Does it feel like the fediverse is exclusively used by older tech nerds?
Does it feel like the fediverse is exclusively used by older tech nerds?
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?
Younger folks have been raised on apps and other polished devices with oodles of effort put into UX design.
Older folks grew up learning DOS commands, memorizing the IRQ of their sound card, and other clunky shenanigans.
In their current state Lemmy, Mastodon and other services are too complicated for most young folks to bother with. Not all, but most, especially the filthy casuals.
My take on this is not that this is the default early adopter demographic (bereal, TikTok, etc…cmon old dudes don’t act like we are “leading the charge”). But, there’s a good chunk of older tech oriented folks that see a glimmer of hope in the fediverse bringing back some bits of the “old web” imo.
While most of the people like me don’t love meta or Twitter it was kinda good enough, but Reddit was kind of a last straw. I was there when all these companies were born and at the time we were all teen and 20-something early adopters (believe it or not even Facebook used to be cool!) and we’ve watched them all slowly degrade. Very young folks prob don’t care as they don’t really use any of these services, but us old nerds want to avoid the pitfalls of the Web 2.0 era.
Web3 and the crypto-decentralization efforts were really ham fisted…I think most experienced techies saw through all the BS and recognized how wildly inefficient it all was, not to mention outright scammy in many cases. Fediverse is unproven but I think it has potential, and I think many of us older techies feel that way.
aka: early tech adopters!
these folk are always the ones trying new things, especially anti-corporate things. They aren't keeping people away. this is just how the bleeding edge of new technology. The communities natural grow out over time as more people show up and start to outnumber them. But it's thanks to them that niche new stuff gets supported in the first place while it builds up it's audience (and reduces the friction to joining)
I'm new here, and new to federated applications (and fit OP's description perfectly). This federated stuff is going to remain niche unless somebody figures out a way to make it approachable.
Reddit first time:
> open app > choose some things I like > see all the thingsLemmy first time:
> open app > ????? > google how to use it > choose a... server? > ?????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.
I'm Gen Z, don't use Linux, don't know the first thing about programming (I know how to use file explorer though), and never intend to learn, and I'm here because I don't wanna use the official Reddit app and because I'm convinced that the Fediverse is likely to become big in the future and I wanna be able to say I was here when it all began.
That profile is very much the early adopters of any new platform or technology. If you described the early users of the internet as a whole, it would be very similar.
I don't think anything particular is keeping other users away, it's early. We need evangelist, I suspect that most normies don't even know the fediverse exists, let alone are considering using it.
We just need to continue to grow the reach of the fediverse, don't give up if it seems a bit bare and give everyone else a reason to join us
Oh yea. One additional demographic too--super excited young people. It's large.
It's just early-adopter types so far. We're not exactly what I would call a "major service" yet.
I don't want to stereotype anyone, but in my own social experience, younger groups don't give a shit about corporate monopolies or privacy, they just want things to work fast and automatically (ex: TikTok). And those I know in older brackets are still on Facebook and complaining that they don't want to deal with change because their family/business/workflow would be affected.
I happen to be 38, a linux user, and a gamer. And I concur that my age-group has just always seemed to be more open to new technologies for some reason.
Is picking a server/federation too complicated?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Literally the single biggest problem with fediverse adoption, brought up in every discussion about migrating to it. It will never replace centralized sites as long as it remains confusing and complicated.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LemmyMigration/comments/145epgc/looking_for_a_lemmy_website_try_lemmyworld/
These are the people who make everything work. After they get it all setup and working, the kids will come flooding in, don’t you worry
I perfectly fit the described persona.
I think whoever is here now cares about the federation/open source. If you don't care about this why would you be here instead of reddit with more active communities? You need active communities to make people that only care about the content to switch.
I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away?
One aspect is that federation is definitely a bit harder to wrap your head around technically.
But I think another large contributor is the fact that culturally, the zoomers never really grew up with things like independent forums. I'm 33 and back in t the day it was very common for me to be signed up to many different forums for my different interests. Over time, I've seen the centralization of those communities, forums shut down and centralized services like Reddit, and lately Discord took their place.
I remember a time when the internet wasn't solely controlled by a handful of organisations, I can see the value in federated systems. But someone who only knows centralized services and walled gardens is likely to fear the wild, or at least won't value it as much.//edit: Another thing to keep in mind, is that it's just very common for this demographic to be early adopters for tech products and platforms. I remember when Twitter started, and a large part of its early user base was people in their 30s or older who were very into tech, or journalists. The reason I started using Twitter towards the end of the 2000s was because most of the podcast hosts and regular contributors on the TWiT network were using it.
Seems to me that if you want to launch a social media platform, your early adopters are either guys who are into tech and in their 30s and 40s or teenage girls.That always happens when a new platform is born.
Tech/nerds are always the ones moving first because they don't mind the quirks, they're not scared of bugs or instabilities.
They start building up communities until the platform is ready for the rest of the people, it was the same for reddit, tho it happened so many years ago the new people wouldn't even know about it.
I think so. I think younger users trust official branded apps a lot more so actually see the Reddit app as safer. Despite how easy tech people think lemmy and mastodon are, picking a server just isn't a feature to non-tech people - it's an obstacle to getting started.
The lack of content is a problem, but the lack of community feeling is the actual offputting part. Having bots repost things from Reddit kills the organic feeling of interacting with another user.
I'll probably be flamed but I do think having such a homogeneous userbase is negative. It means you don't get a wide array of experiences and viewpoints. People bang on about echo chambers online, but if you are in a club full of old white guys then you're in one!
I'd like think we can make these platforms as welcoming for everyone of all backgrounds, genders, etc, but there's just some things we can't understand without having those viewpoints being represented.
No wonder I feel at home.
I also fit that description. I find it to be more true of Lemmy than Mastodon, but the same thing was true of Reddit's early userbase. If anything, it was more extreme; the first people to find Reddit were lisp programmers, which is a couple orders of magnitude more nerdy than Linux users.
Lemmy is used by tech nerds right now because that's who the early adopters are for any new tech that doesn't aggressively target mainstream users with a big marketing budget. Much like Reddit did, the way to attract mainstream users here is to grow communities relevant to their interests. If you're reading this and you have interests that aren't tech, you can help. Join or create a community about it, post original content there either exclusively or before anywhere else.
Of course there's some UX work to do on Lemmy itself. That's to be expected with a software version starting with 0. I don't think federation is inherently too hard for mainstream users to understand assuming they've seen email. An onboarding experience that picks a server for them from a list of defaults would probably help - some apps do that, but join-lemmy.org doesn't.
Early adopters of almost anything tend to be niche. These Threadiverse sites are looking to pick up where pseudo-message boards like Digg and Reddit left off without being extremist havens like Voat and other bullshit. So let's look at who the early adopters of those sites were. Because... They're not that dissimilar to the demographics that you're describing. Reddit didn't start out as the kind of place that just anyone went to. It tended to be tech heads in their mid-twenties or older, gamers, and chronically online people. They tended heavily to be male. And there tended to be some... Really unfortunate widely-shared opinions.
