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?

  • CrunchyBoy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Addition@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

        • nnullzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          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.

    • Dark_Blade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I mean, Reddit killed off ‘polished UX’ and that’s what drove me here. All the great 3PAs are on the Fediverse, after all!

  • RagingRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg

    • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      19 days ago

      That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg

      This is what people always miss. Generally, sites become popular because niche subcultures form outside of the “big” websites as they no longer really serve their purpose of connecting to like minded individuals. They never “start big”, they generally snowball from small hardcore users to larger more generalized userbases over time.

  • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    19 days ago

    Young people don’t even understand that the internet isn’t only the 5 websites that have existed since before they were born lol

    That’s probably a big part of it. We kind of designed the internet to become an information super oligarchy, even if it wasn’t intentional.

    I’m 33 for the record so I guess I’m an older tech nerd. Nice. 😎

  • Ghostc1212@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • GreenCrush@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      This is me as well. gen z, hate that trillion dollar corporations run our social media. The fediverse is the future.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year 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.

  • illah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year 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.

  • myself@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Absolutely It’s really nice how this affects the tech related serious communities but damn is it heartbreaking how bad the memes here are

    • macniel@feddit.deEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      is it heartbreaking how bad the memes here are

      May I interest you in some beans in those trying times?

  • macniel@feddit.deEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    frick, I check all three boxes (36, software developer and currently a KDE Neon user)

  • trollercoaster@feddit.deEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’m not surprised, as using it pretty much requires requires some premeditation, you have to pick an instance to register with just to get started. IMO, that’s a very low hurdle, and I see the root of the perceived problem less in using the fediverse being too complicated, but in internet users becoming increasingly uneducated due to every large operator of internet services and smartphone OS manufacturer dumbing down everything to the point where actually thinking about what you’re doing isn’t required anymore. Thanks to this, to many internet users these days, many web services they interact with aren’t a service on the internet, but an app on their phone.

    I know the internet from before social media like we know them today became a thing, in comparison, anything fediverse is way easier to use than the plethora of separate services (forums, wikis, dozens of different chat services, some, most notably, IRC, with thousands of different servers) that were the norm in the past.

    I don’t see that so slightly higher hurdle for entering the fediverse as a problem, I don’t necessarily want to interact with the kind of people who are too dumb to even figure out how to register an account on a web service.

    aNd NoW iMmA uNiNsTaLl LeMmY bEcAuSe yOuR qUeStIoN oFfEnDs Me!11!!!11!!!11!!! /s (just in case it wasn’t obvious)