Fediverse

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

OK, 3/3, but I should get points for only running Linux on WSL and Steam Deck. I'm not a nerd.

Edit: and my two android phones and my router.

That’s just how the internet works. Early adopters are those willing to try something unfamiliar.

What you calling me out like this for?

I feel the two big reasons are:

1. 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.

2. 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.

The simple existence of different instances will be enough to scare away casual users.

I'm not entirely sad about this.

Enjoy the benefits of having a higher barrier of entry while it lasts. /gen

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

As long as it has enough shitpost it will attract young people. We need to shitpost more.

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.

Reddit was where we were when we were younger tech nerds, so...yeah man.

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.

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.

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.

Hit the mark on all 3. 🤷‍♂️ But in fairness the early days of Reddit was pretty similar.

Phase 1: Collect enthusiasts

Phase 2: ?

Phase 3: Profit

Reddit has tried lots of things in Phase 2, including borrowing many techniques from Facebook, but they're still fundamentally there.

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.

I dont think 30 is that old

"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."

That's why it's less toxic? No teens?

"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.

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.)

13 year old Linux tech enthusiast here.

I'm 3 for 3.

4 for 4 of you separate item 2.

FB was only for college kids, now it's for your grandparents.

Absolutely tick those boxes. And it makes perfect sense.

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

Uhm I’m a Mac user sweaty. But yeah the rest applies lol