As Reddit grew, it changed. But it took time. It took there being content on Reddit to appeal to a wider set of people. And that's going to be the case here. It needs to reach a first sustainable mass where enough content is being created to engage and keep the users who first joined it. But that userbase is going to be rather similar. There are always going to be subgroups that are different, but for the most part, the same kinds of people are going to be the early adopters. Creating a breadth of content that will appeal to more and attract a wider variety of users over time will help people feel more comfortable with it.
And, yes. The Fediverse is kind of weird to most people. I was in an argument the other day where someone was insisting that saying you saw something on Limmy or KBin was wrong, you saw it on the Fediverse, and could everyone just stop being wrong please. That kind of pedantic culture is only going to make adoption even slower than it already is. Because most people, they like to go to a site and create a login to look at that content. The Fediverse isn't really that complicated, but it takes a little jump in how you think about websites to go from something like Twitter or Facebook to something like Lemmy or Mastadon. But people were kind of confused about the leap from message boards to social media like MySpace and Facebook as first too. They came around. It took time. It took exposure to the content. It took people using it and sharing it.
So, yes. The Fediverse is mostly a monoculture right now, focused on the people most likely to make the most of out it: Tech heads with some time on their hands for hobbies. The kind of people who either might make their own Fediverse instance or who would know the people that would. Those tech heads aren't exclusively Linux users, they're not exclusively over the age of thirty, and tech heads aren't exclusively the user base, but yes, we're going to start out seeing an imbalance. That's normal. That's to be expected. What's going to be concerning is if five years from now we have the same or a worse imbalance. That will mean that the Fediverse is stagnant or shrinking instead of growing. That will be a time to rethink some strategies for sure. But for right now, all we can do is be active, share the site with other people, and try to get it to spread to more diverse demographics.
I'm actually a 15 year old, but I still use the fediverse
Will then, I found my people.
I don't think that the fediverse is exclusively used by "older tech nerds", but as someone who matches all three points you mentioned... I must say, you're still a good observer. XD
But it's logical. The more experienced tech crowd is the starting point of it. They are the ones not only able to see the flaws of corporate platforms and complain about it, but also with the technical skillset to just say "Fuck this, we make our own.". If you're not into computer stuff, you simply won't be able to create and maintain an alternative. And it also takes at least a little bit of both life- and coding / web / tech experience to get to that point, so the age is also a given, at least for the initiators. Younger folks may like what's happening and be joining in. And Linux runs the web. It dominates the server space, so the people who are working with it might also use it in their private life. Some others simply enjoy their OS and software not being bloated corporate spyware for the advertisement industry. So they are attracted early as well.
Don't worry though. "Older tech nerds" are regular people, too - with other hobbies and preferences, things, pets and people in their life. So the nature of the fediverse is... community. People stuff. And that is fully compatible with other demographics. If they have enough of the likes of Reddit and Meta, they will find a compatible alternative here for their needs. But that doesn't mean the fediverse has to replace those big tech platforms. People have choice, you know. And things can coexist. I'm perfectly fine with the size of Lemmy's community. Reddit refugees are highly welcome, but I don't worry about the user count, as long as there is a reasonable amount of interaction.
Yes, that's how I know it has legs.
From usenet to reddit, the internet spaces that began by attracting a critical mass of internet/tech experts and enthusiasts are always the ones that end up going the distance.
You don't want to rush this place going mainstream, I promise. Enjoy it while it lasts.
That was once true of reddit. If this is going to be a successful model it will diversify over time
It was the same for reddit in the early days
Yep, that’s definitely me…
I think it’s really more about being an “early adopter” to something rather than following the mainstream. Tech enthusiasts tend to have more patience with minor inconveniences that come along with new technologies.
The average users will show up when their friends start using it and talk about it more. I still have people in my everyday life that don’t understand and don’t use Reddit, no chance they’ve even heard of the fediverse.
This is just confirmation that I've found my people
We're the generation that used forums all over the internet, Digg, and then reddit before it was cool. Now that reddit is going nuclear, we're all looking for our new home because we yearn for the internet we all grew up with as it slowly erodes away thanks to millionaires/billionaires ruining all that is good to make a buck.
IMO, most likely boils down to a few things:
-Lack of awareness, because the reddit protest was more of a vocal minority than a lot of people realized. For the mainstream crowd, even if people were upset, they didn't care enough to actively search for an alternative. Even if they did, there were instantly a bunch of small team projects trying to bank on striking gold the way Reddit did when digg failed. This meant that support was splintered across multiple platforms and there was no post that even hit the majority of front pages or r/all that said "okay everyone, we're all going to lemmy.world" or any other alternative.
-General confusion around the tech\platform and how it works. While it may seem to tech people that it isn't any worse than any other site, just the concept of "picking a server" is a barrier to entry that makes a mainstream person think "oh I have to do research, maybe I'll do this later." I don't know if this has been fixed yet, but as of a couple weeks ago there was some techy syntax to be able to properly link to content from outside servers properly if you'd viewed it and copied the link via your server.
-Older tech focused people tend to have self selected for caring about technical issues and searching for solutions to the issues they encounter. They tend to want control over their technology, and have it be open source or decentralized. The confusing nature of the fediverse is a lower barrier to entry for them.
-Performance. Performance was fairly poor at the critical moment when the apps got shut off, even if it's improved now.
-User friendly dedicated apps that didn't have a barrier to entry, like a warning that it was "early access" and granted devs special access to user data to help develop the app, were not available.
-Content. Because of all the aforementioned, there's just not the user base and content yet to populate all the communities people want with enough fresh dopamine drip to grab all the mainstream lurkers. If Lemmy continues to grow and attract quality content though, there will eventually be a critical mass, because people usually go to what's the new hip place after the early adopters have paved the way. Once you start getting a sizeable chunk of teenagers here and they start telling their friends "have you heard of Lemmy? It has less of that lame boomer crap" then you'll see mass adoption. Alternatively, if the older tech folks end up just posting things that aren't seen as hip\cool, that moment may not come.
510 comments. I think you hit a nerve 😆
Am I too young? My age is 19-22. Oh now I think about it, there is no teenagers community. I feel old for being here.
As for tech enthusiast, maybe. I'm always impressed with open source software, but I don't understand coding.
Linux user? Well I played around with Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Tails, but at the end of the day, I still switched back to Windows just because how much they've dominated the world. It's hard to find programs for linux, especially games. Wine doesn't always work, Virtual Machine is just too much of performance degregation. Maybe Linux isn't meant for me.
What's keeping young people away is kids these days just like to use things that are already popular. iPhones, Nikes, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube. None of my classmates from high school know what Linux is, know about the Snowden leaks, think iPhones are the best because everyone else is using them (I'll admit, I fell victim to peer pressure and got an iPhone, but now I switched back to a Galaxy so I can install apps without a corporation approving it, and I gave the phone to family.), wants 200 dollar shoes, constantly on mainstream social media in class, disrespect teachers even the nice ones. I mean kids these days just don't care, they want to have fun with minimal effort, they aren't gonna spend 5 minutes to try to understand the fediverse.
Is picking a server/federation too complicated?
Apparently anything beyond filling out a registration form is too complicated for a lot of people. Heck, even that seems to be too much for some people, hence the popularity of login with Facebook or Google features. Personally I'm happy to be away from people who can't figure out simple concepts. But, I'm the exact person you described in your post, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tech enthusiasts have always been the early adopters. They're the ones who see the potential for a new platform and migrate to it first. Recall that the internet itself was just a thing for nerds for the longest time.
