I feel like 75% of Mastodon are people talking about Linux. If you don’t care about Linux you feel alienated. I enjoy Mastodon and Lemmy, but the lack of more diverse subjects gets to me if I browse for too long.
Update: I took your advice and purchased a laptop for Linux, and now I care about it! Problem solved.
But it is really important. If you don’t care about free software, what’s stopping you from going back to reddit?
You’re missing the point…
Having reason to stay on this platform is completely dependent on wanting the advantages of FOSS. Of course people like to talk about FOSS here.
If there is another point in this thread I don’t see it
Yeah but if that’s pretty much ALL that people talk about, then it just exists to perpetuate itself essentially, and what’s the point of that? There needs to be diversity, or the platform will never grow substantially.
Yes, diversity is good. Talking about FOSS is also good.
I don’t think the conversations about FOSS take room away from other topics, they can coexist. So let’s aim for bringing in more diverse topics instead of turning down FOSS topics
That’s fair!
I do care about free software. If the fediverse never grows beyond discussion about tech, free software and shitposts I will still use it. But if Lemmy/Mastodon only ever got traction on posts about particle physics, I’d ignore it because I don’t really understand or care about that.
I also want this and other fediverse platforms to grow. And I think that even non-tech people care about FOSS concepts even if they can’t articulate it. People want to feel like their privacy is respected and they want to feel like their favorite platforms are democratic in control. So I think the fediverse will continue to grow and grow. It’ll take a while for us to grow out of the niche tech phase though.