Fediverse

So exactly what Digg and Reddit where to begin with. The tech people are first and then everyone else comes over. Only this time I think the everyone else are staying on Reddit.

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 just passed into the 30 and older crowd yesterday, and created an account a few days before. Thanks... :(

Generalization of course, but the younger generation isn't always as tech savvy as one might assume, and I'd imagine they prefer the easy "sign in and scroll" apps

Fucking zoomers with their tiktoks and snapchats, what was so wrong with old school forums?

I was like “NO!” And then I remembered that I’m 25 now so…. Kinda :/

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.

Probably because tech enthusiasts are the only ones that care about their privacy so they use open source alternative before anyone else

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 thought Lemmy didn't collect info about me 🧐

Yes, that's why it is so good.

I guess we are the ones remembering how it was 15+ years ago

from my own experience, that's definitely the case for Mastodon, except people are 40 and up.

1. Yes, in my late 30s.
2. I was a computer scientist, but now I have done a complete 180. But I'm still a nerd at heart.
3. 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.

Millennial checking in. Not a Linux user, not a programmer, occasionally plays Minecraft

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.

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.

That's how reddit used to be before Digg shit the bed.