The fediverse is mostly full of FOSS enthusiasts, which happens to heavily include linux users.

That's what attracted me to the fediverse in the first place, all the linux people.

The old people are people who grew up before Facebook and corporate social media, as such have no loyalty to said platforms.

I fit the description. I like it, the regular social media life drains me.

Eli5...How can I get into mastadon? I just signed up for Lemmy. Can I download any mastadon app and just log in and use it?

27yo tech enthusiast and worker and linux user here

1. 23, so no.
2. Enthusiast, yeah, trying to get into tech for a job, but don't have the CS degree they all want.
3. No, but not by choice. Not running Linux because I buggered my UEFI somehow, and so it won't allow me to boot from USB or switch to my Linux partition.

I think it's because early Millennials are near the peak of techiness, and the sort of person to switch to an open-source, decentralised, somewhat anti-commercial website is also the sort of person to use Linux. I'm early Gen Z, but fit the other two categories.

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. 😎

Damn I feel seen

It does, yes.

And since lots of people in the Fediverse support blocking popular competitors, like people in Mastodon talking about blocking/unfederating Threads, I'd say we're making sure the Fediverse stays in obscurity forever. Never having a chance to become popular, never having a chance to convince people to leave proprietary platforms.

frick, I check all three boxes (36, software developer and currently a KDE Neon user)

• In 10 years
• Check
• Check

Is picking a server/federation too complicated?

Yes, but because 90% of the fediverse is older tech nerds, good luck getting them to acknowledge it.

Check. Check. And check.

27

IT

A power user for my OS of choice

Yeah….. :/

I feel not nearly as much on Lemmy, but for Mastodon 100% yes. It's actually exhausting talking to them lol, they're so boring.

I think it’s only older people who remember what the internet was like before everything became corporate controlled or SEO optimized.

I would like to get more crafting content on here but tbh most of my friends from that stuff still use Facebook, never mind anything newer. They'll be ready for Fedi by about 2045 if we're lucky.

In the meantime getting to hang out with a load of likeminded nerds does in fact feel to me like a win.

I'm a bit under 24, have the limit of my tech skills being the ability to install and sometimes troubleshoot minecraft and Skyrim mods, and have never used Linux (I've thought about it admittedly, but ultimately didn't switch to it as it doesn't look to be compatible with my vr system.)

So there are some of us here that don't fit that demographic. From talking to some of my friends though, even the idea of having to pick an instance understanding federation/defederation has been hard to explain to some, doable but they generally prefer things that are self explanatory enough to not have to be talked through them. I've tried the whole email analogy but to be honest most of them don't use email that often anyway.