A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
This is a constant cycle.
Tech nerds invent new technology/platform>nerds flock to new thing>the masses hear about it and start flooding it>money notices a large user base that isn't being complete wrung out for money>money destroys the new thing by making it unusable for profit>repeat
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.
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.
I feel the two big reasons are:
The average user of a site like Reddit probably hasn't noticed any significant changes; or if they have, they just don't see them as a problem. So they don't have any significant incentive to emigrate to another site. On the other hand, people who are tech-savvy notice the changes; and decide they need to move.
To a lot of people, the Fediverse is just not as convenient as centralized sites. People who are more tech-savvy and/or use Linux, are willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience in exchange for using a site they see as better.
It's also worth keeping in mind that right now, the Fediverse is still in its early days. Every site in its early days generally has a broadly similar userbase- people who are familiar with technology and willing to put up with some inconvenience because they see the potential.
*looks at self*:
I feel both insulted and understood at the same time
Older? It seems the general lemmy population is in their early 20s.
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.
Trash culture, TikTok and the likes. The gen z folx I know don't seem to prioritize privacy and quality content. Some know it and don't seem to care even after getting hacked/scammed.
Living vicariously through influencers, likes, and whatnot. Being cool, blending in...
My 15 yo ass
Because ipad kids are happy with instagram,tiktok and other shit and doesn't give a fuck about privacy.
I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away?
One aspect is that federation is definitely a bit harder to wrap your head around technically.
But I think another large contributor is the fact that culturally, the zoomers never really grew up with things like independent forums. I'm 33 and back in t the day it was very common for me to be signed up to many different forums for my different interests. Over time, I've seen the centralization of those communities, forums shut down and centralized services like Reddit, and lately Discord took their place.
I remember a time when the internet wasn't solely controlled by a handful of organisations, I can see the value in federated systems.
But someone who only knows centralized services and walled gardens is likely to fear the wild, or at least won't value it as much.
//edit: Another thing to keep in mind, is that it's just very common for this demographic to be early adopters for tech products and platforms.
I remember when Twitter started, and a large part of its early user base was people in their 30s or older who were very into tech, or journalists. The reason I started using Twitter towards the end of the 2000s was because most of the podcast hosts and regular contributors on the TWiT network were using it.
Seems to me that if you want to launch a social media platform, your early adopters are either guys who are into tech and in their 30s and 40s or teenage girls.
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.
Yep, that’s definitely me…
I think it’s really more about being an “early adopter” to something rather than following the mainstream. Tech enthusiasts tend to have more patience with minor inconveniences that come along with new technologies.
The average users will show up when their friends start using it and talk about it more. I still have people in my everyday life that don’t understand and don’t use Reddit, no chance they’ve even heard of the fediverse.
Reddit began in a similar fashion, so its a positive trait for sure
● under 30
● i mean im getting there in terms of tech interests
● Yeah ok i use linux
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:
=> give it a few more years and get your friends, family & collegues on here and see the fediverse grow
Old tech nerd here. Is this the meeting spot?
27yo tech enthusiast and worker and linux user here
The fediverse is mostly full of FOSS enthusiasts, which happens to heavily include linux users.
That's what attracted me to the fediverse in the first place, all the linux people.
The old people are people who grew up before Facebook and corporate social media, as such have no loyalty to said platforms.
There's always a group on the forefront, it makes sense that it's tech interested people Fediverse being based on open source software and all about sharing means it's right p Linux user's alley.
The 30+ demographic not sure, maybe just people a bit grown up and now under as much peer pressure to be on the more popular corporate platforms.
To answer your question, for the non-tech-savvy having to pick a server is, yes, too much of a leap. We are conditioned in the industrialized capitalist world against making decisions we don't understand.
If we want to market it, we could make a wizard that randomly designates a server from a set of cooperating servers. Include also reminders that a user can join multiple servers and each one has separate rules (say, regarding posting NSFW material even to appropriate communities.)
I just talked to a Redditor who was entirely unfamiliar with the recent changes at Reddit.
I just joined and I suspect that you're correct: there's an overall learning curve. No snarky tone intended, but explaining decentralization to those who would likely struggle with grasping the basic client/server model is going to be challenge.
Shoot, I've got 10 years pentesting and R&D under my belt and it took me a while to weigh the pros and cons of creating an account on a public instance or self-hosting. (Will self-host eventually...enjoying a test drive.)