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?
It’s about as complicated as choosing an email provider.
Yeah, you can go with gorillamail, or just go with gmail/outlook like everyone who doesn’t have a specific reason not to.
If you suggest to a new user anything other than choosing a big name instance, you’re part of the problem.
Regular users are going to learn by experience, not theory.
I’ve spent all day trying to figure out the fediverse and I’ve read “it’s just like email” about a hundred times. 😒
Yeah, you probably don’t understand how email providers work either. You just use it and don’t ask questions.
I do understand how email providers work, and Lemmy is not just like them. Stop saying this.
Ok.
You can’t post to Twitter from Facebook or vice versa, but if Facebook and Twitter were part of the Fediverse, then you could. Does that help?
Not to the average person, no. The fact that you have to explain this at all is the problem.
We could sit here and speculate about what makes sense to the average person all day, but at the end of the day it wouldn’t amount to anything without evidence to back it up…user studies or something like that.
What I’m asking is does it make sense to you?
No, your analogy is not accurate. If Facebook and Twitter were part of the Fediverse, you might be able to post to one from the other, or you might not, depending on whether one had defederated from another other or not.
To extend the poor email analogy, it would be as if you had a Gmail account and tried to email a friend on Outlook, but you couldn’t because Outlook refused to accept emails from any Gmail address, but you could get through to them if you sent it from a Yahoo address instead.
I don’t understand your issue. It 100% could work that way as Microsoft could simply block Gmail requests because, I don’t know, let’s say they are constantly receiving malware from Gmail servers in attachments.
Email from Gmail to Outlook would fail but email from Gmail to Yahoo to Outlook would not as Yahoo to Outlook is not blocked.
It isn’t a perfect analogy. I doubt that any analogy is. I regard defederation as an advanced topic, though, and it isn’t necessary to understand it to grasp the basics.