No. Next question

This is the big downside to the Reddit implosion. I liked that Reddit had finally attracted normal people. If I want to know what a 30 year old dweeby white guy thinks about stuff, I’ll ask myself.

It takes a while for stuff like this to catch on outside of this specific demographic.

People who don’t care as much about tech aren’t going to bother to figure out the fediverse right now. It’s way too confusing, but Instagram/twitter/threads/reddit is right there.

Once a few apps get going on iOS and Android, and once it becomes way easier to join a server, then we’ll see normal people start trickling in.

More demographics will come, it takes time. That and people who are willing to break from the habits of flocking to the next big corporation built social media network for something smaller, but more meaningful.

I'd rather agree about mastadon, but not about Lemmy. I've seen people from (I assume) ~20 up to 40+. For example, I'm around 27 and I have few friends who were using Lemmy for almost a year now, they're in their early 20s.

But yes it's mostly nerds.

40-ish M. Potentially, we’re/they’re more likely to have been using 3rd party apps and felt frustration with the Reddit decision in the first place. Younger users (and maybe older, 50-60+) maybe just started off with the official Reddit app or Reddit is a smaller part of their “content diet” vs other platforms, so they don’t really see what the big deal is.

If true, it’d be kind of an interesting demographic shift, since the last time we probably saw something like that was with Facebook when younger people moved away from it when it became boomer territory, so maybe the opposite is happening with Reddit, with middle/older more tech-savvy users jumping ship, but I’ve no real evidence.

Hasnt internet started like that?

No man, I'm 20 and I'm using this site

• 28 (fail)
• Game Programmer (pass)
• Windows user (fail)

Younger people and casual Reddit users never left Reddit. People who were ok with still using old.reddit didn't leave Reddit. When I first joined Lemmy.ml during the blackout, the website struggled to load, the communities were hard to find or non existent, and there wasn't much content (compared to Reddit).

Now that Reddit is dead to me, Lemmy has filled the doomscroll void. I do much less of it now. Also, Lemmy is growing in the right directions.

Younger people may be more affected by social pressure, to be on the already popular apps.

✅ ✅ ✅ - that's me :P

I had been on Lemmy before, but since there was much more activity on Reddit I didn't stick with it. Now that more communities are flourishing on the fediverse early adopters are jumping on, and if ethe growth is stable and communities have activity (not just subscribers or visitors) to rival other spaces, I think diversity will grow. It only takes a relatively small number of active users to create a strong community

Older tech nerdsn are the pioneers of new and open technologies like fediverse and smolnet, because they are smart enough and care enough about technological principles/philosophies to use them. As the services grow they begin to reach a phase where it attracts reactionary people who are looking actively for alternatives to mainstream services ru n by corporations. This tends to be fanatical people who think capitalism/global economic system bad, or the very vocally queer. Then if it manages to grow even further, say from an exodus of users from a competing service, the normal people finally come and attract more normal people with far more varying discussion interest besides conputer technogy, spewing debates on political/economic ideas, and being gay.

I feel a little bit called out with this, indeed 31 years old, tech enthusiast, I am an IT-tech and I use both Windows and Linux as desktops and servers. 😆 Maybe it's just because I remember how much better the internet used to be in some ways.

• check
• check
• check

From what I see on Local we are

Trans Old Young Gay Straight Nerds Furries Porno addicts

I use a mac.

Only 2 of those 3 (age, linux)
If you ever had to configure your xorg.conf to not set your monitor on fire, the fediverse isn't very complicated

I'm 20, but if this is the case, and I've heard a lot of people saying Gen Z is not that good with technology though I haven't seen anything verifying that, then that's a bit terrifying, honestly. ~Strawberry

I'm 28, Linux user, tech worker, pretty much called me out

Even young people who aren't techies are clueless about more advanced stuff. The theory that old people don't understand technology because they didn't grow up with it is wrong

30yr+, tech enthusiast, linux user... these are all the same thing XD

I am 45 and you can say a tech enthusiast. I've never worked in tech but I have always wanted to but never took that chance. I feel like I'm too old to start now.

There are a few things keeping users away - the perceived complexity and the sign up process and understanding how it all works, and the fact that it's a "new" site that is trying to replace reddit when many don't feel any need to leave reddit. That's the big one, and a big part of why the population here is made up of who it is.

The younger people that just use reddit as a meme site and for insta thots and porn either don't know or don't care about the API changes, didn't use a third party app so don't care that they're gone, and were oblivious to the whole protest. It's basically back to normal over on reddit now, so nothing changed for them and they don't have a reason to join here.

I'm 30+, a tech enthusiast dev, but I don't use Linux.