The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:

  • ~30 years old or older

  • tech enthusiasts/workers

  • linux users

There’s nothing wrong with that particular demographic or anything, but it doesn’t feel like a win to me if the entire fediverse is just one big monoculture.

I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away? Is picking a server/federation too complicated? Or is it that they don’t see any content that they like?

Thoughts?

  • Freethewhat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    If I wasn’t a tech nerd I would have given up on signing up for Mastodon and Lemmy. There is a lot of focus on how instances work and it seems a bit overwhelming. I had a lot of internal, ‘what if I make the wrong choice’, or ‘how can I move if I don’t like the community’ type questions. So being the nerd I am I researched the crap out of it and overwhelmed myself and said fuck it and just chose the popular instances since I know that I can move at a later date.

    I personally think this format is favored by a lot of the demographic you mentioned. Most of us, I am generalizing here, grew up being active members in bulletin board systems. Then Reddit came along basically murdered the BB, but there was a good community to interact with. Now Reddit is basically unusable in my opinion because the community doesn’t care about the content or the people behind the screen. That brings us here. We learned so much of our trade, laughed a lot, and made real friendships on these types of system and it is a place a lot of us feel comfortable.

    • BURN@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      100% this

      I’m a tech nerd and software engineer and even I struggled to figure out how to signup. Most people I know just want something that works. And those things tend to be centralized because of ease of use. The Fediverse isn’t easy to use, and makes the user make major decisions before even signing up or understanding the tech.

      Eventually there should probably be account migration and a somewhat “central” account management instance that most users are on, with the option to migrate their user to other instances.

      • tiramichu@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.

        With federation it’s ensured that any single instance is only a small part of the whole, and that if any instance goes down (or worse, goes rogue and becomes a bad actor) then the impact of that is minimised. All users being registered on a single instance is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket.

        I do totally understand from the perspective of new users that it’s hard to understand what to do or how to do it but that is a problem that could be better addressed with clearer onboarding. e.g “Choose any one of these recommended instances to sign up. It doesn’t matter which - you’ll be able to see the same content and communities across all of Lemmy no matter which you pick”*

        *mostly, but close enough

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just your average Hollywood celebrity here to promote my new movie “Barbie”, only in theaters July 21st.

  • vettnerk@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    *looks at self*:

    • 40
    • nerd
    • chief amongst my nerddoms being tech

    I feel both insulted and understood at the same time

  • Anticorp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Is picking a server/federation too complicated?

    Apparently anything beyond filling out a registration form is too complicated for a lot of people. Heck, even that seems to be too much for some people, hence the popularity of login with Facebook or Google features. Personally I’m happy to be away from people who can’t figure out simple concepts. But, I’m the exact person you described in your post, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
    0·
    11 months ago

    Perhaps it’s because people under 30 have no sense of responsibility so don’t really care to communicate much with peers. They don’t have the means to bring systems like this online. They don’t have the historical perspective to take part in intelligent conversation, so they have Twitter and Facebook.

  • pHr34kY@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    30s software engineer / linux user here.

    We are exactly who you want as the “primer” user group. We will collectively make sure the whole thing works before the load really rams up.

    • SpaceAape@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      We’re the generation that learned to troubleshoot bc we had to. If we wanted to play that shiny new game or app, we had to actually get it running first.

      • AVeryCleverName@lemmy.oneEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I think about this a lot. I’m so grateful I had the experience of messing with the windows registry and other phenomena of the 90s.

        • NoMoreCocaine@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          TBH, I actually thought he was talking about autoexec.bat and EMS memory, etc, rather than windows. I guess I’m slightly older? Maybe not. I’m also thinking windows registry thing hasn’t really gone away. Yet.

  • silencioso@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago
    • ~30 years old or older
    • tech enthusiasts/workers
    • linux users
    • hates Elon Musk
    • hates capitalism
    • loves free software but somehow hates free markets
  • chraebsli@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    as a young IT with friends who dont know much about IT i have to say that most around 20 use reddit, instagram, … cause its the only thing they know. everyone they know uses them and many of them want likes, …

    if they would join the fediverse:

    1. they wouldnt understand how it works. what is a server? why choose an instance? its just too complicated
    2. all their friends dont use the fediverse. they would be alone and have nobody who they can share things to
    3. they would mostly see tech stuff and less in categories they are interested in
    4. none of the people they follow on instagram are here. the cant follow their celebrities, … and see their content
    5. the fediverse still has to less users to be successful worldwide. its growing. and just like facebook in its first years, its growing slow.

    => give it a few more years and get your friends, family & collegues on here and see the fediverse grow

  • illah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    My take on this is not that this is the default early adopter demographic (bereal, TikTok, etc…cmon old dudes don’t act like we are “leading the charge”). But, there’s a good chunk of older tech oriented folks that see a glimmer of hope in the fediverse bringing back some bits of the “old web” imo.

    While most of the people like me don’t love meta or Twitter it was kinda good enough, but Reddit was kind of a last straw. I was there when all these companies were born and at the time we were all teen and 20-something early adopters (believe it or not even Facebook used to be cool!) and we’ve watched them all slowly degrade. Very young folks prob don’t care as they don’t really use any of these services, but us old nerds want to avoid the pitfalls of the Web 2.0 era.

    Web3 and the crypto-decentralization efforts were really ham fisted…I think most experienced techies saw through all the BS and recognized how wildly inefficient it all was, not to mention outright scammy in many cases. Fediverse is unproven but I think it has potential, and I think many of us older techies feel that way.

    • bittabet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      While most crypto/web3 ended up being get rich quick schemes for their founders, I actually think that the main weakness of lemmy right now will be funding for the long term. So some sort of web3 type micropayment system may need to be the eventual alternative if you don’t want a reddit style ad infested experience.

    • jscummy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      First thought when I read the title. Surprisingly, the early adopters of a new, not particularly user friendly tech platform are the same as people who use other niche technologies

    • Schooner@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Even as a crypto enthusiast, the web3 movement smelled like VC manure being dumped on a field hoping something grows.

  • fututio_enjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Is picking a server/federation too complicated?

    Yes.

    Absolutely.

    Literally the single biggest problem with fediverse adoption, brought up in every discussion about migrating to it. It will never replace centralized sites as long as it remains confusing and complicated.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14t9t66/im_so_lost_is_there_an_easy_mode_to_the_fediverse/

    https://www.reddit.com/r/LemmyMigration/comments/145epgc/looking_for_a_lemmy_website_try_lemmyworld/

  • ScaNtuRd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Good. I don’t want to see some teenagers doing some dumb dance or whatever is on normie platforms.