretty much your instance’s collective brain dump.

Federated: the cosmic firehose of everything, everywhere, all at once. Many are sure to be in languages you don’t speak. Basically: digital chaos in reverse-chron order.

New users are expected to intuit the metaphysical difference between timelines, And honestly—why should new users care? What does each one do for them?

What problem is it solving? No really, I’ll wait.

3️⃣ The Sin of Remote Interaction Purgatory: Federation Gymnastics

One of the Fediverse’s great promises is universal interaction—no matter which server someone calls home, you can still follow them, reply, boost, interact. In theory? Utopian.

In practice—for web users—it’s an absolute effing mystery.

Want to boost a post from another instance?

Want to follow someone who lives on a server that’s not your own?

Brace yourself: copy, paste, search, squint at a remote profile view, and whisper a quick prayer to the federation spirits that it might work this time.

Want to reply to a post from a different corner of the Fediverse?

You’d better hope the stars align, the server’s awake, and the fediverse goblins aren’t misbehaving today. Sometimes it’s seamless. Sometimes you end up trapped in a social media escape room, having to try every door twice.

It’s social networking as performance art: awkward, elaborate, and weirdly beautiful—but absolutely not the experience most users signed up for.

And remember the golden UX rule: every extra step you give a user cuts retention in half.

That brutal law applies here too. Every clunky redirect, every extra click, every “wait, what do I do now?” moment sends more would-be users quietly packing.

4️⃣ The Sin of DM Disasters Waiting to Happen

Private messages in the Fediverse: because who doesn’t love social roulette?

And yet here we are - as on most Fediverse platforms, “Direct Messages” live right alongside public posts in the same composer, the same timeline view, sometimes even with mostly the same visual styling. You can toggle visibility to “Direct”… but will you notice you didn’t? Will you check? Will the UI save you?

Spoiler: It will not.

One wrong toggle, and your private thought becomes a public reckoning.

There’s no special UI wrapper. No bold red warning. No modal that says: “Heads up—you’re about to tell your boss what you really think, in public.”

Instead, it’s all too easy to accidentally post a private message as public—or vice versa. This isn’t just a newbie trap. It’s a UX booby trap.

And let’s be real: “Direct Message” in the Fediverse doesn’t even mean what most users think it means. It’s just a post with limited visibility, sent to a tagged user.

Worse? There’s no encryption. So it’s not just accidentally public—it’s intentionally insecure. It’s plaintext dressed up as a secret. There is some fine print warning you, But let’s be real: nobody reads fine print mid-conversation.

The result: drama, confusion, and sometimes real harm. All from a UI that treats one of the most sensitive features of a social platform like just another post flavor.

5️⃣ The Sin of Ghost Conversations and Phantom Follower Counts

Federation is the Fediverse’s secret sauce—and as implemented, its spectral curse. What should be lively, multi-user conversations often arrive with limbs missing.

Replies that clearly should be there are gone. Half the participants never materialize.

You’re reading a thread and suddenly think: Wait… who is this person even talking to?

Follower counts of remote users become carnival mirrors: someone shows “800 followers,” you see 12.

You follow a fascinating account, only to feel like you’ve stepped into a half-lit room where the conversation’s already happened—and half the guests are ghosts. Why does this happen?

Because what you see is only the part of the Fediverse that’s federated to you. Each server decides what to fetch, when to fetch it—and sometimes just… doesn’t.

There’s no guarantee your instance will pull in every reply, every participant, or even the full thread—especially if the original conversation lives on a server it barely talks to.

The result? Phantom threads. Phantom user counts.Hollow outlines of conversations happening elsewhere.

Social interaction becomes confusing swiss-cheese cutouts of themselves.

It’s enough to make you wonder:

Am I lurking… or am I the one being lurked?

6️⃣ The Sin of Invisible Discovery: The Content Mirage

The Fediverse was born to be better than Big Tech’s social media rage-bait casino—that places like X or Facebook designed to mine you for clicks, views, and your soul.

Good call to avoid that. Let’s not do that.

And yes, privacy is precious. Zero arguments here—no one’s asking for surveillance ads or algorithmic doomscrolling.

But the Fediverse takes that privacy ethos and forgets to replace it with… well… anything.

So what you get instead is discovery by divine accident: No algorithmic curation. No fediverse-wide trending topics. No “here’s what’s buzzing.”

Just you and The Void.

So new users end up wandering along, stumbling across interesting people and conversations only by sheer luck. It’s charming - but only in a 19th-century explorer way.

