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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[–] BURN 41 points 1 year ago (12 children)

100% this

I’m a tech nerd and software engineer and even I struggled to figure out how to signup. Most people I know just want something that works. And those things tend to be centralized because of ease of use. The Fediverse isn’t easy to use, and makes the user make major decisions before even signing up or understanding the tech.

Eventually there should probably be account migration and a somewhat “central” account management instance that most users are on, with the option to migrate their user to other instances.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (8 children)

A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.

With federation it's ensured that any single instance is only a small part of the whole, and that if any instance goes down (or worse, goes rogue and becomes a bad actor) then the impact of that is minimised. All users being registered on a single instance is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket.

I do totally understand from the perspective of new users that it's hard to understand what to do or how to do it but that is a problem that could be better addressed with clearer onboarding. e.g "Choose any one of these recommended instances to sign up. It doesn't matter which - you'll be able to see the same content and communities across all of Lemmy no matter which you pick"*

*mostly, but close enough

[–] gxgx55 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A central account instance rather defeats the point of a federated system.

Does it? Would it not be possible for a minimal global account system to exist, which ONLY handles logging in and identity? Any user-related data could still exist in instances, not centralized.

I am pretty new to this type of system so maybe I am wrong but it does seem like both the biggest barrier to wider adoption and rather solvable: in current terms, imagine if the "login" instance had no communities, only account log in, while other instances have no log in, but integrate the "central" one. In case decentralization is wanted, I think it'd be possible to have multiple "login" type instances exist in a consensus, at which point problems and solutions start looking similar to cryptocurrency, but without the need to deal with "currency" or any of those ethical landmines - it'd just need to do the task of multiple instances agreeing to dataset of existing users.

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

Does it make sense to fave one central e-mail account management server? Email is a federated system, though it's becoming less federated all the time.

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