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?

  • @cthellisEnglish
    16•1 year ago

    “Exclusively?” No. But obviously its initial appeal was to the more tech-savvy and FOSS-centric sort, and it’s byzantine enough to jump in that it dissuades many newcomers who try.

    But ActivityPub does seem to look like it will pull in larger services (like Threads) so in the end “protocols over platforms” may win out by default, sorts like WebKit/Blink/Chromium has. Not everyone gonna use Brave or Opera, but the mass of Chrome users will still feed back in some fashion.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•1 year ago

      it’s byzantine enough to jump in that it dissuades many newcomers who try.

      Hard disagree, it was confusing when it was first explained to me, but in practice only a few more clicks were added to the account creation process.

      • @cthellisEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I’m in IT and work with normies all day, the number of people to whom even just that will flummox and they’ll just not bother is frankly overwhelming. 😝