Somebody has to be first. It isn't going to be people who are only going to follow, it isn't going to be people who are going to leave when they realize that none of their favorite people are on there. Going to be people who have some kind of vested interest in trying this new and interesting thing.
As for the relatively older age, I hate to say it but a lot of kids think that technology is consumption. It's a big problem. In a recent shocking employer survey, employers talking about the lack of tech skills among gen z. This isn't an isolated data point, either. There's a lot of data suggesting that kids are growing up as experts on TikTok and Facebook rather than fundamental skills that would let you go out and do something like run a website.
There's a poll about the age of Mastodon users currently open... More than **34 000 ** voters until now! The results are interesting: more than 80% of users are 28 years old or more... More than 40% are more than 40 years old.
Is Mastodon the social network for grown up people?
TL;DR: it's just that the current state of the Fediverse is more attractive for that demographic than for most other people.
NTL;R: It's a damn complex subject but I'll try to simplify it.
Let's pretend for a moment that each user is a perfectly rational agent (they aren't, but it's a useful model). A perfectly rational agent will stay in the platform that offers him the most subjective value. And subjective value is tied to a bazillion of factors, among them:
- lots of content that the user wants to see, and it's easy to sort it out from things that he doesn't care about.
- lots of people whom he'd like to interact with, and it's easy to avoid people whom he'd rather would not.
- liking the interface and experience of the platform itself.
- the feeling that the platform is reliable, and won't suddenly stop working.
- agreement with the premises, goals, and values of the platform; etc.
Note that the weight of each of those factors changes from user to user, even among perfectly rational agents. For example, Alice might think "I'm fine with a shitty interface" (low weight for #3), while Bob might think "I can't stand an ugly platform" (high weight for #3).
Now, let's think about the differences between the Fediverse and "corporate media" in those points. For the first four factors, corporate media is clearly at an advantage, due to: network effect, network effect (again), age of the platform, and more money to throw at their user experience. For the fifth one, the Fediverse is at a big advantage, but only for users who care about open source and transparency.
And who cares about those things? Older, tech-savvier users, who are likely to also use Linux. For those, factor #5 weights so much that it compensates the cons of factors #1 to #4. But for the others, factor #5 is non-existent (they do benefit from the open nature of the Fediverse, but they don't weight it because they don't care about it).
That applies to the current state however. The Fediverse is growing, while Twitter and Reddit are enshittifying themselves; so over time there'll be less of a gap on the first four factors, promoting further migration to the Fediverse, even among people outside the demographic that OP narrowed down.
By the way, someone in Mastodon created a poll that confirms your "gut feeling" of most users being 30yo+.
Hey I'm a younger tech nerd
Ill take it as a compliment to be considered among such folks.
Lemmy is still in a niche stage. Perhaps needs more exposure to attain more groups of people. Not sure how you came across those stats but I'm glad that I'm surrounded by matured community of human beings.
21 yo software dev here, so not quite older, but I'd say I fit the tech nerd bill lmao
While a lot of people are conscious about the software they use, I think being involved in tech, either as a hobby or career, ups the chance that a person will care about things like user privacy, how an app is run, algorithms that might manipulate the user, or even how technologically literate the rest of the community is
And that isn't to be condescending towards people who are more apathetic about it. It's like how a doctor might be more behooved to eat healthy; when you've seen and studied what can go wrong, you're more compelled to avoid it
17 year old tech enthusiast here
Honestly, from all the Gen Z and younger kids I know in my life the big thing that's probably killing the fediverse is it's not a media-first platform.
Not a one of them really participates in text-primary social media, which is what Lemmy definitely is.
Mastodon supports it better, but there's so much gatekeeping around the "right way" to share media content that the few people I know that tried to use it just bounced off it because they couldn't figure out the technical and social aspects of how to interact, because it's just piles of conflicting opinions.
They will, however, spend an insane amount of time on TikTok or Youtube or Twitch or Instagram or Snapchat endlessly watching whatever comes up and scrolling along to the next thing or sending pictures/videos of whatever they're doing at that moment to their friends.
I'm a jeweler 🤷🏻♀️
Picking a server/federation is too complicated. Don't need to look elsewhere. For most people, a federation is a kind of country.
More importantly, there's not an easy way to get into this. You first need to learn what lemmy is, how it works (because nerds can't simply tell how you can do it, they need you to understand how it works first), and then where and how to register.
What's lemmy is done ok: it's reddit, but better.
How it works? People don't care. Most of you don't know quantum mechanics, yet that's what allows the cpu and gpu to work. You know how to plug it in a computer (maybe), and you know that hitting the power button starts the computer. That's what people need to know for lemmy. I'm not sure there's really an entry point for normal people with an adapted tutorial.
Which lead to this point: honestly, lemmy is not ready for most people. Accessibility just isn't there yet. It's not so much that it's hard to do any of the actions required. It's more that it is a jungle. You first need to choose a federation. And for that you need to understand what it is, because people who run lemmy servers won't tell to go on a default server. This is the first problem. People need a way to know where to go to get an account. They also need an app for most, which is not completely obvious.
I don't mean that things are badly made, just that the resources to enter lemmy are targeting a specific audience still.
That all it would take: an easily accessible place where it tells you to go on any lemmy webpage on the list, register, and how to get started with the feeds. What is there is close, but not yet good enough.
To answer your question, for the non-tech-savvy having to pick a server is, yes, too much of a leap. We are conditioned in the industrialized capitalist world against making decisions we don't understand.
If we want to market it, we could make a wizard that randomly designates a server from a set of cooperating servers. Include also reminders that a user can join multiple servers and each one has separate rules (say, regarding posting NSFW material even to appropriate communities.)
I just talked to a Redditor who was entirely unfamiliar with the recent changes at Reddit.
I've seen and even tried to run a few polls on age (mostly on mastodon and microblogs).
The age demographic of the fediverse definitely leans as you think ... on average ... Xennial tech/academia/nerd oriented. Not too sure linux users are too dominant though.
As for more diverse users? This isn't mainstream (yet?). There's a lot of inertia around the big-social era. It lasted for a long time relative to the history of the internet, ~2008-2022, ~14 years, which is nearly as long as the internet had been around for before then. So many are stuck in their ways and stuck on the idea that there's only one or two places to be online and they're on one of them, the "right place". I saw someone on twitter just yesterday say that they'll stay on twitter until it goes down and then never go anywhere else because they don't want to bother with another social media platform.
It seems that the idea of a monopolised internet is breaking apart and fracturing now, which is a good thing, but not completely good across the board. Where for instance should emergency information be broadcast? Previously I would have checked twitter before mastodon without blinking. Now, Lemmy might actually be pretty good for this (only realising this now as I write). So there's also a dimension of kinda believing in the big/monopolised social media. This is likely more prevalent amongst younger people, from whom, for example, I've heard ideas like that decentralisation is some weird tech-libertarian ideology and that the "town square" is actually a good thing and something that should be committed to. As far as anyone that has any commercial interest in their social media profile like businesses (both small and big!) or journalists, not being the town square, and the lack of apparent "engagement" and "virality" on the fediverse is definitely a turn off. And of course having those types on a platform naturally attracts others. All of which is not to mention that the decentralisation thing is something your average person just doesn't have the time or patience for and the insistence of some of the people on the fediverse that you should learn about it and that it isn't hard are off-putting to some.
