I just joined Lemmy and so far I’m enjoying it. It’s a little bit sparse in terms of content and users, but I think it has a really cool structure, and it feels more human than certain other social media sites.
I’m curious to know what users think about who is welcome here. Do you think it should be gates open, everyone including your aunt should join, or is it more exclusive to people interested in the fediverse as a starting point? Or something else?
Not trying to stir up shit, just genuinely curious about what the vibe is and where the community thinks it is or should be going.
It would be great if it could become a virtually universal social media eventually, but for its quirks to be understood by everyone, some critical mass of first adopters must understand the fediverse. So I think the fediverse will self-select for technically knowledgeable people at first before eventually becoming accessible to the public, not by any fault of its own but by virtue of having been around long enough and grown enough of a community to attract the average person from traditional social media.
I also think there are different instances and communities for people with different priorities. People interested in the ideas behind the fediverse can congregate on lemmy.ml (because that’s where Lemmy’s developers are, right?) and in FLOSS communities, etc., while people looking for a social network that won’t use them for profit can flock to region-specific instances, etc.
R****t felt like the place for tech savvy people when I first joined a decade and a half ago (I feel old now). It was confusing and I had no idea how to use it but the content was better than 9gag which was hugely popular at the time. Felt the same way about the fediverse half a year ago. Now it’s all natural to me.