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?

  • tiramichu@lemm.eeEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.

    With federation it’s ensured that any single instance is only a small part of the whole, and that if any instance goes down (or worse, goes rogue and becomes a bad actor) then the impact of that is minimised. All users being registered on a single instance is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket.

    I do totally understand from the perspective of new users that it’s hard to understand what to do or how to do it but that is a problem that could be better addressed with clearer onboarding. e.g “Choose any one of these recommended instances to sign up. It doesn’t matter which - you’ll be able to see the same content and communities across all of Lemmy no matter which you pick”*

    *mostly, but close enough

    • BURN@lemmy.worldEnglish
      112·
      1 year ago

      To be honest, I’m still not sold on federation, and that’s going to be a huge hurdle to overcome with the general public.

      • zeppo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        I think it’s a huge advantage. It’s not that confusing that different websites share content. I think all it would take is something like “sign up for the site you like or one in your state” and for the default home pages to be All vs Local.

      • PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        Does anyone know of any Game Theory-esque analysis of how late-stage Fediverse is supposed to work? What’s the end game? What happens to the Fediverse with all the different kinds of players involved at this point?

        • jelloeater - Ops Mgr@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I see each topic having their own instance, a giant web of interest connected content servers… I’ll call it, the internet 😄 For real though, this shit feels like the old days back in the 90s ♥️

    • gxgx55@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.

      Does it? Would it not be possible for a minimal global account system to exist, which ONLY handles logging in and identity? Any user-related data could still exist in instances, not centralized.

      I am pretty new to this type of system so maybe I am wrong but it does seem like both the biggest barrier to wider adoption and rather solvable: in current terms, imagine if the “login” instance had no communities, only account log in, while other instances have no log in, but integrate the “central” one. In case decentralization is wanted, I think it’d be possible to have multiple “login” type instances exist in a consensus, at which point problems and solutions start looking similar to cryptocurrency, but without the need to deal with “currency” or any of those ethical landmines - it’d just need to do the task of multiple instances agreeing to dataset of existing users.