Fediverse

I'm almost 48. My profession: foreign languages and literature. I have had a computer since I was 7 years old. I know how to use Linux and I have played video games all my life. I know a little code. I'm good with computers. A lot of people my age in my profession are not all that good with computers. They think they are because they can make a PowerPoint presentation or took a class on how to use a spread sheet as a grade book. So, I don't know, I don't think everyone on here are older tech nerds, so it's not exclusive to them. They could be the majority, though. Am I a nerd? Yes. But a different type of nerd. I speak three languages and read six. I can diagram a sentence and correct peoples' grammar and vocabulary in my sleep. I know all about literature from the 16th and 17th centuries. I play video games and I like technology enough, but it does not consume my life. Are there lots of people on here like me? I don't know. I DO know that I've interacted with a lot of younger people on here. To understand how to use this new type of social media you have to understand technology pretty well. It isn't for people who just want to tap or click on stuff that "just works." You need a basic understanding of how decentralized social networks function to be able to navigate it and you have to have patience with things that might slow down or do strange things every once in a while. There are lots of people my age that would not have the patience to learn how to use this space on the internet. In a lot of ways, they are very similar to the stereotypes of "average twenty-somethings" I've seen mentioned in this thread. No worries about privacy. In some cases, perfectly happy with their privacy being invaded because they want to see ads related to products they would buy. I also enjoy shopping. It's fun. I don't like ads, though.

27yo tech enthusiast and worker and linux user here

I started back in the Wild West BBS days on the 80s; graduated to USENET in the 90s, website forums in the Web 1.0 days, /., Reddit, and now Lemmy. Yeah, I’ve been around. Been “Yaztromo” all that time too.

I don’t mind that “Eternal September” hasn’t infected this space yet — that’s a feature, not a bug!

I've just blocked the linux communities. I quite liked Linux when I still had reason to use it, but it's just not something I care to see so frequently when scrolling the FP. Just keep blocking the /c/ you don't want and eventually you'll have a curated list of posts you want to see. But maybe i'm just old, ya young bastard. :p

Yeah... We rule... :-)

I'm actually quite a bit younger than that. I was very much into stocks but got scammed in the GME fiasco when they disabled the buy button and got into Monero (at least I know beforehand that crypto is manipulated as fuck). Monero lead to FOSS and now I run a xmr node, i2p node, lemmy instance, selfhost cool stuff, etc. I learned a lot of stuff this way.

There is natural overlap in ideology between the fediverse and FOSS (Free and Open Source Software so including Linux). The same principles apply like building something together without big corporations*. But that does lead to a rather narrow demography I'm afraid.

* I know a lot of big corporations ARE involved in the Linux kernel but I'm talking about the various distros in case of Linux.

I feel seen by this post.

I've literally just signed up because of the Reddit policy changes killing off third-party apps, and I'm already confused by some of the conversations on here about the "fediverse" and some stuff about Threads and EEE (whatever that is).

I'm just like, I wanted an alternative to Reddit, what the hell is all this? 😂 Even signing up to this was confusing and I consider myself more tech-savvy than most. I think the process needs to be made simpler to encourage more ex-redditors to sign up.

I have a statistical pool of 1, but I am 40 something, an infra specialist at a video game publisher and use Linux. So, I suppose you just described me

Yes, and I'm loving it.

My 15 yo ass

Have you not seen the hundreds of nsfw and furry categories created immediately upon accessing the fediverse? I don't think tech nerds over 30 are the lion's share of adopters. It's the fucking weird and critically horny.

Not exactly but I feel like those are my people nevertheless

Signing up and commenting on Lem should be made stupid simple so that masses can flock here instead. ANY friction in between will result in no action taken. Also more Google searche algos with Lemmy will greatly help.

Woah now, who said people over 30 are old? 😮

Anyway, your average internet user in 2023 wants to sign in to a platform with ease (preferably using one tap sign in with their Facebook/Google/whatever account).

They also want that one platform to have everything, in an easy to access and digest format, without having to learn complex rules about how a system works.

The days of needing to understand a bunch of stuff to use the latest social media service are gone, and if we build a website/service that requires us to know and understand more complex stuff, and add more barriers to entry, and MOST IMPORTANTLY if we split it up in to a thousand little corners instead of having it all in one place? People will shy away.

Another issue is consistency. People, myself included, want consistency and accountability. I want the people running the platform to be publicly known figures/companies that are accountable for the platform and how they run it, but with this fediverse stuff, it can be run by any anonymous person, who could be doing anything with the private data in our account back ends. And that could be the case hundreds of times over, with all sorts of groups, from all around the world.

There's no accountability, no way to ensure they're meeting requirements of our laws. It's all very untrustworthy and wild west.

That's fine for some people, but the majority of normal users? They want security, they want safety, they want simple ease of use.

I was going to say I don't use Linux, but I just noticed I have a Linux partition on my window 10 machine - and I have no idea how it got there.

Hmm, not sure. But I’m in my 20s and I love to advocate for privacy and decentralization.

The fediverse is mostly full of FOSS enthusiasts, which happens to heavily include linux users.

That's what attracted me to the fediverse in the first place, all the linux people.

The old people are people who grew up before Facebook and corporate social media, as such have no loyalty to said platforms.