In the end, we've reached a bit of an impasse it seems, where we've culturally outgrown the idea of an important service like our online existence being at the mercy of private corporate whims, but don't have a clear way out. Accepting that the internet is diverse and not monopolised may just take some time.
Where the fediverse comes in is that it gives you both a fractured and diverse social media space but also the ability to connect anything to anything with a standardised protocol. It's a powerful idea, just like that of the internet itself, and whether it's activity pub or some other standardised protocol, I hope it makes it.
What you calling me out like this for?
I feel the two big reasons are:
-
The average user of a site like Reddit probably hasn't noticed any significant changes; or if they have, they just don't see them as a problem. So they don't have any significant incentive to emigrate to another site. On the other hand, people who are tech-savvy notice the changes; and decide they need to move.
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To a lot of people, the Fediverse is just not as convenient as centralized sites. People who are more tech-savvy and/or use Linux, are willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience in exchange for using a site they see as better.
It's also worth keeping in mind that right now, the Fediverse is still in its early days. Every site in its early days generally has a broadly similar userbase- people who are familiar with technology and willing to put up with some inconvenience because they see the potential.
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Enjoy the benefits of having a higher barrier of entry while it lasts. /gen
I mean, if you started a social media club and there was a dearth of over-30s tech people, that would be a pretty telling thing wouldn't it?
The whole if you see a bomb technician running, you better run thing.
I also fit the description. I wonder if I see the internet differently having grown up pre Web 2.0. With tech corporations cracking down on user freedoms, I can't imagine jumping ship, say from Twitter to Meta, and expecting to be treated any differently.
As a nerd, I'll use a platform that works the way I want, even before the content is there. Hopefully as the amount of content grows it gets more diverse and normies will take interest.
"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.
As for the ages here, the people most likely to migrate are the long term Reddit users that have had an account using third party apps since 2010 or so (because younger people have only ever known the official app). That self selects for anyone that was old enough to use Reddit in 2010 back when the user base was mostly high school / college / recent college grads. Someone in their late teens / early 20s back then will be in their 30s now.
"Hey just fyi, I post all this stuff first on my site at noschool.angelfire.com, but i realize people are all here on Xanga now, so I copy it here too. Anyways:
These lemmy users are really making me stress about my age, as if my back pain wasn't enough. I guess I just need to accept it. I have too much going on to be worried about that anyways, i still need to get the rest of those songs downloaded for the mix cd. Kazaa is taking forever to download, but soulseek is ZOOMING at 300kbps, so there's that. Once i get my domain and stuff set up, and my blog system going with Greymatter, let me know if you want to use one of my subdomains for your blog. Anyways i'll be on aim later if anyone is bored."
I just joined and I suspect that you're correct: there's an overall learning curve. No snarky tone intended, but explaining decentralization to those who would likely struggle with grasping the basic client/server model is going to be challenge.
Shoot, I've got 10 years pentesting and R&D under my belt and it took me a while to weigh the pros and cons of creating an account on a public instance or self-hosting. (Will self-host eventually...enjoying a test drive.)
I don't think there's much keeping users outside that demographic away, more so that the fediverse is a tech solution to the reddit problem, so naturally the people that flock to lemmy are the type of person that looks for tech solutions to the problems they experience in daily life.
My mother just had her illegal IPTV streaming box stop working recently, was her solution to find an alternative? No, she simply stopped watching her shows and did other things instead, and complained about it. And that's with full denial of service, not just limited/compromised service like reddit users currently experience.
It wasn't until her tech-savvy nerd son set up another IPTV box for her that she was able to resume consuming the content she wanted to, and similarly lemmy won't really take off until it reaches a critical mass where enough tech-savvy nerds have shown regular people Lemmy as the tech solution to the problem they're facing. What's holding up progress with that at the moment is that the reddit problem for most people isn't significant enough for a regular person to be in a position to do anything about it, even if they are directly inconvenienced.
13 year old Linux tech enthusiast here.
I left Reddit because I like browsing on my phone while pooping. They took that away from me.
If YouTube forces me to remove AdBlock, I'll leave that too. And if Windows 11 forces me to create a Microsoft account then I'm moving to Linux.
But yes I'm 39, I run a tech repair shop, but I'm not on Linux... Yet.
FB was only for college kids, now it's for your grandparents.
Absolutely tick those boxes. And it makes perfect sense.
I'm a younger tech nerd, but I do use linux.
I'm 24 and while I do use Linux, I'm nowhere close to an expert user, so idk what to tell you man, other than fuck spez and fuck Reddit I guess.
am teenager
I mostly fit that description. While I understand what you're saying, we all have other interests on top of this. That's what makes it diverse.
Personally, I feel like a more mature audience is needed. I have never liked the feel of places like Facebook, tiktok, etc. Let me have one place where I can pretend the world isn't overrun with stupidity. There is actual conversation on topics to be had, and people aren't jerks to others for no reason.
The fediverse is somewhat complicated to understand. Maybe like usenet or other such places.
Age 16 here. I'm getting old, eh?
Well... damn. I'm mid-30's; Tech is (definitely) kind of a hobby of mine; and I use Linux for learning, experimenting, and... uhh, tech hobby stuff lol. I can solder a little, and sometimes it actually works!
Maybe it's because that cohort is the fastest to adopt. We grew up with a rapidly changing internet, we're kinda used to navigating the glitches/unfamiliarity, and it's just more familiar (to us) in a "back-to-basics" way. I feel like I've entered a nostalgic "place" that has become better since I last visited.
With Memmy for ios going full-live, the multitude of 3rd party apps at full throttle, and Facebook ready with "Threads" - this just seems like the first wave of what could be a hell of a storm. The content will increase and diversify, that's inevitable now.
The question is: do people want to be responsible for maintaining a user-controlled platform? Or would they prefer an operator help to connect us? We'll see, but I guarantee there will be some fresh af memes coming through here in the mean time, so no worries
Hell, while you're here... throw some of those old ass memes (or almost any pic you've got saved on your phone) onto !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Be the change you want to see and shit
Or don't, it's not like anyone can really judge you when you're anonymous... but you'll know. Months from now, when you're lying in bed, unable to sleep because you were complicit in the apathy; you'll wonder if it could have been different. You'll try to bury the intrusive thoughts and "what ifs", but you'll always wonder...
"Could it have actually worked? Might we have taken claim to a piece of independence in the future of world communications?!"
... and the thought slips away, as you mainline another 40 min of memes directly into you're neurotransmitter reservoir, for sustenance and maintenence
Hey, I'm not old!
Shit, wait, yes I am.
I think the federation system is quite a barricade for some people. I recently changed over to Lemmy from Reddit, and it was quite challenging to first understand how it worked. Also I am not sure that I even now understand how this works fully.
Also the smaller community on Lemmy might be a turn-off for some people.
I am younger than 25, but I’m a Sys-Admin.
However my mother also uses the Fediverse and has nearly to none technical knowledge.
Also my cousin who’s 15 uses it. And some friends of mine who are between 18 to 26 use it without being what you typically would call a nerd.
So I think for the majority it applies but there are also people here not fitting in this sector.
Yup. That's me.
