There are a many people over the age of 30 on Reddit as under. People like us make up 50% of reddit users.
Fediverse
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
I'm 3 out of 3. Sorry I don't have a good answer for you.
My unfounded guess is that this demographic has seen the internet at it's beginings and is more willing to put up with the lack of bling and willing to discover/ build things from the ground up, just like the Forums of the Old in the mythological era were done. No corporations, no low effort rewards, no likes/ karma/ whatever. You have to actually get involved for lemmy to live.
Honestly wouldn't mind Lemmy being a 30+ monoculture. Let the kids stay on their TikBooks and SnapFaces where they make porn or whatever else kids do these days.
I think most people don't go to a platform because of how it is implemented but rather what content and what communities already exist there.
People on the fediverse now are using it not because of the content already here but more because of the promise of a platform designed in a different way that will ultimately enable a better internet experience. I think part of the reason why it's mostly techy people is that the sales pitch is complicated enough that mostly techy people will be able to appreciate it. Not to say that non-techy people are too stupid to get it, it's just that it requires a kind of abstract thinking that techy people are more used to.
It feels like lemmy seems to have a sense of nostalgia for old reddit in some ways, so I imagine that a lot of people on here where also on reddit maybe 5-15 years ago, which means that you are probably going to be older than the average reditor as well as techy. Can't speak for mastodon, honestly I find the culture on most instances I've seen to be kinda weird and unappealing but yes it seems to be older techy people as well there.
Branding is also another factor that comes into play here. Most regular users are used to having a more polished app. Simplicity is the driving force behind apps like tiktok and Instagram. They build on top of each other rather than reinventing the wheel. So it's just a transfer of skills and patterns. With the fediverse, regular users have relearn those patterns and skills, which most people just aren't going to do.
One way to solve this problem is to just abstract the idea of the fediverse. Rather than saying "join the fediverse, we're decentralised" we could say "we're a multiverse of internet communities".
I also dont think regular users care about whether a post is from another server or not. This can be abstracted as well by only showing the community not the server. What I'm trying to say is, even though the fediverse is a decentralised network, we need to treat is as a centralized one.
Right now, the fediverse is not very user-friendly for non-tech people.
I mean, there's instances de-federating from each other, weird federation sync anomalies still going on between instances, users have to create and maintain multiple user accounts on multiple instances if those instances have defederated each other, even the 'official' jerboa app for lemmy shits itself if you try and connect in to an instance that's one sub-dot version lower than what it was built for - plus it crashes on 1/3 of my android devices, some of the best lemmy apps have been removed from app stores due to non-compliance with app store terms and have to be installed manually from github. It's all still very DIY right now instead of plug-and-play....and if lemmy is to appeal to anyone other than tech nerds, it needs to become much more user friendly and much more plug-and-play.
I tried explaining it all to my wife (who is still a Reddit user) and she argues that lemmy on fediverse sounds way too complicated...and she's not wrong.
It's funny if so - I was so old on Reddit. But this means I'm old enough to remember Usenet so this platform is comfortable for me.
I don't think it was difficult at all to sign up though, doesn't seem like a barrier to entry.
Yes. I have yet to run across 💀💀💀 or 🔥🔥🔥 in any reply thread as well as popular slang. Also AITA posts with some of the worst advice known to humankind. Thank god it’s over!
Reddit evolved into in something unrecognizable over the last 5 years as it’s popularity exploded.
can confirm:
- 28
- DevOps Engineer
- daily linux use
I think that might be because most people who go through the hurdles of setting up an account and figuring out the entire frediverse are people who are much more interested in the tech and it's applications rather than your average social media consumer who can just get all they want in a single location with a easy to understand concept
sure. but i also can't help but feel like when history looks back on the fediverse it's more likely to be in the geocities and anglefire category than some seismic shift in social media.
I hope for the later, but realistically feel it will be the former.
Definitely the server federation thing is overwhelming. I don't even know what that is. I was told Lemmy.world is the alternative Reddit.
2* y.o. Linux user & sysadmin/sre/devops/younameit checking in.
I am still gonna use reddit for porn only, using patched Reddit app (by Revanced manager). 😂
This is me 46 *nix user, nerd
24 yr old tech worker / Linux user checking in! I'm not old yet but I've got the spirit!
I think that's probably accurate, but it needs context. When I discovered reddit, I was a teenager and I just lurked for a long time. At the time, the typical redditor was closer to 30 years old and a tech worker. I was a lurker because I didn't yet understand how to write a thoughtful, worthwhile comment. So there might be some lurkers right now because of that.
All kinds of people gravitate towards conversation, but older users will be more comfortable engaging in conversations at first. Reddit is not a good place to converse right now. We just need to focus on building community and encouraging conversations.
I am younger than that demographic and not the most techy person, so maybe not exclusively. But yes, in my experience with Lemmy and Mastodon that is the trend.
Its the BBS era come again.
No man, I'm 20 and I'm using this site
I'm not that old! I'm still a linux user and tech enthusiast though, so you're not that off.
Did you see the linux memes comments? It's full of windows users who are infuriating me.
I (37M) am a broadcast TV tech director so I guess that puts me in the "techbro" world, however, I wouldn't consider myself an "early adopter." I'd say really I'm just tired of corporate social media and all the algorithms and BS. And I'm not alone.
Why am I on Mastodon and Lemmy:
I was looking for something genuinely different, something human focused, something better. Hopefully the Fediverse can be that and hold the line against the likes of Meta. I've gotten four people in my close friends circle to give Fedi a try on three different platforms, all within the last two weeks.
My solution here:
We can't expect hobbyist server hosts, pro bono web devs, and volunteer modmins to pay to advertise this place. Memories of the marketing classes I was forced to take in college are screaming at me right now that what we need to do is begin an honest to goodness word-of-mouth campaign for the whole of the Fediverse... and by that I don't mean "posting aggressively" about it on Facebook, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter, BlueSky, etc, etc.
Scary as it may be to some of us "techbros," we need to go touch some grass and actually talk to people in the real world. "Word of mouth" means face to face, in person, and it's possibly the most powerful advertising tool ever devised. I'd genuinely advise taking a cue from fundy Christians... evangelize... talk to your friends, your family, your co-workers about what you like about the Fediverse and what they might like. Listen to their problems with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, etc... offer a possible solution that they could give a try. Obviously, don't be pushy or a dick but also, if they do take the leap, help them get settled. Help them find a platform they'd like and how to find the communities and users with whom they'd like to interact.
Perhaps there are some onerous barriers to entry to places like this, but there are loads of people out there genuinely looking for better online communities and just better social media in general. This place -it's various platforms and numerous instances- can be that for a load of people, but they won't know about it unless we tell them.