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?

  • illah@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How much do you know about the inner workings of an internal combustion engine, yet do you still drive?

    It’s a good thing imo that we’ve abstracted away the complexity of tech to make it more usable. It was a pain in the ass before (so says one of the “old” techies on lemmy haha)

    • PixelProf@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I agree with this, but we’d need to draw lines in the analogy. For example, my CS students struggle with downloading and installing a program and don’t know how to locate find files that they’ve saved in a text editor. We’d be concerned if the people driving didn’t know where their turn signal was, hah.

      A lot of students grew up using Chromebooks as their primary computer, so they’re largely limited to app stores and web browsers.

    • RAK@fosstodon.org
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      1 year ago

      > How much do you know about the inner workings of an internal combustion engine, yet do you still drive?

      A fair bit from a theoretical perspective, actually. I’ve got a copy of Fundamentals of Motor Vehicle Technology on my shelf and I figure 50 years ago, I’d have been one of those people taking apart and putting together a motorcycle engine during the summer instead of figuring out how computers worked.