this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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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?

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[–] Hikiru@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

im 16. probably in the 0.1% of fediverse users. i dont really use mastodon though, too boring for me

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

I tick all those boxes 😂

[–] potkulautapaprika@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago
[–] MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months 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. 😎

[–] khoi@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 years ago

Hmm, not sure. But I’m in my 20s and I love to advocate for privacy and decentralization.

[–] Grant_M@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago
[–] Yaztromo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] erik1984@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

There is natural overlap in ideology between the fediverse and FOSS (Free and Open Source Software so including Linux). The same principles apply like building something together without big corporations*. But that does lead to a rather narrow demography I'm afraid.

* I know a lot of big corporations ARE involved in the Linux kernel but I'm talking about the various distros in case of Linux.

[–] Jackthelad@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I've literally just signed up because of the Reddit policy changes killing off third-party apps, and I'm already confused by some of the conversations on here about the "fediverse" and some stuff about Threads and EEE (whatever that is).

I'm just like, I wanted an alternative to Reddit, what the hell is all this? 😂 Even signing up to this was confusing and I consider myself more tech-savvy than most. I think the process needs to be made simpler to encourage more ex-redditors to sign up.

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[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Buy hearing aids

Edit: Sorry, thought this was the Bing.

[–] jere344@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

As long as it has enough shitpost it will attract young people. We need to shitpost more.

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[–] jamms@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

I feel seen by this post.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

All true for me... except I haven't booted into my Linux install in literal months.

[–] gruf@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

have been around on mastodon for years (was one of the first few thousands accounts). it really depends where you look. i'm under 30 and the majority of people i see + interact with are under 30 too.

the "professionals" side of mastodon absolutely does skew more to that age range, but the more shitposty social groups skew way younger, and with a lot of them existing on other instances.

lemmy also has a mix and again depends where you look.

tl;dr i'm not sure i'd totally agree with that 90% statistic

[–] LordShrek@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

27yo tech enthusiast and worker and linux user here

[–] zerkrazus@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Razzmadazz@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

What you calling me out like this for?

[–] mcepl@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Every new technology is first used by this kind of people (not sure about the age), it is for now just to us to extend the area covered by various communities to non-techie areas. I hope to start with participating in !fanfiction@lemmy.ml and !hpfanfiction@lemmy.world which are hopefully far enough from the usual techie crowd.

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