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 36. I'm tired of everybody taking my money. I'm tired of corporations. I'm here to get away from that.
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.
I'm a younger tech nerd, but I do use linux.
Maybe I'm am outlier but I'm 21 and here.
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.
Closest I’ve felt to BBS since, well, BBS.
Perhaps it's because people under 30 have no sense of responsibility so don't really care to communicate much with peers. They don't have the means to bring systems like this online. They don't have the historical perspective to take part in intelligent conversation, so they have Twitter and Facebook.
Because ipad kids are happy with instagram,tiktok and other shit and doesn't give a fuck about privacy.
*looks at self*:
I feel both insulted and understood at the same time
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.
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.
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!
Older? It seems the general lemmy population is in their early 20s.
Yes.
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. 😎
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.
Hmm, not sure. But I’m in my 20s and I love to advocate for privacy and decentralization.
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...
My 15 yo ass
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.
It's also used by loads of tankies
I think anyone that fits in those 3 categories just tend to be the early adopters. The normies come later. 😁
Currently interning as software engineer and typing this from a Linux machine. I'm Gen Z though.
There's always a group on the forefront, it makes sense that it's tech interested people Fediverse being based on open source software and all about sharing means it's right p Linux user's alley.
The 30+ demographic not sure, maybe just people a bit grown up and now under as much peer pressure to be on the more popular corporate platforms.
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