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?

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[–] krayj 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For several weeks straight, the 'official' lemmy app, Jerboa, wouldn't even connect to Lemmy.world due to the difference of a minor version number, and when beehaw.org de-federated, many of the communities I was subscribed to just ceased updating and I could no longer participate in them. This is a major problem for people who don't have a deep understanding of how federation works and is implemented. Common users shouldn't need to have deep understanding of technology to be able to use it. This is a massive hurdle that lemmy will have to overcome if it is to be adopted by more than just tech geeks.

It's not as simple as you make it out to be...I can't tell if you are just being willfully ignorant or if you like arguing from the point of a wrong/bad position just for the sake of arguing here, but it's not simple and easy yet for your common non-technical reddit user...and it has to be before it sees more adoption among that group.

[–] andobando 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No I am saying to me it seems like the vast majority of confusion for new users is giving them this super long detailed explanation of federation, and/or users trying to figure out which instance they should be joining. As a new user all you really have to know is to go on lemmy.world and signup and its just like reddit.

What I said is what I've done and have had zero to worry about.

Yeah thats fair on your communities disappearing. Not really a common things thats happening though, and not something youd really notice until you used it for a while.

[–] krayj 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay, well that's a fair point, but I'll point out that communities disappearing is a lot more common than you think. For example, the single largest "Technology" community in the entire fediverse was the one hosted on beehive - a LOT of lemmy.world users were subscribed to that when it suddenly just ceased working correctly for them. That's just one example of many.

When it does just stop working like that, there's two perspectives an end user can have: a) they are new/novice users who just signed up for lemmy.world as you describe and shit just started breaking for apparently no reason which makes them think this junk is unreliable and broken, or b) they have an in-depth knowledge/understanding of how federation works and and understanding of why it broke.

Just ushering users into lemmy.world and giving them the expectation that it's just like reddit is setting them up for dissatisfaction. That is, in fact, exactly how my introduction to the fediverse/lemmy worked. I signed up, started subscribing to popular stuff without really understanding how any of it worked, and then shit just started breaking. Is that really the experience you think former reddit users should have or are expecting?