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?
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
To be honest, I’m still not sold on federation, and that’s going to be a huge hurdle to overcome with the general public.
Does anyone know of any Game Theory-esque analysis of how late-stage Fediverse is supposed to work? What’s the end game? What happens to the Fediverse with all the different kinds of players involved at this point?
I see each topic having their own instance, a giant web of interest connected content servers… I’ll call it, the internet 😄 For real though, this shit feels like the old days back in the 90s ♥️