- I'm under 30
- I use my PC for 3D render art as a hobby but otherwise I'm not a tech enthusiast
- I don't use Linux.
With that said, early adopters are often tech enthusiasts. As the user base grows, so will the content and diversify itself.
I'm 19 if that works for you, just following wherever people go.
Yes, but that's pretty much the early adopter demographic across all tech. I would love for people to realize this and start talking about their other hobbies, not just how they run Lemmy on a toaster and are so radical.
Just so we are clear.. Reddit was the same, likely before your time. But sites like Digg and Reddit were for nerds but over time it brought in other 'communities' in a forum type style. Build it and they will come. (also you're likely too old for that reference too, but its all good) I like the less 'normy' experience.
After chatting to a few gen z, if I was to assume a characteristic of this generation, it's that most seem to have completely given up, or not even started, the fight against the deterioration of online privacy, exposure to ads, and companies "rights" and/or ability to harvest personal data from them no matter what they want. It's just part of life to them.
It's just accepted, and whenever I've raised the issue with them, they'll generally just reply with defeatist/pessimist/'pragmatic': "well, the alternative X, y and z apps/websites you've suggested likely all have hardware backdoors forcibly installed anyway"
So I think the willingness to fight, and picture a different way of having things, really is focused on those within millennial and gen-x age bands.
Edit: the point being, gen z therefore appear less likely to move away from existing structures, like Snapchat and Reddit, over increased ad promulgation, personal data harvesting, or bad company behaviour.
Hey, I'm still in my 20s... for another 3 weeks. Also, Software Engineer for over 10 years...
For me, I really miss the old school internet forms where it was all just people nerding out about the same stuff and providing useful information because they cared about the interest and the community.
Reddit used to be like that but now it's like any other social media platform.
Everything is becoming algorithm driven endless scrolling packed with ads and promoted content with very little focus on the community and actual information. It is just an app you use when you want to turn off your brain.
I'm brand new to lemmy and stuff like it but I'm hoping to find something closer to the classic internet. Not sure if that's what I'll find here but reddit sure isn't that any more, and hasn't been for a while
I would say picking a server. Regular users shouldn't be bothered with that. I wouldn't say multiple server choice is a bad thing, it's actually great thing, but regular users shouldn't be bothered with that. Maybe hide server selection behind advanced section or something like that, so regular users aren't bothered with that, but more tech savy users can still find that option if they would like to. And default option for server can be lemmy.world for example (or any other server). If using lemmy is too dificult for regular users and learning curve is too big, they will not bother with that and they will just leave. I am using Connect for Lemmy now and I think lemmy.world is selected by default. I am just using it and I was never bothered with concept of multiple servers, and I really like that I don't have to worry about that.
Millennial checking in. Not a Linux user, not a programmer, occasionally plays Minecraft
I thought Lemmy didn't collect info about me 🧐
I mean, I'm 32, my husband is a software dev, and I've been curious about Linux, but not enough to make the move. 😅 So, one of of three.
But I agree with the others. It's probably partly due to the signup. I also think that the techy prime are the ones who understand what happened with Reddit better and are more likely to care.
The Reddit migration was probably mostly people who know what an API is so that fits your demographic.
Also, people generally don’t take a stance on something unless it affects them personally. So API, privacy, data collection etc just doesn’t register.
I am none of those things and I didn't think it was too complicated, I just had no idea it existed until I joined r/redditalternatives.
I love the old internet feel. Once I saw the fesiverse 'map' it made perfect sense.
The thing I'm struggling with the most is being able to subscribe to communities on some instances with this account but not all instances. And being able to add some instances to an app (liftoff, tusk) but not all. That's the most frustrating for me right now.
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I use arch btw
Early 20s here.
That's how reddit used to be before Digg shit the bed.
Just turned 18. Work in tech, but not a Linux user (yet). Non of my friends used Reddit in the first place, so for sure non are on lemmy
Fit the first one. Not the other two 😂
To be fair, the most diversity I'm seeing in an userbase right now is the one on tiktok. That's definitely a plus, but at what cost? There are trade-offs in every platform.
- Yes, in my late 30s.
- I was a computer scientist, but now I have done a complete 180. But I'm still a nerd at heart.
- Yup, I'm a Linux user.
But we have to understand that Lemmy/Kbin are still babies, they've just started. And I really believe that it will continue to grow and get better at accommodating users who are not tech nerds. But it will be an organic process.
The more Reddit gets worse (no more moderation bots, no good moderation tools from Reddit, etc.), the more people will migrate to Lemmy/Kbin. This migration will force the community to adapt and make it easier and easier for users to integrate.
I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away?
The more diverse users are the ones that aren't realistically worried about their online privacy and are too used and comfortable with what the big names offer. They're more likely to be the ones that would only move once "everyone they know" moves.
Also, consider that the "advertising", the message and reason for joining the fediverse,
It's like [Twitter/Reddit/Instagram] when they were good, minus the corporate meddling and greed and algorithmic shit shoveling!, only really catches the attention of a few types of people.Average Joe and Jane won't move out, "there's nobody there (that they care about)". Internet famous Joes and Janes won't move either, because they will lose a significant portion of followers.
People are willing to put up with A LOT of shit to avoid moving out of places like Instagram, Twitter, Reddit or Tiktok, since the time spent there makes them feel like it's a place where they belong to.
Gosh I feel like this guy called me out.
But then I saw the user name.
Hmmm.....
Hah, I fit the description perfectly. Not too sure how to take that. ☹️
"You must be new here"
We're always the first adopters.
You just described the demographics of the average early tech adopter.
Old enough to understand the importance of privacy and to care about the federation aspect of the fediverse, tech savvy and nerdy enough to not be discouraged by an unfamiliar interface and still developing environment. And apparently we like Linux too.
Probably so. But then why are Android and Android Apps struggling for engagement? But more randoms, casuals, just a wider overall demographic will be needed for niche communities to become viable.
The communities I mainly communicated in on Reddit either don't exist, or have paltry engagement here.
This is why I am keeping my Reddit account active to make posts in these forums to invite others over here to build engagement.
This is also me: I'm a 39 year old Ubuntu user who has been excited about the Internet since the day I first learned what a modem does, in maybe like, 1990?
So far I think Lemmy's a bit too technical for regular people to get started with the Fediverse and to figure out how to find the right communities to join in order to have content show up in their feed comparable to what they're already getting at a commercial service, which takes no effort at all to continue to scroll. Why would a normal person want to use alpha release software? We're still in the early days, we're the early adopters.
I fit the profile
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we are the kind to early adopt new stuff
23 year old electrician here. I'm pretty interested in dectralized tech. My first was Bitcoin
Bah, I'm three raccoons in an overcoat.
Who.. have a steady IT job.. dang it.Get off my lawn.
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Reddit began in a similar fashion, so its a positive trait for sure
Most people are older than 30.
Branding is also another factor that comes into play here. Most regular users are used to having a more polished app. Simplicity is the driving force behind apps like tiktok and Instagram. They build on top of each other rather than reinventing the wheel. So it's just a transfer of skills and patterns. With the fediverse, regular users have relearn those patterns and skills, which most people just aren't going to do.
One way to solve this problem is to just abstract the idea of the fediverse. Rather than saying "join the fediverse, we're decentralised" we could say "we're a multiverse of internet communities".
