The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:
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~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?
If I wasn’t a tech nerd I would have given up on signing up for Mastodon and Lemmy. There is a lot of focus on how instances work and it seems a bit overwhelming. I had a lot of internal, ‘what if I make the wrong choice’, or ‘how can I move if I don’t like the community’ type questions. So being the nerd I am I researched the crap out of it and overwhelmed myself and said fuck it and just chose the popular instances since I know that I can move at a later date.
I personally think this format is favored by a lot of the demographic you mentioned. Most of us, I am generalizing here, grew up being active members in bulletin board systems. Then Reddit came along basically murdered the BB, but there was a good community to interact with. Now Reddit is basically unusable in my opinion because the community doesn’t care about the content or the people behind the screen. That brings us here. We learned so much of our trade, laughed a lot, and made real friendships on these types of system and it is a place a lot of us feel comfortable.
100% this
I’m a tech nerd and software engineer and even I struggled to figure out how to signup. Most people I know just want something that works. And those things tend to be centralized because of ease of use. The Fediverse isn’t easy to use, and makes the user make major decisions before even signing up or understanding the tech.
Eventually there should probably be account migration and a somewhat “central” account management instance that most users are on, with the option to migrate their user to other instances.
Yep. Certified non-tech nerd here. And not quite 30, either.
I was awfully close to not figuring out Lemmy enough to make an account and participate.
I still don’t understand exactly what’s going on, but I can confirm that my first time visiting was extremely confusing. So many terms I was completely unfamiliar with, and no clear way for me to jump in easily (like you were describing with having to make important decisions before signing up/understanding). Truly the only reason I ended up successfully making it here was that I saw a post on the instance I ended up joining, welcoming reddit refugees so I figured - well, I guess I could try this one. And that was after I had searched around online to figure out what the heck the fediverse, instances, etc, were.
The barrier to entry is really high for those of us with little to no tech knowledge. And I was really motivated, I reeeeally wanted to commit to leaving reddit. I imagine those who are considering joining but aren’t quite as motivated just won’t make it. :(
I’ve been in tech for 25 years and it still took me a day or two to figure it out after I made a account. So no worries, you’re in good company 🙂
My experience was exactly like you describe, I see we even ended up using the same instance. Only reason I chose this one was because it was the top option in the Memmy app.
A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.
With federation it’s ensured that any single instance is only a small part of the whole, and that if any instance goes down (or worse, goes rogue and becomes a bad actor) then the impact of that is minimised. All users being registered on a single instance is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket.
I do totally understand from the perspective of new users that it’s hard to understand what to do or how to do it but that is a problem that could be better addressed with clearer onboarding. e.g “Choose any one of these recommended instances to sign up. It doesn’t matter which - you’ll be able to see the same content and communities across all of Lemmy no matter which you pick”*
*mostly, but close enough
To be honest, I’m still not sold on federation, and that’s going to be a huge hurdle to overcome with the general public.
I think its the only way to not be completely dependent on some single entity.
So far we have seen all of them go bad with time. At least with federation, you and me can talk with no corporation in the middle, which brings me back to the lovely feeling of the 90’s with BBS’s and forums. Before the corps took over and put ads everywhere, and basically took the world hostage.
If something big happens, ordinary people need to be able to talk without censorship. And its going to be very hard to censor a distributed network like Lemmy.
Choosing an instance is no more confusing than choosing an email provider. I signed up on several right away. I figured I’d stick with the one I liked best, but since they all run the same software it makes little difference. One instance lost its domain, another is constantly being DOSed. Otherwise it’s simple.
I’m not a tech nerd and still managed to figure it out. I can tell when something starts to suck and reddit did just that.
maybe we should stop calling them instances and start calling them proxies?
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.