In a poll on hexbear (see link), it was observed that there are very few cis women on Lemmy. I think this is the intersection of several problems:

  • engagement of women on Reddit was always low
  • fewer women in computer science
  • I’m hesitant to recommend anything fediversy to people who don’t tinker with computers like I do and thus might need a more handholdy UX.

I gather that transgender people tend to be more into CS, though I don’t see why that explains entirely such an astonishing presence of the transgender community on Hexbear.

Anyway, I just thought I’d open the floor to brainstorming.

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    I think my instance is now defed’d from hexbear, but when it wasn’t, they were the reason I wouldnt recommend lemmy to my partner. Their “trolling” was pure obnoxiousness.

    The other major issue I think is the lack of moderation, lemmy just isnt a very pleasant space. There are still issues with spam. The CSAM incident a while back hasnt been repeated, but I have no reason to beleive it cant/wont happen again. Porn seems to hit All every so often.

    With an agressively curated block list Lemmy can be nicer, but by default it just isnt.

    Here is an idea for dissection: There should be a default blocklist that instances can provide and update. Defederation is too coarse a tool, but if instances (or third parties?) could provide a list of “bad” instances, “bad” communities and “bad” users that are used as the default blocklist. Users are free to opt out of the blocklist, but with a sane default lemmy could be a lot safer. (Or maybe not, im no expert)

  • livus@kbin.social
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    1 month ago

    Worth noting that’s Hexbear not Lemmy as a whole. Hexbear has a unique culture.

    To answer the question, the way you attract openly cis women is create spaces where they are definitely not bullied, trolled, and stalked. The fediverse is young and has relatively few mod tools.

    There are plenty of cis women on mastodon as far as I can see.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    The Lemmy.ca survey in the new year showed similar observations.

    Not sure if it’s just the thread format (perhaps mastodon and misskey have a less skewed share), the fact it’s an anonymous platform, or the other factors you talked about.

    How to get more diversity? Idk tbh, definitely we should ask people from minority groups for more ideas.

    Only thing I can think of: certain communities could transplant themselves over that discuss topics that you don’t currently see much around here that would draw broader interest from other groups.