Fediverse

“Older” “30 years or more”

HEY

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)

That's what I'm here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg

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 things

Lemmy first time:

> open app
> ?????
> google how to use it
> choose a... server? 
> ?????

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.

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 36. I'm tired of everybody taking my money. I'm tired of corporations. I'm here to get away from that.

I don't know what you're talking about, I'm just your average Hollywood celebrity here to promote my new movie "Barbie", only in theaters July 21st.

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.

30s software engineer / linux user here.

We are exactly who you want as the "primer" user group. We will collectively make sure the whole thing works before the load really rams up.

The whole reason why I'm on lemmy/masto is exactly because it isn't filled with low-effort karma whoring and that it resembles how Reddit pre-Digg migration and before the sale to Condé Nast.

That community was made up of older nerds with a minimum of technical savvy. Not everyone was a 30 something male programmer..

Other "diverse" folks are free to make their communities and they do, you just need to look at other instances.

Why doesn't it feel like a "win"? Does the fediverse "need" to be like Reddit? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? YouTube?

It'll never be due to the nature of federation and I really like that it encourages quality over quantity, moreover you can curate your own feed.

Block the tech communities and go look around if it bugs you so much.

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

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.

Old tech nerd here. Is this the meeting spot?

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/RedditAlternatives/comments/14t9t66/im_so_lost_is_there_an_easy_mode_to_the_fediverse/

https://www.reddit.com/r/LemmyMigration/comments/145epgc/looking_for_a_lemmy_website_try_lemmyworld/

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

I'm called out, although I'm not quite in my 30s yet.

Also... Reddit started out in the same way, mostly as a forum for programmers and nerds

im 15 and other websites just suck lmao

I think anyone that fits in those 3 categories just tend to be the early adopters. The normies come later. 😁

Yes. Reddit was probably the same for years.

Op too young to realize who made Reddit popular to begin with.

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 would say lemmings age are 25 to 45. People in this range are, in my experience, the most technologically educated.
Gen Z is somehow terrible with anything outside basic android/ios.

Yeah.

It's fuckin' great! 😄

As a 30+ Linux using IT guy I feel offended lol

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.

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.

Oh c'mon, 30s is not older.

Good. I don't want to see some teenagers doing some dumb dance or whatever is on normie platforms.