Fediverse

Definitely the server federation thing is overwhelming. I don't even know what that is. I was told Lemmy.world is the alternative Reddit.

Absolutely It's really nice how this affects the tech related serious communities but damn is it heartbreaking how bad the memes here are

Closest I’ve felt to BBS since, well, BBS.

Speaking as a 23 year old windows user (though one that want to move to Linux eventually), the only one of those that I am is a tech enthusiast. From what I've hear Reddit started the same way, tech enthusiasts built it up and then everyone else noticed how good it was getting and moved in.

It is obviously. Just look at what Lemmy and Mastadon are. The whole concept of the fediverse is trying to get back to old school, smaller and less controlled services like message boards, IRC, etc.

Most younger, less tech savvy people don’t care about those principles. They just want a cool place with a bunch of people.

Hopefully the balance will shift a little bit to get more diversity and more users in general. In the last few days, stability issues and lack of content have lowered my engagement. It’s early days still though, so hopefully the people developing and hosting these sites keep plugging away and more people come to make it worthwhile.

Older than 30 nope, tech enthusiast yes, Linux user sort of, because my self-hosting servers run Linux but my personal daily driver is Windows. Windows native art programs have a lot of responsiveness problems and other random issues when running on Linux, and it's annoying to have to boot up a separate OS to use specific programs.

Taking the extremely tech-unsavvy fanartist community as a reference, it's not that federation and choosing a server is that difficult, that's just a lame excuse. Their usual social media platforms do UI redesigns, A/B testing and introduce weird limitations all the time. They just learn to cope with it.

People who don't care about tech don't think about the websites they use at all. In their minds, websites are just omnipresent things that exist naturally, like the sun. They only care about whether the website is able to connect them to their friends and showcase their posts to other people. They will only pay attention to the website if it introduces a change that affects their daily usage of it negatively, just like how people don't consciously think about the sun unless it inconveniences them.

I don't mind a monoculture if it keeps morons away, that's a price worth paying. The reason I started using Reddit in 2009 was to escape the comment section of YouTube. Erik from Internet Comment Etiquette has been doing sterling work educating the Mongol Hoardes but they're still not ready.

I am younger than that demographic and not the most techy person, so maybe not exclusively. But yes, in my experience with Lemmy and Mastodon that is the trend.

My take today after observing for some weeks, is that Lemmy fills all MY needs. Reddit will probably not die. Threads seems to be a hit.

I just don’t care enough. Yeah, I wish everyone stopped using Reddit and Meta apps, but Lemmy is certainly not ready for 500 million new users right now anyway, and if they were, moderation would just be hell again.

I haven’t used Reddit since Apollo shut down unless it’s the only place still I can get in touch with some business, and I’ve blocked Threads on my network and devices.

I’m very happy with this. It would be nice if some cool, open source, free, tolerant and loving network would pop up to save 14-18 year olds and our next generation from manipulative commercial SoMe, but honestly Lemmy would probably never be that.

My only concern currently is that lemmy.world want to allow Threads for the time being while I see absolutely nothing to be gained from that.

Its the BBS era come again.

I'm over 30, but I'm tech stupid compared to everyone else here, but I can follow, and understand the jist ftmp of the conversation. Not my area of expertise. I grown up with the internet though obviously so I do know my way around.

If anything i'm probably just more open to new experiences than the average person, and I like learning stuff.

But in general I agree with your observations, and it seems natural for early adopters of a platform.

Hasnt internet started like that?

43 here. IT consultant. Have been on every social media platform since Myspace all the way back to Usenet if you want to consider that social media which is what is basically was. On the major platforms these days, I mostly lurk and DM with fam and friends along with small Discord groups. Since joining the fediverse, and more specifically Lemmy, I've been much more active commenting and posting then I've been in years. I actively encourage friends and fam to join, but the fact is the fediverse is young and isn't as user friendly. It has to reach a critical mass of ease of use and user adoption which is what's being driven up right now like all other platforms before it. The more people join, the more it will be streamlined, feeding back to usability so more people discover and join, etc. etc. This is how all platforms evolved except in the case of the fediverse, it isn't controlled by a single entity which has its pluses and minuses. I don't expect MetaThreadBook, Reddit, Twitter, et al to go anywhere anytime soon, but diversification and competition is always good. If we can reach critical mass with the fediverse, it will provide a good check against these monopolistic entities and hopefully result in better overall communities and interactions.

Older tech nerdsn are the pioneers of new and open technologies like fediverse and smolnet, because they are smart enough and care enough about technological principles/philosophies to use them. As the services grow they begin to reach a phase where it attracts reactionary people who are looking actively for alternatives to mainstream services ru n by corporations. This tends to be fanatical people who think capitalism/global economic system bad, or the very vocally queer. Then if it manages to grow even further, say from an exodus of users from a competing service, the normal people finally come and attract more normal people with far more varying discussion interest besides conputer technogy, spewing debates on political/economic ideas, and being gay.

More demographics will come, it takes time. That and people who are willing to break from the habits of flocking to the next big corporation built social media network for something smaller, but more meaningful.

This is the big downside to the Reddit implosion. I liked that Reddit had finally attracted normal people. If I want to know what a 30 year old dweeby white guy thinks about stuff, I’ll ask myself.

It takes a while for stuff like this to catch on outside of this specific demographic.

People who don’t care as much about tech aren’t going to bother to figure out the fediverse right now. It’s way too confusing, but Instagram/twitter/threads/reddit is right there.

Once a few apps get going on iOS and Android, and once it becomes way easier to join a server, then we’ll see normal people start trickling in.

From what I see on Local we are

Trans Old Young Gay Straight Nerds Furries Porno addicts

Saw a couple polls over on Mastodon about just this thing and it was very much skewed to people 35+. It's no a platform the youths are on, but that can change as the fediverse gets some traction and works on that on-boarding experience.

I'd rather agree about mastadon, but not about Lemmy. I've seen people from (I assume) ~20 up to 40+. For example, I'm around 27 and I have few friends who were using Lemmy for almost a year now, they're in their early 20s.

But yes it's mostly nerds.