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?

  • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    IMO things would work a lot more smoothly if the official website had a button that made an inversely weighted random selection from the top 20-50 “general purpose” instances and just sent you straight to their site or signup pages. To those who are unwilling to do extensive research, picking from the list they have is basically just choosing randomly anyway.

    • Pleonasm@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I think this is not really inline with the philosophy of the main Lemmy devs. For this to happen, I think someone else would have to do the work of creating the random selection service. If it was popular enough, maybe they’d put a link on join-lemmy.org

      • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Well, they already have a list if popular instances and even curate a few “recommended” instances on top of that. Giving the option to pick one randomly automatically doesn’t seem like a stretch.

    • fututio_enjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      There are differences between the servers, though. Instead of picking randomly, it should ask you a few questions about what you value and what you intend to do.

      I made this account to look at NSFW stuff, for instance. I had read that lemmy.world was the biggest server and it checked all the boxes of allowing NSFW content, downvotes, community creation, etc.. “OK, should be fine.” Only after trying it out did I realize that all NSFW thumbnails are blurred and you have to manually open each one, and lemmynsfw.com has a patch to fix that. So if you’re making an account for that purpose, it should recommend that server.

      Likewise, the admins of different servers have different goals and rules. beehaw is expressly created to oppose rationalism(???), for instance, and disabled downvotes and has heavy moderation of things that don’t fit the admins’ beliefs. The Lemmy sign-up process should give examples of the kinds of things that have been banned/moderated and ask if that’s your thing or not your thing.

      It should be kind of like https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/

      (Also, server administration costs matter? Servers that are hosting lots of images will be more expensive to run. If you’re consuming all that content with an account on another server, is that fair?)

      • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You make some good points. A more complicated chooser could be a good idea. I just went for something simple.

      • carbotect@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I think that beehaw guy was more against the “DESTROYED by FACTS and LOGIC” culture, that you see among self-proclaimed “rationalists”, that use half-baked and deceptive statistics and half-truths to mask their hate and pride behind a facade of fairness and logic to be more appealing to normal people.

        “Rationalism” is weird and misguided way to describe this for sure tho.

        The moderation aspect is mostly irrelevant imo. Most recommended instances allow any content. NSFW and politics are the two major faultlines here.

        For NSFW, make a second account on lemmynsfw. Most people on reddit also typically don’t use their main account to watch porn, so this is reasonable I think.

        For politics, all general purpose instances are mostly fine, so you probably don’t even need a second account for that.

        If you have extremely passionate political views tho, then another account specialized towards your brand of politics is probably needed. Normal people don’t want to read posts romanticising or denying genocides, concentration camps or gulags after all.

        Redditors making political posts are likely no stranger to getting banned anyways, and are used to creating new accounts constantly, so having one more account is probably not a big deal.

        I personally got banned so many times on the r/AskMiddleEast sub for believing that democracy and secularism are good things and that war is bad. Someone even made a poll there and almost every user of that sub had been banned at least once (even the mods ban each other). That sub made me realize that online politics is a waste of time, but that’s a different topic.