I also dont think regular users care about whether a post is from another server or not. This can be abstracted as well by only showing the community not the server. What I'm trying to say is, even though the fediverse is a decentralised network, we need to treat is as a centralized one.
I think that's probably accurate, but it needs context. When I discovered reddit, I was a teenager and I just lurked for a long time. At the time, the typical redditor was closer to 30 years old and a tech worker. I was a lurker because I didn't yet understand how to write a thoughtful, worthwhile comment. So there might be some lurkers right now because of that.
All kinds of people gravitate towards conversation, but older users will be more comfortable engaging in conversations at first. Reddit is not a good place to converse right now. We just need to focus on building community and encouraging conversations.
I think that might be because most people who go through the hurdles of setting up an account and figuring out the entire frediverse are people who are much more interested in the tech and it's applications rather than your average social media consumer who can just get all they want in a single location with a easy to understand concept
I'm 3 out of 3. Sorry I don't have a good answer for you.
My unfounded guess is that this demographic has seen the internet at it's beginings and is more willing to put up with the lack of bling and willing to discover/ build things from the ground up, just like the Forums of the Old in the mythological era were done. No corporations, no low effort rewards, no likes/ karma/ whatever. You have to actually get involved for lemmy to live.
I think most people don't go to a platform because of how it is implemented but rather what content and what communities already exist there.
People on the fediverse now are using it not because of the content already here but more because of the promise of a platform designed in a different way that will ultimately enable a better internet experience. I think part of the reason why it's mostly techy people is that the sales pitch is complicated enough that mostly techy people will be able to appreciate it. Not to say that non-techy people are too stupid to get it, it's just that it requires a kind of abstract thinking that techy people are more used to.
It feels like lemmy seems to have a sense of nostalgia for old reddit in some ways, so I imagine that a lot of people on here where also on reddit maybe 5-15 years ago, which means that you are probably going to be older than the average reditor as well as techy. Can't speak for mastodon, honestly I find the culture on most instances I've seen to be kinda weird and unappealing but yes it seems to be older techy people as well there.
can confirm:
- 28
- DevOps Engineer
- daily linux use
I kind of fit the description so I certainly can't argue with you.
I think a big part of the reason you're so spot on is because of the timing. Painting with broad strokes here, but the group you mentioned is kind of the group you need for something like Lemmy to be built in the first place. And I fully appreciate Lemmy had been around for awhile now, but let's be honest, it's only recently become 'popular' thanks to u/spez.
I hope the username will expand as more people find out about Lemmy. I think with that will come feature changes (more likle9in the form of third party apps) as a more diverse group of people start using Lemmy.
Right now, the fediverse is not very user-friendly for non-tech people.
I mean, there's instances de-federating from each other, weird federation sync anomalies still going on between instances, users have to create and maintain multiple user accounts on multiple instances if those instances have defederated each other, even the 'official' jerboa app for lemmy shits itself if you try and connect in to an instance that's one sub-dot version lower than what it was built for - plus it crashes on 1/3 of my android devices, some of the best lemmy apps have been removed from app stores due to non-compliance with app store terms and have to be installed manually from github. It's all still very DIY right now instead of plug-and-play....and if lemmy is to appeal to anyone other than tech nerds, it needs to become much more user friendly and much more plug-and-play.
I tried explaining it all to my wife (who is still a Reddit user) and she argues that lemmy on fediverse sounds way too complicated...and she's not wrong.
I am around 20 and use lemmy, but I agree my friends need instagram
I feel it's complicated for the non-tech users but interestingly I have started to see some folks coming to Lemmy because I (a tech friend) started using it and advertising to them. I think it's these early adopters who play a major role in bringing the non-tech folks and people from other diverse culture.
If 'getting in' would be more mass compatible we would have a more realistic view about society. That would bei great but the society is of douchebags and this is what mass social media is suffering from in my mind.
I spent most of my time on Reddit in the learn programming subs, so I'm glad at least that demographic has moved here. I'm almost 34, don't work in tech but want to, don't use Linux but want to (and if the rumors of windows adding ads to the OS are true I will switch to Linux full time except for gaming). I wasn't really that invested in the reddit API changes but I liked reddit when it was more under ground and wild west. I used to spend a lot of time on rcsources (those days are behind me regardless, though). So I wanted to see if there was still room on the internet for the outlaw tech cowboy shtick, and Lemmy stepped up to the plate.
This is me 46 *nix user, nerd
There are a many people over the age of 30 on Reddit as under. People like us make up 50% of reddit users.
Definitely the server federation thing is overwhelming. I don't even know what that is. I was told Lemmy.world is the alternative Reddit.
Ehhh... might be better that way. Dont whant to act like a gate keeper, but if you are refering to normies, then it better this way, since normie activity usually is politically oriented, and not in a civiliced dialogue oriented manner, specially US politics, and usually on major non isues that i rather not get into since i dont whant to sumon them, and with normie activity comes the political bots that just make the noise louder. Its the main reason that r/whitepeopletwitter never leaves the top 10 of r/all back at reddit and why twitter and facebook are full of extremist viewpoints. Now if you are reffering to other academic/profecional comunities like the historians, medics or phisicyts, then thats because they usually stay on the larger online platforms or standard publishing because they are not on the mindset of being anti-stablishment, rebelious or cyberpunk HACK THE WORLD kind of thing since their comunities are better stablished and they really have no reason to be in on some obscure platform thats really just the second best choise to reddit thats mostly used by ex redditors. Now that might change due to meta sticking their noses up in here or hopefully due to the growing comunities in the fediverse. Although with the beef some of the instances have with each other that might definetly make it harder to sell on other people outside of the alreaddy interested.
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.
No man, I'm 20 and I'm using this site
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.
It might be partially due to corrolation as well. People who don't like to be controlled by corporate overlords and be their products, tend to use/switch to open alternatives.
Its the BBS era come again.
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.
Only 1 for 3 there myself, but I get the point.
One thing I have noticed is a big chunk of the memes posted earlier in June were very dated, ~2010-era Facebook style. Made me wonder if the crowd on here didn't at least initially skew older.
Did you see the linux memes comments? It's full of windows users who are infuriating me.
You just described me perfectly.
I feel like the people who are really upto speed, read between the lines, know their shit, and know what the best shit it.
Generally the people on here take their time, do their research, and invest in some quality product.
I was a Windows user up until last summer, a daily Reddit user since 2011, I was born in 1991, always been somewhat of a computer geek growing up.
In life I work as a barista/manager in a cafe, I set up the whole POS, trained staff, I do latte art.
Outside of work I organize public boardgame groups and movies in the park using a projecto, connected to a steamdeck, connected to a harddrive with 1800 movies.
The second Reddit hit the fan, I came here.
When I go to the bar, I make friends easy, I talk people's ears off about geeky stuff. I eat mushroom chocolates a few times a week that I made my self, mushrooms give me insight and revelations.
I am the only person I know in person who has a steamdeck, no one I talk to is familiar with Linux, and few people are familiar with the fediverse and what's happened to Reddit.
It's odd feeling like the odd one out, but I am happy to have these forums to connect to other odd ones out.
Closest I’ve felt to BBS since, well, BBS.
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.
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.
