The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:

  • ~30 years old or older

  • tech enthusiasts/workers

  • 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?

  • Addition@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1041·
    1 year ago

    This is the answer. I’m 26 and most of my peers didn’t really use the internet beyond the occasional usage of the school library computers until Apple released the first iPhone. By that time places like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were up and running.

    That’s all their experience with the internet is. Polished experiences through dedicated apps on extremely popular platforms. Now those people have had kids and all those kids know is the same thing. It’s all apps on phones and tablets.

    Lemmy: A) Is too complicated in it’s current form for those types of people to effectively understand and use.

    B) Lemmy is currently emulating a type of early internet experience that only nostalgic older millennials nerds crave. General users tend to prefer bigger platforms.

      • nnullzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        No I feel the same way. I think it’s because it’s part of an ecosystem of concepts built with all its predecessors mistakes in mind. There’s still learning to do but the foundation is simple but is also modern.

    • TheWoozy@dmv.socialEnglish
      33·
      1 year ago

      Lol, older millenials never saw the early internet experience. UUCP, FTP, Gopher, Mosaic, et al.

    • Brkdncr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      Most people didn’t use the internet when the first iPhone came out either. That shit was slow and unusable at the time, and locked to AT&T.

      • Addition@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        This thread is a couple months old at this point but I figured I’d reply anyway.

        Maybe you had a different experience but I experienced this transition in middle/high school in west MI. The first Gen iPhone released in 2007. 3G was widespread and while that might be considered slow these days, it was state of the art speed at the time, so it wasn’t considered “slow and unusable”.

        In 2007, kids my age didn’t have much tech beyond an iPod or MP3 player. By 2009, almost everyone had a smartphone. That was a huge leap in internet accessibility.