It’s less charming when you’re just trying to find a cat meme.

What about Mastodon Search? On paper, it’s powerful. In reality, it’s opt-in only—tucked behind an Easter egg hunt of privacy settings. Years after launch, Mastodon Search still surfaces a fraction of a fraction of users—basically just those who’ve unlocked the “I read the docs” achievement.

And hey, credit where it’s due: Eugen and team did build something. And erred on the side of caution.

Most other Fediverse platforms haven’t even really tried to tackle search yet in a meaningful way.

7️⃣ The Sin of User Discovery Hell

Search is one thing. But finding people to follow—especially if you’re new—is where the UX - beyond just search - really starts to melt down.

User discovery in the Fediverse is so decentralized, it’s basically unusable. No global directory. No “you might like.” No obvious trails to follow.

Just vibes. And maybe a dusty wiki from 2022.

(Full disclosure: I helped build some of those early directories for journalists and activists. We were literally hand-crafting Excel spreadsheets of accounts worth following. Read that again. No really.)

Want to create your own curated user list of great accounts? Go for it—just don’t expect to share it. Mastodon lists aren’t public. You can’t even make them public. So they live and die with you, like a mixtape you can’t give to anyone.

And other Fediverse platforms do not even have lists.

Some Fediverse servers maintain public list pages of their user profiles that are on that server —but good luck using them. They’re often:

Unsortable except by these vague, frustrating options:

Recently active: OK, fine. Credit where due. Good one.

New arrivals: (New…where? From what? And are they “New” and “Aticve” or just lookie-lous that joined then bounced away?)

From this-server-name.com only: What? Why? (See Sin #1.)

From known Fediverse: I’m begging you. What does that even mean to any newbie?

Unlabeled by any useful tag—even ones users have publicly applied to themselves.

Unfiltered, showing accounts that haven’t posted since Obama’s first term and giving no indication who’s worth following now.

And lastly each server’s public profiles do not flow up to any larger discovery pipeline. So even if you do find cool, active, Jazz fans found by hand from user profile section of the Jazztodon server, no other server benefits but you. Go you. But opportunity firmly lost for fediverse wide discovery.

And let’s say you gave up on all of the above. But a new idea struck you:

“I know: like on every other social media platform, I can find cool folks that my friends follow and follow them.”

Yeah…no.

Thanks to federation fragmentation - Think you Sin #5 - many of their following—although every last one of them being technically public—are totally invisible to you in practice. So much for that idea.

It’s a UX turducken. One Sin nested inside another.

You didn’t just fall through the cracks—you’re living in them.

🙏 The Path to Redemption

Ok that was withering to write, let alone what it must have been to read. Time for a palate cleanser for both of us: ![Adorable golden retriever puppies] (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrdpDT3eMO7ZBVv39srKhyD9rfVaAHAOW-3mzmx-IiO7qCL8j9439fPDhsKPCFnaiPHx0_fi13eZrFvhwy7YiSAGdTb0tXfqNxum9NAH3Rxy_-Q6s7aW2uZnnu-O9H7nciyNHDI4OIMZbP/s1600/Golden_Retriever_Puppies.jpg)

OK here is another ray of hope:

Remember I’m writing these out of LOVE for the Open Social Web and the fediverse and to improve it.

And let’s be clear: these UX sins aren’t as the preachers say, “sins unto death.” There is a path to redemption, each one of these is eminently fixable.

These fixed don’t require a pilgrimage to the holy land of W3C working groups or a blockchain duct-taped to the side of the server rack. We’re not waiting on divine intervention via Fediverse Enhancement Protocol v99.9b.

The path out of UX hell is paved with thoughtful design, a pinch of frontend finesse, and a few determined devs who are tired of watching newcomers bounce off of this experience back into the waiting arms of Big Tech Silos - often doing so with very good reason, and a sense of loss.

And more good news? Many folks have already started making serious strides. Now is the time to push forward.

Lastly, remember: The early open web had UX problems just as gnarly—and it worked through nearly all of them. The open social web can too.

I’ll dive into the fixes in the next article in this two-part series. Catch you on the other side.

This is Part 1 in a two-article series on the Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience.

Part 2—our roadmap to redemption—will arrive as soon as the author can wrestle their love of the Open Social Web back into prose, ideally before the next major Mastodon fork or the collapse of another Twitter clone.

In the meantime, if you’ve spotted a UX sin I missed, drop it in the comments or send a direct message (just, you know, double-check the visibility setting first).

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