this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
1953 points (94.8% liked)

Fediverse

27910 readers
1 users here now

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

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

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

Thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Im not sure its so much learned helplessness as, and I know this will be an unpopular opinion here, I don't want to understand how it all works behind the scenes.

"Learned helplessness" isn't meant as an insult, it's just a way to describe... well, this. The idea that the internet is too complicated and you'll never understand it so don't bother trying. This is not the fault of the "normie masses" but rather society not treating digital competence as a necessary skill. Society has many more complicated systems like law, finance, insurance and property that people can still navigate!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I didnt take it as an insult, I just disagree with its use here. What I mean is that it's not learned incompetence, I'm speaking specifically for me. I'm fully capable of learning how this stuff works and I know I could, I just dont want to. I just dont care about tech stuff, it bores me. The same way some people don't care about the rules of football, or the way contract law works, or the difference between needle lace and bobbin lace, that's how I feel about tech. I could learn it, I'd just rather not. There are a lot of people like me who don't want to learn this stuff because they don't enjoy it and like it or not that apathy (rather than inability, real or imagined) is a strong barrier to entry for something like lemmy/the "fediverse"