For everything except the memes I agree. The memes are clearly not generated by 30+ year olds though, and there are a lot of memes. (all of those 196 communities)
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.
I'm not that old! I'm still a linux user and tech enthusiast though, so you're not that off.
The Fediverse is the Linux of the social media world. Normal people don't know it exists, but it will shape the inner workings of the platform(s) that will be popular in the future.
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I (37M) am a broadcast TV tech director so I guess that puts me in the "techbro" world, however, I wouldn't consider myself an "early adopter." I'd say really I'm just tired of corporate social media and all the algorithms and BS. And I'm not alone.
Why am I on Mastodon and Lemmy:
I was looking for something genuinely different, something human focused, something better. Hopefully the Fediverse can be that and hold the line against the likes of Meta. I've gotten four people in my close friends circle to give Fedi a try on three different platforms, all within the last two weeks.
My solution here:
We can't expect hobbyist server hosts, pro bono web devs, and volunteer modmins to pay to advertise this place. Memories of the marketing classes I was forced to take in college are screaming at me right now that what we need to do is begin an honest to goodness word-of-mouth campaign for the whole of the Fediverse... and by that I don't mean "posting aggressively" about it on Facebook, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter, BlueSky, etc, etc.
Scary as it may be to some of us "techbros," we need to go touch some grass and actually talk to people in the real world. "Word of mouth" means face to face, in person, and it's possibly the most powerful advertising tool ever devised. I'd genuinely advise taking a cue from fundy Christians... evangelize... talk to your friends, your family, your co-workers about what you like about the Fediverse and what they might like. Listen to their problems with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, etc... offer a possible solution that they could give a try. Obviously, don't be pushy or a dick but also, if they do take the leap, help them get settled. Help them find a platform they'd like and how to find the communities and users with whom they'd like to interact.
Perhaps there are some onerous barriers to entry to places like this, but there are loads of people out there genuinely looking for better online communities and just better social media in general. This place -it's various platforms and numerous instances- can be that for a load of people, but they won't know about it unless we tell them.
The youth have an innate pressure to follow trends and their peers. They need and crave social acceptance while still lacking the means to be independent and "go their own way", so it's not viable to expect younger users to form the bulk of pioneering users of an unproven platform like the fediverse.
Older user will generally be more confident and independent, especially when the craving for social approval is not as powerful as it was in younger users.
tech enthusiasts/workers
linux users
Those are the primary people who are going to come to a platform like this. The average joe probably hasn't even noticed any major changes with reddit.
- I'm under 30 (Under 20 too) X
- Tech enthusiast/comp sci student ✔️
- Linux User ✔️
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.
No. Next question
30 years or older. Check.
Tech enthusiast/ worker.... check.
Linux users. Check.
Dammit
I am 45 and you can say a tech enthusiast. I've never worked in tech but I have always wanted to but never took that chance. I feel like I'm too old to start now.
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.
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.
I think it’s because we remember a time when there wasn’t a lot of stability and centralized content. So the absolute shit show that is going on right now and the resurgence of decentralized content is really refreshing. Plus it’s pretty amazing that the forums we came up using can now talk to one another! Now if we could only bring back XMPP 😂
- ~30 years old or older
- tech enthusiasts/workers
- linux users
- hates Elon Musk
- hates capitalism
- loves free software but somehow hates free markets
30yr+, tech enthusiast, linux user... these are all the same thing XD
There are a few things keeping users away - the perceived complexity and the sign up process and understanding how it all works, and the fact that it's a "new" site that is trying to replace reddit when many don't feel any need to leave reddit. That's the big one, and a big part of why the population here is made up of who it is.
The younger people that just use reddit as a meme site and for insta thots and porn either don't know or don't care about the API changes, didn't use a third party app so don't care that they're gone, and were oblivious to the whole protest. It's basically back to normal over on reddit now, so nothing changed for them and they don't have a reason to join here.
I'm 30+, a tech enthusiast dev, but I don't use Linux.
Follow #art on mastadon and you see how active that community is.
- 28 (fail)
- Game Programmer (pass)
- Windows user (fail)
Younger people and casual Reddit users never left Reddit. People who were ok with still using old.reddit didn't leave Reddit. When I first joined Lemmy.ml during the blackout, the website struggled to load, the communities were hard to find or non existent, and there wasn't much content (compared to Reddit).
Now that Reddit is dead to me, Lemmy has filled the doomscroll void. I do much less of it now. Also, Lemmy is growing in the right directions.
Younger people may be more affected by social pressure, to be on the already popular apps.
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.
No man, I'm 20 and I'm using this site
40-ish M. Potentially, we’re/they’re more likely to have been using 3rd party apps and felt frustration with the Reddit decision in the first place. Younger users (and maybe older, 50-60+) maybe just started off with the official Reddit app or Reddit is a smaller part of their “content diet” vs other platforms, so they don’t really see what the big deal is.
If true, it’d be kind of an interesting demographic shift, since the last time we probably saw something like that was with Facebook when younger people moved away from it when it became boomer territory, so maybe the opposite is happening with Reddit, with middle/older more tech-savvy users jumping ship, but I’ve no real evidence.
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.
✅ ✅ ✅ - that's me :P
I had been on Lemmy before, but since there was much more activity on Reddit I didn't stick with it. Now that more communities are flourishing on the fediverse early adopters are jumping on, and if ethe growth is stable and communities have activity (not just subscribers or visitors) to rival other spaces, I think diversity will grow. It only takes a relatively small number of active users to create a strong community
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.
Only 2 of those 3 (age, linux)
If you ever had to configure your xorg.conf to not set your monitor on fire, the fediverse isn't very complicatedI'm 28, Linux user, tech worker, pretty much called me out
From what I see on Local we are
Trans Old Young Gay Straight Nerds Furries Porno addicts
- check
- check
- check
Even young people who aren't techies are clueless about more advanced stuff. The theory that old people don't understand technology because they didn't grow up with it is wrong
I feel a little bit called out with this, indeed 31 years old, tech enthusiast, I am an IT-tech and I use both Windows and Linux as desktops and servers. 😆 Maybe it's just because I remember how much better the internet used to be in some ways.
Yeah I'm one of the 90% here, except for the Linux part, FreeBSD man. No problem with that and it would fine with me if it doesn't change. Talking to my peeps here.
I'm literally less than a decade old and only own a phone and a shitty HP laptop
Yes, I'm one too. That's why I am here. The channels are generally relevant to me, and I can communicate with people, and not disappear in the mob, or deal constantly with low effort smart ass comments, trolls and bots.
What is it that you want to win? http://web.archive.org/web/20230707004346/https://ploum.net/2023-07-06-stop-trying-to-make-social-networks-succeed.html
you ever feel like tech people embrace new technology first?
you're not wrong, and it's something that needs to be acknowledged, but I can't think of a single innovation on the internet that wasn't dominated by older (when you demarcate 30 as "older") tech people before coming to popularity among the general public
I'm all of those things, but not an active Linux user any more. Definitely been there before though.
Let's be honest here - Lemmy today is a very broken experience. I can't recommend it to my partner because she will complain non stop that this not working, that is laggy, etc. It's all fun for enthusiasts, but it's nothing more than a very broken alpha preview of what could be made in few years.
