The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:
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~30 years old or older
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tech enthusiasts/workers
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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?
Younger folks have been raised on apps and other polished devices with oodles of effort put into UX design.
Older folks grew up learning DOS commands, memorizing the IRQ of their sound card, and other clunky shenanigans.
In their current state Lemmy, Mastodon and other services are too complicated for most young folks to bother with. Not all, but most, especially the filthy casuals.
This is the answer. I’m 26 and most of my peers didn’t really use the internet beyond the occasional usage of the school library computers until Apple released the first iPhone. By that time places like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were up and running.
That’s all their experience with the internet is. Polished experiences through dedicated apps on extremely popular platforms. Now those people have had kids and all those kids know is the same thing. It’s all apps on phones and tablets.
Lemmy: A) Is too complicated in it’s current form for those types of people to effectively understand and use.
B) Lemmy is currently emulating a type of early internet experience that only nostalgic older millennials nerds crave. General users tend to prefer bigger platforms.
Lemmy is nostalgic? Lemmy is novelty for me. Looks and feels so modern. Simplistic, yet modern. Am I weird?
No I feel the same way. I think it’s because it’s part of an ecosystem of concepts built with all its predecessors mistakes in mind. There’s still learning to do but the foundation is simple but is also modern.
I mean, Reddit killed off ‘polished UX’ and that’s what drove me here. All the great 3PAs are on the Fediverse, after all!
Yes.
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.
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
Even as a crypto enthusiast, the web3 movement smelled like VC manure being dumped on a field hoping something grows.
I started back in the Wild West BBS days on the 80s; graduated to USENET in the 90s, website forums in the Web 1.0 days, /., Reddit, and now Lemmy. Yeah, I’ve been around. Been “Yaztromo” all that time too.
I don’t mind that “Eternal September” hasn’t infected this space yet — that’s a feature, not a bug!
I’m Gen Z, don’t use Linux, don’t know the first thing about programming (I know how to use file explorer though), and never intend to learn, and I’m here because I don’t wanna use the official Reddit app and because I’m convinced that the Fediverse is likely to become big in the future and I wanna be able to say I was here when it all began.
This is me as well. gen z, hate that trillion dollar corporations run our social media. The fediverse is the future.
I know how to use file explorer though
What are the kids being taught that this is worth mentioning???
According to what I have heard, other elite hacker skills that are at risk of getting lost in the younger generations include searching on Google and using e-mail.
Gen-Z doesn’t even know there is more than one search engine.
Idk I just heard that apparently knowing how to use file explorer is considered impressive in modern CS classes
What in the actual fuck
Well it’s new open source tech that can be self hosted by the 30+ tech nerds that have the money and interest in it.
aka: early tech adopters!
these folk are always the ones trying new things, especially anti-corporate things. They aren’t keeping people away. this is just how the bleeding edge of new technology. The communities natural grow out over time as more people show up and start to outnumber them. But it’s thanks to them that niche new stuff gets supported in the first place while it builds up it’s audience (and reduces the friction to joining)
That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg
This place reminds me so much of early reddit. It’s been a strangely nostalgic experience so far. The part of that which I’m enjoying the most, is that commenters are more polite to each other as far as I’ve seen
● under 30
● i mean im getting there in terms of tech interests
● Yeah ok i use linux
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/LemmyMigration/comments/145epgc/looking_for_a_lemmy_website_try_lemmyworld/
Good. I don’t want to see some teenagers doing some dumb dance or whatever is on normie platforms.
But then how will we know if our drip is bussin’?
fr no tomorrow our drip is mid no cap
What do people have against dancing? Life is soul sucking enough - let people do their silly little dances without judgement.
Oh I have nothing against it at all, I just have no interest in watching them lol
I don’t want to stereotype anyone, but in my own social experience, younger groups don’t give a shit about corporate monopolies or privacy, they just want things to work fast and automatically (ex: TikTok). And those I know in older brackets are still on Facebook and complaining that they don’t want to deal with change because their family/business/workflow would be affected.
I happen to be 38, a linux user, and a gamer. And I concur that my age-group has just always seemed to be more open to new technologies for some reason.
I think younger people don’t give a shit about privacy because they grew up in a post 9/11 surveillance world. Facebook, Instagram and the internet at large became a giant surveillance machine and they’ve never known another possibility, so it’s normalized to them.
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.
Noooooo.
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.