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?
Younger folks have been raised on apps and other polished devices with oodles of effort put into UX design.
Older folks grew up learning DOS commands, memorizing the IRQ of their sound card, and other clunky shenanigans.
In their current state Lemmy, Mastodon and other services are too complicated for most young folks to bother with. Not all, but most, especially the filthy casuals.
This is the answer. I’m 26 and most of my peers didn’t really use the internet beyond the occasional usage of the school library computers until Apple released the first iPhone. By that time places like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were up and running.
That’s all their experience with the internet is. Polished experiences through dedicated apps on extremely popular platforms. Now those people have had kids and all those kids know is the same thing. It’s all apps on phones and tablets.
Lemmy: A) Is too complicated in it’s current form for those types of people to effectively understand and use.
B) Lemmy is currently emulating a type of early internet experience that only nostalgic older millennials nerds crave. General users tend to prefer bigger platforms.
Lemmy is nostalgic? Lemmy is novelty for me. Looks and feels so modern. Simplistic, yet modern. Am I weird?
No I feel the same way. I think it’s because it’s part of an ecosystem of concepts built with all its predecessors mistakes in mind. There’s still learning to do but the foundation is simple but is also modern.
yeah, too modern. perhaps they’re using a third party client?
Hello,
Are you aware you are replying to a year old comment?
Also, for less modern: https://old.lemmy.world/
i am also using a third party client
Lol, older millenials never saw the early internet experience. UUCP, FTP, Gopher, Mosaic, et al.
Somehow I doubt you’re 26.
Most people didn’t use the internet when the first iPhone came out either. That shit was slow and unusable at the time, and locked to AT&T.
This thread is a couple months old at this point but I figured I’d reply anyway.
Maybe you had a different experience but I experienced this transition in middle/high school in west MI. The first Gen iPhone released in 2007. 3G was widespread and while that might be considered slow these days, it was state of the art speed at the time, so it wasn’t considered “slow and unusable”.
In 2007, kids my age didn’t have much tech beyond an iPod or MP3 player. By 2009, almost everyone had a smartphone. That was a huge leap in internet accessibility.
I’m 26, probably among the oldest of gen z. I love lemmy. The quality is higher here because the community is smaller. There are much less reports than there used to be on reddit.
Yeah Im like one of the youngest with an age of 14.But thats okay because lemmy is just awesome for me.
I mean, Reddit killed off ‘polished UX’ and that’s what drove me here. All the great 3PAs are on the Fediverse, after all!
My Soundblaster used IRQ 7. Why do I still know this.
Because when the great reset happens and VHS is hot shit again, you’ll be ready.
Ahh, the great modem connection sounds, letting you know that the internet was only just (roughly) 2 minutes away. Or longer.
56k4life
“No, I can’t come out tonight, I’m optimizing my
CONFIG.SYSfile so I can have a mouse AND my Soundblaster work at the same time!”I use Ivory for browsing Mastodon, and I’d bet that the app is more polished than any other first-party social media app.
The problem with Mastodon (and Lemmy to some extent) is that the onboarding process is not as straightforward, thus causing some friction for the less tech-savvy users.
Word! I feel active learning and feeding off one’s brain curiosity diminished for younger folx.
With that comes laziness to “set things up”. “OMG, it’s too complicated for me. I’m having a headache. I can’t, I just can’t.”
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Couldn’t agree more
We are used to Comfort and once you are used to it (or even never experienced else) its hard to lay it off for other benefits
Jeesus you made me feel older. Setting irq jumpers. Sigh
My take on this is not that this is the default early adopter demographic (bereal, TikTok, etc…cmon old dudes don’t act like we are “leading the charge”). But, there’s a good chunk of older tech oriented folks that see a glimmer of hope in the fediverse bringing back some bits of the “old web” imo.
While most of the people like me don’t love meta or Twitter it was kinda good enough, but Reddit was kind of a last straw. I was there when all these companies were born and at the time we were all teen and 20-something early adopters (believe it or not even Facebook used to be cool!) and we’ve watched them all slowly degrade. Very young folks prob don’t care as they don’t really use any of these services, but us old nerds want to avoid the pitfalls of the Web 2.0 era.
