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?

  • PixelProfEnglish
    111·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, I think framing it similar to the old days might help, but I could be wrong. Like, you aren’t signing up for (just to web-equivalent) PHP Fusion or something, you’re signing up for your gaming clan’s forum, or your roleplay group, or your Canadian phreak BB. The difference with Lemmy is just that you also indirectly sign up to receive content from a lot of other places using the same protocol.

    IMO, I think the framing/abstraction will make or break the future of the paradigm for mainstream consumption. Not to get into another repeat of the EEE discussion, but assuming nothing nefarious from something like Threads, that would mean people start an account there and then find a niche group with their friends to go hang out on instead.

    I also have to push back against the pushback against the paradigm going mainstream, because again IMO a move back toward decentralized platforms is really important for the future of the internet and quite frankly the global economy.

    Just editing to expand, but I think maybe there’s a problem in framing Lemmy or Mastodon as communities in themselves, because it really conflicts with the model of instancing and email that is being used to describe them.

    • PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Best analogy I keep coming back to is an instance is like a PHP forum where it can talk to and display other forums.

      • IonAddis@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        That’s how I framed it to a fandom friend.

        I said… imagine back to when there were the two main fourms for our favorite author? Now imagine if you could sign up as a user for one… but the forums can talk to one another so you can post on the other too, but your username will reflect the domain of the one you made your username on.

        And defederation is when the two factions of fandom get into some fandom drama and decide not to let members of the other board talk to them anymore, lol.

        It’s like one part forum, one part irc with distinct chat rooms around a topic, and one part signing up for a new email address, where the place you do it becomes part of your email address.