The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:
-
~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?
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)
In reddit’s early days, it was exactly like this. I remember that it felt like a Linux user forum, but with some conspiracy theorists. I actually feel that lemmy is a little more diverse than that.
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.
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?
yeah, too modern. perhaps they’re using a third party client?
Hello,
Are you aware you are replying to a year old comment?
Also, for less modern: https://old.lemmy.world/
i am also using a third party client
I’m 26, probably among the oldest of gen z. I love lemmy. The quality is higher here because the community is smaller. There are much less reports than there used to be on reddit.
Yeah Im like one of the youngest with an age of 14.But thats okay because lemmy is just awesome for me.
My Soundblaster used IRQ 7. Why do I still know this.
Because when the great reset happens and VHS is hot shit again, you’ll be ready.
Ahh, the great modem connection sounds, letting you know that the internet was only just (roughly) 2 minutes away. Or longer.
56k4life
I use Ivory for browsing Mastodon, and I’d bet that the app is more polished than any other first-party social media app.
The problem with Mastodon (and Lemmy to some extent) is that the onboarding process is not as straightforward, thus causing some friction for the less tech-savvy users.
Word! I feel active learning and feeding off one’s brain curiosity diminished for younger folx.
With that comes laziness to “set things up”. “OMG, it’s too complicated for me. I’m having a headache. I can’t, I just can’t.”
I mean, Reddit killed off ‘polished UX’ and that’s what drove me here. All the great 3PAs are on the Fediverse, after all!
Couldn’t agree more
We are used to Comfort and once you are used to it (or even never experienced else) its hard to lay it off for other benefits
Woah now, who said people over 30 are old? 😮
Anyway, your average internet user in 2023 wants to sign in to a platform with ease (preferably using one tap sign in with their Facebook/Google/whatever account).
They also want that one platform to have everything, in an easy to access and digest format, without having to learn complex rules about how a system works.
The days of needing to understand a bunch of stuff to use the latest social media service are gone, and if we build a website/service that requires us to know and understand more complex stuff, and add more barriers to entry, and MOST IMPORTANTLY if we split it up in to a thousand little corners instead of having it all in one place? People will shy away.
Another issue is consistency. People, myself included, want consistency and accountability. I want the people running the platform to be publicly known figures/companies that are accountable for the platform and how they run it, but with this fediverse stuff, it can be run by any anonymous person, who could be doing anything with the private data in our account back ends. And that could be the case hundreds of times over, with all sorts of groups, from all around the world.
There’s no accountability, no way to ensure they’re meeting requirements of our laws. It’s all very untrustworthy and wild west.
That’s fine for some people, but the majority of normal users? They want security, they want safety, they want simple ease of use.
(preferably using one tap sign in with their Facebook/Google/whatever account).
Kbin can actually do this, so no reason why Lemmy couldn’t
Hmm, not sure. But I’m in my 20s and I love to advocate for privacy and decentralization.
There just needs to be automatic instance assignment for new users with registration time opt-out for those who want to choose. Pick whichever one is the most populated. If that’s down at that particular moment in time, pick the next most populated and so on. Take the instance picking out of the equation for people who don’t care about that. People who do care can still pick their own.
That being said, it’s difficult to grow a new website in general unless it’s already got established backing from other source (i.e. a large corporation, celebrity, etc.), It’s not like old days in the 90s when there were far fewer websites in general.
Most populated? That would slow them down. join-lemmy.org already discourages instances above a certain size threshold.
Older? It seems the general lemmy population is in their early 20s.
*looks at self*:
- 40
- nerd
- chief amongst my nerddoms being tech
I feel both insulted and understood at the same time
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.
Even as a crypto enthusiast, the web3 movement smelled like VC manure being dumped on a field hoping something grows.
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.
My 15 yo ass
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. 😎
Maybe I’m am outlier but I’m 21 and here.
Same. And I’m also not a Linux user, I’m a Windows normie. Though I definitely do work in tech.
- ~30 years old or older
- tech enthusiasts/workers
- linux users
- hates Elon Musk
- hates capitalism
- loves free software but somehow hates free markets
Currently interning as software engineer and typing this from a Linux machine. I’m Gen Z though.
Old tech nerd here. Is this the meeting spot?
