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 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.
I think most common people are accustomed to “being fed”, rather than exploring for themselves. That’s why most of the original platforms were just getting copy pastes from other platforms. Originality requires effort.
I personally have been looking at lemmy thinking what’s new… Only to realise that maybe it’s time “I” create that new. :=
I am a former senior web developer and head of a web-based software company, I know how to use the internet. That is not why I use apps. I use apps because they fit into my phone’s ecosystem much better than websites. The flow I’ve illustrated is the most commonly adopted, as others in the reply thread have pointed out.
As a backend developer I know that it’s all servers under the hood, but that’s not what the internet is. It hurts to say it, but the frontend matters more in that regard. Probably the most used frontend these days is apps, so the internet is apps. Websites are still widely used and indispensable so they are also the internet. Apps and websites are both the internet, just on different usecases.