Web3 and the crypto-decentralization efforts were really ham fisted…I think most experienced techies saw through all the BS and recognized how wildly inefficient it all was, not to mention outright scammy in many cases. Fediverse is unproven but I think it has potential, and I think many of us older techies feel that way.
First thought when I read the title. Surprisingly, the early adopters of a new, not particularly user friendly tech platform are the same as people who use other niche technologies
You picked the thoughts out of my head, and worded it much better.
I gotta disagree with you on one point: Facebook was never cool.
If we’re talking efficiency, the fediverse isn’t particularly well optimized either. It’s just a trade off for decentralization.
Even as a crypto enthusiast, the web3 movement smelled like VC manure being dumped on a field hoping something grows.
While most crypto/web3 ended up being get rich quick schemes for their founders, I actually think that the main weakness of lemmy right now will be funding for the long term. So some sort of web3 type micropayment system may need to be the eventual alternative if you don’t want a reddit style ad infested experience.
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At work I’ve been thrust into a support function for some random system (I’m in analytics) and one of the roles I work with is fairly entry level, so lots of younger folk. I have been floored by some of the basic-ass shit I’ve walked them through. (Like explaining that you can copy and paste the url into a browser if the link isn’t clickable for whatever reason. Also had to clarify what url meant–is this not a common term anymore?) I had just assumed that because they’re younger and grew up with the internet, they’d smoke the hell out of me. But I guess interfaces are so streamlined these days many got away with never having to learn basic troubleshooting the same way I did as a millennial.
It’s because they grew up with it rather than actively learning it. UIs have started to hide the actual details, so the users don’t pick them up.
UIs have started to hide the actual details
This is what it’s really about. There’s no need to understand the nuts and bolts because now the software obfuscates all of that.
URL is very much an out of date term, as far as general use goes. People think in terms of “links”, and if they understand a little more they’ll likely respond to you talking about an “address”. Most of an entire generation only really interacts with these concepts through the streamlined methods of a phone or tablet interface, which have gone out of their way to hide scary concepts like the actual file system.
Source: late-model millenial
I used to play SMITE with a kid, and he didn’t really know anything computer related. It was a bit shocking to me since I always just expected that future generations would become more and more tech literate, but I think smartphones kind of screwed that.
Smartphones truly brought computing to the masses more than desktop OSs, and true, the majority of people have no idea what they’re doing. But… prior to smartphones they wouldn’t have been using a computing device at all.
Oh yeah absolutely. It just really baffled me he first time I had that sort of interaction with someone younger than me.
There will always be enthusiasts and nerds, but I rather thought that computer literacy would be more widespread than it turned out.
Me too. In the 90s, when word processing and then the internet went mainstream, I thought that that average people would finally learn basic computer concepts and stop acting like it was super-confusing… just simple things like, what is a file? What is an executable? How do I organize my system? At the most basic, how do I plug all the wires together to set a desktop up? (This one always drove me nuts because there is literally only one cord and socket that fit together for each component).
Instead we ended up with millions of people running Windows 98 with 8 viruses at once and a desktop full of icons, and nonsense like “I’m calling the Geek Squad to come to my house fix my PC!” or harassing the youngest person they know to fix it for them. I can’t count how many times I had to fix my mother or aunt’s computer, then someone would fuck it up again by downloading HottestAlbumListenNow.mp3.exe. The current situation with many people’s Android phones is about as horrifying, with 20 spyware casino apps at once, and they don’t even know where they got them from. Around 2010, I got so tired of my mother saying “my computer’s broken! can you fix it?” that I installed Linux on her machine, and it was somewhat confusing for her for a while as in “How do I get the photos from my camera?” but entirely ended the constant virus/spyware bullshit. Eventually she got a Chromebook, which had the same advantage vs. Windows.
It’s a shame to just have to dumb things down or hide complexity but I think the best choice to give the average person a system like ChromeOS or iOS that they simply can’t fuck up with viruses or spyware. People have demonstrated that they aren’t going to take the time to figure it out.
