Does it feel like the fediverse is exclusively used by older tech nerds?
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?
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.)
wait I can selfhost my own lemmy and then use my account from there? ... and then I can federate whoever I choose?? ... and my have ownership of my own account??? 🤯
Sure can! It's a bit involved and there are security considerations to take into account. Those who deploy their own instance have to make sure the underlying services are well-configured and patched. This happened yesterday, for instance. Hard to know the exact scope of the compromise, but in bad circumstances it could have compromised everyone's credentials who has registered on lemmy.world. I've no reason to believe that's the case....just saying it's a thing.