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?
There are nice lists of servers, like at join lemmy and awesome lemmy instances at github. Though I will agree that going through decision making at the very beginning of the dive into the lemmy might be detracting. Even as a rather tech savvy person I did use lemmy read-only for some time, as I could not make decision which instance to choose :)
Just a sidenote, I think it’s funny that the topic of Lemmy mainly being used by tech nerds is partly explained with the barrier to entry of picking an instance, and you seem to suggest the barrier is lessened in any meaningful way by a list on Github of all things.
Well, I wouldn’t say that the problem is lessened by a list on the Github, it was just me happy that it even exists. All because oftentimes there is simply no meaningful documentation behind some things I have to work with :)
It will probably be easier if there was default “simple registration mode”, where it just guides you through registration on one of the static or random “general purpose multilingual instance”. And “advanced mode”, where you are supplied with lists and you are on your own.
I am software developer and even I was confused with the choice of servers. At least at the beginning. Also, I dont think manuals (with explanations which server to choose) are great solution either. At least not when you start using it.
As I understand there is currently no option to migrate your account between instances. Probably if this is implemented then the burden of the instance choice becomes light