Ugh, that all sounds really familiar to me too. Boggles the mind that people can’t plug things in, it’s just a case of finding what cord goes from where, and which port it fits in. It’s really difficult to get it wrong. I think the thing I hated the most was being called over to literally read a dialogue. “I was working on my document and this popped up!!”
Do you want to save your document? (Yes/No)
Like please, just read what it says instead of freaking out every time something pops up!
Ha! I have the exact same issue with people and dialogues, like “Okay… did you read it? What did it say?” Somehow they don’t seem to understand that there are words on the screen which are there to tell them information.
I tried helping my ex brother in law over the phone and he couldn’t grasp the concept of right clicking. I told him to just hold on and I would help him when I was back in town.
I know he knows how to right click but when given the instruction to right click on something he somehow forgets what a right click is.
Before 3pa were banned on Reddit I tried to convince people to join Lemmy, and the general consensus was that it was “too complicated”
Its oversimplified but yet I feel like the new generation never had to understand tech basics prior to enjoying it.
It’s a good thing overall, but yeah… Might be a bit scary too
aka: early tech adopters!
these folk are always the ones trying new things, especially anti-corporate things. They aren’t keeping people away. this is just how the bleeding edge of new technology. The communities natural grow out over time as more people show up and start to outnumber them. But it’s thanks to them that niche new stuff gets supported in the first place while it builds up it’s audience (and reduces the friction to joining)
Without hobbyists most all new recreational activities just won’t take off. People don’t become professionals and things don’t become usable until those who have more passion and time than sense tackle it first.
In reddit’s early days, it was exactly like this. I remember that it felt like a Linux user forum, but with some conspiracy theorists. I actually feel that lemmy is a little more diverse than that.
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 thingsLemmy first time:
> open app > ????? > google how to use it > choose a... server? > ?????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.
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.
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.
I don’t think it’s necessarily the job of the developers, the main issue IMO is that there’s not enough involvement from other specialists such as designers in open-source communities.
Sometimes I try to help, but unfortunately not everyone is willing to listen. I’ve noticed there are multiple reasons why UI might be bad in a Free Software project:
- developers are not UI experts and they don’t know better
- developers are not UI experts and they don’t listen to experts or UI is not their priority
- the UI code is so bad that changing it would require rewriting most of the application and nobody has the time to do that, so there is nothing that can be done (this probably doesn’t happen in web apps)
I believe in Lemmy’s case it’s mostly the 2nd point.
IDK about Lemmy devs, but point 2 is so, so common. Making a point about UX or accessibility in 99% of FLOSS project discussion spaces is incredibly stressful; you can have user research, industry best practice, and years of experience on your side, but you’re inevitably met with dismissal and argument. Devs often treat designers as though they’re a bunch of artsy crystal-healing crusties, despite the fact that good UX people base their work on actual research and theory grounded in human behavior and psychology. (Calling use of basic design principles “eye candy” for example) Of course, if a dev makes a decision on technical grounds, it must be treated as scripture as far as any remaining designers on the project are concerned. It’s no wonder so many FLOSS projects have abominable UX.
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.
People need to know what an instance is. They need to know what defederating means too. They also need to know why the Fediverse is better than centralized alternatives, because otherwise they won’t care.
Can I ask you to educate me on why people need to know? I’m struggling to see your point. Surely people will benefit in some way from knowing how the Fediverse works under the hood, but not everyone needs to know, and as you can see this heavy emphasis on the Fediverse’s inner workings is, instead, turning people away.
People are just very used to having things magically work, and I think that it’s very natural for them to not want to deal with things that they need to make work. Many people never knew how Twitter or Reddit works under the hood, many never cared, but in the Fediverse it’s suddenly brought up as a necessary thing. And I just can’t see how that’s necessary thing to use such a tool. All I’m saying is that UX-wise, many apps in the Fediverse could feel more seamless.
I hear you on the Fediverse being better in many many cases, but I also feel like many of the Fediverse’s features are all but marketable to the average person. Add in the fact that people feel like there is a learning curve, and what you get is that people lose interest very fast.
