The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:
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~30 years old or older
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tech enthusiasts/workers
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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?
I’m new here, and new to federated applications (and fit OP’s description perfectly). This federated stuff is going to remain niche unless somebody figures out a way to make it approachable.
Reddit first time:
> open app
> choose some things I like
> see all the things
Lemmy first time:
> open app
> ?????
> google how to use it
> choose a... server?
> ?????
This perfectly illustrates the problem with the Internet as a whole in the age of smartphones.
Your idea of the “first step” is always “open app” but the Internet is not apps. The Internet is servers, and a web browser is the client app for most of it.
Since I know how to use the Internet, it was simple AF to get a Lemmy account going. I went to https://lemmy.world and signed up. Now I’m on Lemmy.
If all you know of the Internet is “open app” on your phone, you have a lot more to learn about the Internet as a whole.
As a backend developer I know that it’s all servers under the hood, but that’s not what the internet is. It hurts to say it, but the frontend matters more in that regard. Probably the most used frontend these days is apps, so the internet is apps. Websites are still widely used and indispensable so they are also the internet. Apps and websites are both the internet, just on different usecases.
I am a former senior web developer and head of a web-based software company, I know how to use the internet. That is not why I use apps. I use apps because they fit into my phone’s ecosystem much better than websites. The flow I’ve illustrated is the most commonly adopted, as others in the reply thread have pointed out.
I think most common people are accustomed to “being fed”, rather than exploring for themselves. That’s why most of the original platforms were just getting copy pastes from other platforms. Originality requires effort.
I personally have been looking at lemmy thinking what’s new… Only to realise that maybe it’s time “I” create that new. :=
What if we can’t make it more approachable? Should we forever rely on corporations and their unethical platforms to be able to communicate? Just because people aren’t willing to learn a few very basic things?
This is not a problem with the technology, but with people.
This is not a problem with people, but with UX design.
We don’t need a corporation to have usable interfaces. Right now, if you visit join-lemmy.org, the main focus is for people wanting to host an instance, which is only a small part of the advanced user base. The common user won’t care about the fact Lemmy is made with rust or that there’s a docker image.
I don’t think it’s only an issue with Lemmy, lots of open-source projects lack user-friendliness and onboarding.
I agree so much. I feel like your typical user does not need to know 1% of all that. Hell, I don’t even think that they need to know much about the whole instances shebang. Scroll through a feed, see a bunch of users from various federated instances say things, the end. The fediverse aspect is something that could be relegated to a help section or something along these lines. Complexity scares people away.
I seriously wish that Lemmy and the Fediverse in general would boom in popularity because this kind of “free” social media is what people deserve, but I just can’t see it happening with how things are now.
Yes, Lemmy’s UI is very bad. It would be pretty easy to improve it, if only developers understood this. But I think the part that new users complain about the most is federation. At least I’ve seen many posts and comments saying that it’s too confusing.
Yeah, this seems like one potential solution. But I think Fedheads (please tell me I’m the first person to use that term 🤞) will say this defeats the whole point of a federated platform. The official guide recommends avoiding the biggest communities and instead joining something smaller.
I called this a few weeks ago on reddit and people weren’t impressed with my negativity.
I’m sorry, but you can’t start a website with:
Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform.
And expect 95% of people to do anything other than close the window.
i had to actually READ about how to get this program to work and understand its nuances and stuff and research ways to even look at it or what is was
90% of people are def not gonna do that lol
Yep, that is literally me. I am not particularly techy or whatever and I came here because RiF shut down and the maker said they would be on lemmy.world. i had no idea what that meant but i made it here.
Much googling was involved and after i made like 4 accounts on different instances, bumbled around, settled down and learned to subscribe to stuff, i subbed to communities specifically about the fediverse and finding new communities. I also tried like 3 different apps and aettled on Liftoff so far.
I still havent figured out how to reliably see mastodon or kbin stuff or if i even want to.
I can see how most people wouldn’t bother and have no idea why any of this even matters. I still find reddit much easier to use (and important for ongoing world events like the war in ukraine, where it isnt about what we can aggregate but where posters from that conflict put their content originally, a huge amount gets posted directly to reddit and they dont have time to sit around debating the finer points of internet usage), but philisophically i understand why the fediverse is important.
Also learning sbout the concept of defederation (as it regarded Beehaw) was a brainmelter and i felt like i was missing out on “content” be ause of how big it was. My other issue was around not undersranding who runs all these instances and quite frankly having no reason to trust they wouldnt do some crazy stuff themselves.
I still havent figured out how to reliably see mastodon or kbin stuff or if i even want to.
Lemmy is community-oriented, and I’m not sure it has a way to see posts that aren’t to a community. Mastodon users can post to a community by tagging it, and you’ve probably seen posts from Mastodon users without noticing. If you want to see some, here’s my photography account. Only posts to Lemmy communities show up at that link, but you’ll see more if you view the profile on the original Mastodon server.
You should be able to view and join Kbin magazines just like lemmy communities. Here’s one.
i felt like i was missing out on “content”
You are. It happens with email too; it’s somewhat difficult to reliably deliver email to gmail.com as a small server for example.
Do we really need 10s of millions of people here???!
Having gone through the time when AOL first allowed its members access to the Internet, the impression I ended up with was that it was exactly having the sub-culture of the time overwhelmed by the vastly larger culture of the AOL members that mainly screwed things up.
I think the desire for massive crowds is just a reflection of what we’ve become used to in the last couple of decades rather than the conclusion of thinking it through.
Mind you, I’m not saying that I have the answer, I’m trying to throw out there the idea that maybe in a forum of forums system “the more” aren’t “the merrier” because the sweet spot of participation to make a forum pleasant is somewhere in the middle rather than more always being better.
I think the desire for massive crowds is just a reflection
of capitalism. outsiders don’t consider you successful unless you have x amount of users or make x in revenue or are top 3 in your category. and even when you match the desired characteristics, it’s still not enough. what about this quarter? profits over everything. the solution isn’t to bend for other people, but to create something that’s authentic to you and be satisfied with what you have.
Yeah, that too.
I reckon that many people’s expectation and even desire for what’s familiar (a natural human preference for the known and familiar which is often confused with actually liking it) that ends up as a desire expressed in these comments for a BIGGER Fediverse is due to the their constant exposure to big and crowded situations again and again, which in turn is because Capitalism tends to create those in all kinds of context (virtual or otherwise) as they’re more profitable.
This federated stuff is going to remain niche unless somebody figures out a way to make it approachable.
And also make the layout attractive. I view Lemmy via a Web browser on my desktop (yeah, I know, my age is showing) and it is…I’ll be polite and call it “a work in progress”.
I think federated software should probably be focusing on a web-first rather than app-first approach. That has to include an excellent mobile web experience, which Lemmy could use a bit of work on (the software is fairly young and this is not meant as criticism). Mainstream users do have an app-first habit right now. I don’t think that’s necessarily because people prefer apps to websites, but because companies are pushing apps and deprecating websites. I’ve read that app users are, on average seven times more profitable than web users.
It’s easy to figure out how and where to sign up when you’re linked to https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/. When inviting people to Lemmy, it’s probably good to just directly link a server.
