I’m getting a lot of comments from friends that they can’t make an account. I went to make test accounts on both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world and both are throbbing indefinitely (didn’t see any network traffic either).
stop using big instances, there is very little value to it, the more people pile onto these instances the more you will have issues like reddit.
Avoid redditoization of fediverse, stop using big instances.
The main issue I have with Lemmy however is the profound lack of discoverability for communities. This is exacerbated on smaller instances. It is human nature to want to be where many people are, and Fediverse instances are no exception there.
Did they select a language? Mine did the same thing on various instances. I tried a few things at the same time, so I don’t know what finally let me register, but I learned a few things in the process.
For example, the most likely explanation is that the username is already taken. The back end fails silently when that happens, and there’s already a bug open in GitHub. I figured I’d try a shorter password and selecting a language, and that worked.
Hopefully that helps your friends.
Upvoted for throbbing indefinitely
They will do that if the username and/or email address is already taken. I’ve seen it on my own instance. There are possibly other reasons as well.
If that’s the case and it’s just a bug that there’s not feedback on the sign-up page then that’s cool. Probably need to track an issue for that. But right now the new user is experience is pretty bad for even technically literate people.