In order to be able to choose an instance or change it in the future, a user needs to know what it is first. Maybe we could choose it for them randomly (would that be ethical?), but they still need to know where their account is hosted. If their instance gets defederaded by other instances, then they also need to know what defederation is and how it affects them. Those are just basics needed to fully use the Fediverse and the freedoms it gives you. I’m not saying that people should know exactly what ActivityPub protocol is and how it works. But they need to know the basics about how federation works. This is nothing complicated, so I don’t think I’m asking for much.
In centralized platforms users don’t have freedom, so they don’t have to worry about any of this. If they aren’t willing to learn a few basic things in order to have freedom, then there is nothing we can do for them. We can and should try to educate them, but many people don’t see a problem with being abused by corporations. This is not a new problem in software. It has existed for at least 30 years since the Free Software movement was created.
Lemmy has many UI and UX problems and they certainly need to be fixed. But it’s possible that decentralized platforms will always be more complicated to use than centralized ones. If people aren’t willing to learn how to use it, that’s a problem with them, not with this technology.
A few basic things? What are you talking about? Gen-Z doesn’t even know how to use a computer. We’re fucked!
It’s my very first day. There was a small learning curve, but then I just found memmy and it’s back to a normal Reddit like experience for me. Really not too hard at all.
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.
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.
that’s a common problem. kids don’t know how to use computers because they’re so used to using apps.
That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg
This place reminds me so much of early reddit. It’s been a strangely nostalgic experience so far. The part of that which I’m enjoying the most, is that commenters are more polite to each other as far as I’ve seen
Everyone writes in clear, concise and grammatically correct sentences too lol. It’s slightly surreal.
Yeah, and there are apps. I don’t have to drag out my laptop.
It’s always the ones who are willing to experiment a little who are the first adopters. We’re always looking for something better, and as a result we often are the first to arrive, and the first to leave, we browse for different reasons than just “going with the crowd”
That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg
This is what people always miss. Generally, sites become popular because niche subcultures form outside of the “big” websites as they no longer really serve their purpose of connecting to like minded individuals. They never “start big”, they generally snowball from small hardcore users to larger more generalized userbases over time.
I’m Gen Z, don’t use Linux, don’t know the first thing about programming (I know how to use file explorer though), and never intend to learn, and I’m here because I don’t wanna use the official Reddit app and because I’m convinced that the Fediverse is likely to become big in the future and I wanna be able to say I was here when it all began.
I know how to use file explorer though
What are the kids being taught that this is worth mentioning???
According to what I have heard, other elite hacker skills that are at risk of getting lost in the younger generations include searching on Google and using e-mail.
Gen-Z doesn’t even know there is more than one search engine.
Idk I just heard that apparently knowing how to use file explorer is considered impressive in modern CS classes
What in the actual fuck
Unfortunately, computer literacy seems surprisingly rare in the younger generations…
This is me as well. gen z, hate that trillion dollar corporations run our social media. The fediverse is the future.
gen z, hate that trillion dollar corporations run our social media.
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.
30 is just a baby. My son is 30. Im late 50’s.
I think older techies are just sick of all the bullshit regarding corporate aocial/web etc. A lot of us went to linux to escape windows hell for same reasons. Tech is abused to unfathomable levels so we do what we can to limit it.
I’m below 30, but I’m right there with ya. Even in my lifetime, I’ve seen enough stupid corporate shit.
I’m a younger tech nerd, but I do use linux.
I’m 36. I’m tired of everybody taking my money. I’m tired of corporations. I’m here to get away from that.
Same. 36 and tired of the dictatorship within these apps. God forbid you break a stupid rule
They went too far left. I left the plantation and god forbid ActivityPub just be left as a sacred place.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just your average Hollywood celebrity here to promote my new movie “Barbie”, only in theaters July 21st.
I like to think we’re all here like “hah hah, look it’s Margot Robbie” and in a wild turn of events, find out that it actually was all along
No one will ever believe you.
omg I’ve been noticed by the Margo Robbie ;)
There has to be at least one celebrity that would rather be surfing the fediverse than doing celebrity stuff with other hot celebrities. I would be shocked to find out it was Margot Robbie, but not shocked if it was Nicholas Cage.
