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?
This isn’t even an issue for me so long as those trillion dollar corporations let me use social media the way I want to. I can just download an ad blocker and stay off the more garbage parts of their websites. The reason why I like the Fediverse is not because trillion dollar corporations don’t have a stake in it, because let’s be real, money was always gonna be involved. The reason why I like it is because I will most likely be insulated from the effects of enshittification and corporate incompetence on company-run instances. Even if the instance I’m on gets enshittified, it won’t be that difficult for me to just move to another instance, especially once the Fediverse matures and we get things like account migration, or even account federation, if I wanna keep one foot in both instances. Same for whatever community I’m involved with. Plus the fact that I can just block any community who’s users I don’t like means my experience will be way less toxic than it would be on Twitter, where avoiding toxicity requires a lot of effort. That’s one of the things I liked about Reddit, the structure kept the toxic people in their own little bubble and I was able to ignore their existence if I stayed off mainstream subreddits.
TL;DR: It ain’t about the money (or lack thereof), it’s about the potential for a better service.