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?
“Older” “30 years or more”
HEY
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.
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. 😎
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)
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.
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.
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.
● under 30
● i mean im getting there in terms of tech interests
● Yeah ok i use linux
It’s also used by loads of tankies
That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg
23 year old electrician here. I’m pretty interested in dectralized tech. My first was Bitcoin
I’m 3 for 3.
I think that might be because most people who go through the hurdles of setting up an account and figuring out the entire frediverse are people who are much more interested in the tech and it’s applications rather than your average social media consumer who can just get all they want in a single location with a easy to understand concept
Define “older” hahah
-under 30 -was a tech enthusiast -currently i am not using gnu but i was