There's also a lack of content. Can you get a professional skincare advice on Lemmy? No. Can you talk to Bill Gates on Lemmy? No. Is there a Chinese Cooking Demistified community on Lemmy? No. It's just Linux, Fediverse, cats and porn.
And then there's a question of money. For Lemmy to go mainstream it needs to spend millions on promotion, ads, development, customer support, lawyers, etc. You can build great thing on enthusiasm, but they will remain a niche. If you want to reach the masses, you need a lot of capital. You can see that clearly with Facebook's Twitter clone - tens of millions sign ups in 24 days. Can't do that without spending tens of millions.
The average person is about as technologically literate as a rock and curious about learning new things as a weed. Only a small subset of intelligent, curious, principled people dare to think of using alternatives that require users to have more than two brain cells or an attention span of more than 30 seconds.
Doesn't bother me
Jeez I’m not that old
Me, me and me. Maybe I've finally found my people?
I certainly fit the bill at 46 and in a tech-related job (although I'm on a Mac, in part because my job is on the design end).
And I'm good with that. I hated getting into it with someone on Reddit and realizing I was arguing with a child. I felt like such a fool.
I think it is something along those lines, the early adopters are quite fed up with Reddit and have the knowledge to explore new options. The fediverse is still strange and not so easy to understand for the casual user.
Well, we (old farts) know shit, kids are brainwashed nowadays.
Sub-30 yo but super-20 yo
STEM equal, just not tech
Windows user (although I have Linux installed on my PC)
Close, but rly close enough
Avoiding corporate software companies and abandoning established communities on principle isn't something your average person does. Also, wrapping your head around the Fediverse, even if the sign-up process is as simple as other platforms, can be an obstacle for most people.
… so you’re saying that my subscriber numbers are actual people and not mostly bots? I assumed they were bots. (I created an over 30 community).
Yes - guilty! We understand what it is, and we have used the centralized systems long enough to remember how they started. It's so romantic to be at the beginning once more - until the next eternal September :)
I guess I'm all 3. I'm 39, tech enthusiast (tho I've long since given up on working in the industry), and have been using and occasionally contributing to the Linux community since the mid-90s.
My husband is afaik, still just on reddit. idk if he's moved to the official app on his phone (he was a rif guy for years) or what he's doing tbh. But, he's not really a geek 😁
As many, I fit the description except for the age, but I hope this monoculture thing goes away. I don't want an entire social network to be a huge bubble. If I want a bubble I join one of the many communities populated by people similar to me, but I want to have the chance to look "for something completely different", getting in touch with world views completely opposte to mine.
Not EXCLUSIVELY... but kinda, but even though I'm only 1 (or maybe 2) out of the 3, and a bunch of programming jokes and jargon go over my head, I really don't mind. And... if you're going to start with a particular demographic as a core userbase, man oh man could you do worse these days.
I'm in my early 20's but I do use Linux and and I'm a tech enthusiast. For now everybody here is 1 of the 3 but it will grow.
All true for me... except I haven't booted into my Linux install in literal months.
You caught me. I'm old, write software and regularly use Linux.
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.
I'm neither cis male nor that old but I fit the other two demographics lmao
Might be that tech inrerested ppl are more inclined to switch to less used alternatives when they allow for a more free and open platform. Also the barrier of entry for those might be quite a bit lower than the average Redditor
hey! i'll have you know i'm only 26. calling me out...
i also haven't used linux for a while but i'm currently procrastinating on setting it up on my laptop because windows modern standby hella sucks
im studying CS
im in the late 30s
i've been a tech enthusiast for a bit more than 30 years
i dont use linux though
More users will come. it's all about the memes and fun discussions though. Memes is what drew me towards reddit. i just wanted to "scroll" for some entertainment, when i first found the site.
and being able to google, and finding reddit links helps.
i've yet to find a link to lemmy, by googling anything - even if i include the word lemmy.
On reddit we had a ton of "general" hobby subreddits. houseplants, cast iron, woodworking etc
i've not been searching for specific communities (search doesnt work super well i think) but i've yet to randomyl spot any communities that fall in to that category. it's mostly.. tech related subreddits.
the "common folk" wants hobbies, sports, news, etc.
I'm an ageless, multi-planar being located outside of time. My New Deal policies benefited from it.
Yep. Sounds about right, polls I’ve seen on mastodon also shows this: https://mastodon.art/@jsstaedtler/110668308409683502
Man since when was early to mid 20's considered old 😔
As far as what others have commented, I prefer to never touch Linux with a 10 ft limbo pole if I absolutely don't have to (school, work, etc). Obviously this has exceptions such as Android and other Unix offshoots. Maybe some common groundwork other users have is that we all like tech and are willing to try new experiments even if it doesn't work out right away.
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Woah now, who said people over 30 are old? 😮
Anyway, your average internet user in 2023 wants to sign in to a platform with ease (preferably using one tap sign in with their Facebook/Google/whatever account).
They also want that one platform to have everything, in an easy to access and digest format, without having to learn complex rules about how a system works.
The days of needing to understand a bunch of stuff to use the latest social media service are gone, and if we build a website/service that requires us to know and understand more complex stuff, and add more barriers to entry, and MOST IMPORTANTLY if we split it up in to a thousand little corners instead of having it all in one place? People will shy away.
Another issue is consistency. People, myself included, want consistency and accountability. I want the people running the platform to be publicly known figures/companies that are accountable for the platform and how they run it, but with this fediverse stuff, it can be run by any anonymous person, who could be doing anything with the private data in our account back ends. And that could be the case hundreds of times over, with all sorts of groups, from all around the world.
There's no accountability, no way to ensure they're meeting requirements of our laws. It's all very untrustworthy and wild west.
That's fine for some people, but the majority of normal users? They want security, they want safety, they want simple ease of use.
Because ipad kids are happy with instagram,tiktok and other shit and doesn't give a fuck about privacy.
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!
I've been saying this since I joined as a Reddit refugee. This place is great!
Older? It seems the general lemmy population is in their early 20s.
I have a statistical pool of 1, but I am 40 something, an infra specialist at a video game publisher and use Linux. So, I suppose you just described me
27yo tech enthusiast and worker and linux user here
Trash culture, TikTok and the likes. The gen z folx I know don't seem to prioritize privacy and quality content. Some know it and don't seem to care even after getting hacked/scammed.
Living vicariously through influencers, likes, and whatnot. Being cool, blending in...
I've just blocked the linux communities. I quite liked Linux when I still had reason to use it, but it's just not something I care to see so frequently when scrolling the FP. Just keep blocking the /c/ you don't want and eventually you'll have a curated list of posts you want to see. But maybe i'm just old, ya young bastard. :p
I do not think that it is complicated to join or use.
But many do not care about privacy and centralization and hence will not leave mainstream platforms. Also the network effect is strong.
It does, yes.
And since lots of people in the Fediverse support blocking popular competitors, like people in Mastodon talking about blocking/unfederating Threads, I'd say we're making sure the Fediverse stays in obscurity forever. Never having a chance to become popular, never having a chance to convince people to leave proprietary platforms.
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.
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. 😎
Yes, and I'm loving it.
Signing up and commenting on Lem should be made stupid simple so that masses can flock here instead. ANY friction in between will result in no action taken. Also more Google searche algos with Lemmy will greatly help.
I just joined lemmy and I am 20 and I am liking it here