Yeah, we did try to get Nic Cage to play a Barbie, but apparently there are roles that even he won’t do.
This is where the illusion falls apart because Nic Cage would totally play Barbie.
Yeah that’s what we all thought too, I for one was pretty disappointed.
Maybe you can ask him to play a Barbie in the sequel?
I know George Takei is on Mastodon, I’d love to see what celebs make it to Lemmy
I’m pretty sure it’s legit
If I wasn’t a tech nerd I would have given up on signing up for Mastodon and Lemmy. There is a lot of focus on how instances work and it seems a bit overwhelming. I had a lot of internal, ‘what if I make the wrong choice’, or ‘how can I move if I don’t like the community’ type questions. So being the nerd I am I researched the crap out of it and overwhelmed myself and said fuck it and just chose the popular instances since I know that I can move at a later date.
I personally think this format is favored by a lot of the demographic you mentioned. Most of us, I am generalizing here, grew up being active members in bulletin board systems. Then Reddit came along basically murdered the BB, but there was a good community to interact with. Now Reddit is basically unusable in my opinion because the community doesn’t care about the content or the people behind the screen. That brings us here. We learned so much of our trade, laughed a lot, and made real friendships on these types of system and it is a place a lot of us feel comfortable.
I’m not a tech nerd and still managed to figure it out. I can tell when something starts to suck and reddit did just that.
maybe we should stop calling them instances and start calling them proxies?
100% this
I’m a tech nerd and software engineer and even I struggled to figure out how to signup. Most people I know just want something that works. And those things tend to be centralized because of ease of use. The Fediverse isn’t easy to use, and makes the user make major decisions before even signing up or understanding the tech.
Eventually there should probably be account migration and a somewhat “central” account management instance that most users are on, with the option to migrate their user to other instances.
A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.
With federation it’s ensured that any single instance is only a small part of the whole, and that if any instance goes down (or worse, goes rogue and becomes a bad actor) then the impact of that is minimised. All users being registered on a single instance is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket.
I do totally understand from the perspective of new users that it’s hard to understand what to do or how to do it but that is a problem that could be better addressed with clearer onboarding. e.g “Choose any one of these recommended instances to sign up. It doesn’t matter which - you’ll be able to see the same content and communities across all of Lemmy no matter which you pick”*
*mostly, but close enough
Yeah, I think framing it similar to the old days might help, but I could be wrong. Like, you aren’t signing up for (just to web-equivalent) PHP Fusion or something, you’re signing up for your gaming clan’s forum, or your roleplay group, or your Canadian phreak BB. The difference with Lemmy is just that you also indirectly sign up to receive content from a lot of other places using the same protocol.
IMO, I think the framing/abstraction will make or break the future of the paradigm for mainstream consumption. Not to get into another repeat of the EEE discussion, but assuming nothing nefarious from something like Threads, that would mean people start an account there and then find a niche group with their friends to go hang out on instead.
I also have to push back against the pushback against the paradigm going mainstream, because again IMO a move back toward decentralized platforms is really important for the future of the internet and quite frankly the global economy.
Just editing to expand, but I think maybe there’s a problem in framing Lemmy or Mastodon as communities in themselves, because it really conflicts with the model of instancing and email that is being used to describe them.
Maybe I’m am outlier but I’m 21 and here.
Same. And I’m also not a Linux user, I’m a Windows normie. Though I definitely do work in tech.
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I don’t want to stereotype anyone, but in my own social experience, younger groups don’t give a shit about corporate monopolies or privacy, they just want things to work fast and automatically (ex: TikTok). And those I know in older brackets are still on Facebook and complaining that they don’t want to deal with change because their family/business/workflow would be affected.
I happen to be 38, a linux user, and a gamer. And I concur that my age-group has just always seemed to be more open to new technologies for some reason.
I think younger people don’t give a shit about privacy because they grew up in a post 9/11 surveillance world. Facebook, Instagram and the internet at large became a giant surveillance machine and they’ve never known another possibility, so it’s normalized to them.
The Fediverse is the Linux of the social media world. Normal people don’t know it exists, but it will shape the inner workings of the platform(s) that will be popular in the future.
