1y ago

Beehaw's Demographics survey of June 2023!

Compiling this data was not as hard as I expected, let's go through the data and the shiny graphs!

Age of Beeple

Most are above 24! Seems we got an older average age compared to a lot of social media. It would be interesting to see how many came here with experiences from independent forums before Reddit.

Where Beeple reside

This one's a big graph. Though we can notice most people are from the US. Would be nice to see more countries represented though a big part of it likely has to do with language. (You will need to open the big graph in another tab, it's too big to show properly.)

Gender identity of Beeple

So, as expected, mostly men. However, less than expected which is nice to see. There should be outreach to at least equalize this.

Sexual orientation of Beeple

This is kinda surprising. It seems we managed to get a lot more LGBTQ+ people than expected considering most of you all come from Reddit - so this is nice to see. This is most likely because of our focus on a safe space.

Whiteness of Beeple

As expected, mostly white which is unfortunate. I think there's outreach to be done in that regard as well.

Neurodivergence of Beeple

We seem to have a really surprising amount of neurodivergent people! Definitely nice to see.

Beeple with disabilities

I.. have no idea how to interpret this data so I'll just say, shiny graph.

Beeple's awareness of the Fediverse

Most knew about the fediverse but still a good 20% had not heard about it so glad to see you all managed to find your way here!

How Beeple have been dealing with Beehaw

It seems most people feel relatively confident in their ability to use Beehaw and most people seem to enjoy it. That makes me really happy to see. Feels rewarding, feels good.

Conclusion

I wanna thank everyone for the feedback about the survey and its questions - we'll do better next time! I'm glad we did this survey because it shows the areas to work on in terms of outreach! Thank you all for your participation!

151 comments

I just want to pipe in and and say thank you for caring about diversity. Lots of discourse here about how that's hostile to white people. In my opinion purposefully misinterpreting "unfortunate" to mean "white people not welcome" is a perfect representation of why WHY diversity matters.
Because as a POC it's clear to me that there are valid reasons why a white-dominated community can be... Uncomfortable. Like the very comments here that push back and pretend that race isn't a issue and that POC are racist ones for caring about it. Not bothering at all to understand where it's coming from and why it matters.
Edit: I didn't write this at first but I can't bite my tongue anymore. White people who get hositle over this have suffered from main character syndrome for way too long. You feel unwelcome because some online community simply wants more diversity? Why is it that in your mind one more POC means one less white person? Speaks more about your world view than anything else.
I've felt unwelcome my entire life because people resent my intrusion into their white bubbles. The whole point of Beehaw is that it's inclusive. I'm a snowflake who wants her safe space.
- In my opinion purposefully misinterpreting “unfortunate” to mean “white people not welcome” is a perfect representation of why WHY diversity matters.
  it's a good indicator we are going to continue to ask that question on the survey forever, for what that's worth. very clearly a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" question because oh god, some of the responses here
  
  I'm so glad that the mods aren't getting steamrolled into submission. I was having a bad mental health day today and some of these comments really bothered me. Immediately my reddit-trained mind was like, oh, you dumbass snowflake. Touch grass.
  But then I was like, fuck, the whole reason I'm on Beehaw is because it's supposed to be different here. Thanks for continuously affirming my belief in it 👍
  
  I'd like to respectfully ask that you don't hide behind the excuse of people acting in bad faith. I think that section, as written, is actually difficult to interpret in good faith. The charitable interpretation of it is that we need to be intentionally welcome and aware of POC in the community, but that is just factually not what that sentence says. It just says that it's unfortunate most of the people here are white. It just seems like an intentionally inflammatory way of phrasing the meaning.
- Thank you for writing this!
  As a straight white male it's a bit hard to feel your words carry any weight in discussions like this.
  I'm here trying to be an ally to ant decent human being who might feel they need one! <3
  
  I actually think your words carry a lot of weight, both bad and good. As an ally you can advocate for and support. As a POC it can be exhausting to always have fight. You can't live our lives but you can help carry the torch when we're too tired to do so. And other white people care more about what you have to say.
  The reality is as a white man you have outsized power. You can use that to dismiss and berate, or you can use it to understand and support. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for doing the latter. Your words are extremely important in this discussion.
- As a fellow snowflake, I've got your back.
  
  A bunch of snowflakes makes a blizzard ;)

Love seeing the results from the survey, and also love the word “beeple.”
- Beeple is also an amazing 3d digital artist

What is 'white' exactly and why is it unfortunate?
Where I am from, we don't make these distinctions on the color of a person. That and the fact that unless we are quantifying somehow the 'shade' of the skin color it's impossible to make any serious category.
I've always thought that the way americans divide people by color is really dumb and very antiquated, even bordering immorality.
I wouldn't bring that for future statistics. I don't understand why race is important in a medium where we can't see each others.
- I'm white, and I just took that to mean they'd like to see more diversity. As in, it's not unfortunate that members are white so much as unfortunate they haven't attracted more diverse representation (if I'm right, I do think it could have been worded better).
  And to be clear, in contexts like this, no one is dividing people "by color," but by experience. While race may be largely imaginary biologically, it has been and continues to be a major variable related to a person's economics, education, housing, etc. due to the external factors that do treat race as significant (i.e., as an American, we have historically and systemically discriminated against non-white people in pretty much every facet of civic and social life).
  That stuff matters to...a lot of people. But it's not at the expense of white people--we can all be happy to see diversity in our communities. It's a net gain for everyone.
  
  Yes - I'm white as well. It's more so that I want to see more diverse representation because I believe that a majority white (also majority men) tends to push out people of colour as they will be a minority group.
  For example, if a thread about abortion (an issue that affects mostly women) was filled with men talking about it - it's unlikely that a women would want to comment there. I believe the same would apply with a majority of people being white in a thread about BLM for example.
  I think it could've been worded better but I didn't really think about the wording of these much at all.
  
  I understand.
  I guess part of me wanted to get away from the same pervasive US politics that's plaguing reddit. I had hopes that maybe we wanted to build a less american community and more inclusive of other points of view but it seems we are going to fall back to the same thing here.
- I don't understand why race is important in a medium where we can't see each others.
  Because people bring their personal experiences, histories, and identities to every discussion. Having a folks with a range of different experiences and identities contributing, imo, greatly benefits discussions; I want to hear multiple perspectives on an issue (within reason of course - I'm not interested in engaging with racists, transphobes, fascists, etc., for obvious reasons). If a community is very one-sided (ex. Mostly white folks, mostly men, and so on) how can I curate a well-balanced perspective on a given topic? I only know what I know, and if everybody around me is coming from a similar background and we're all saying the same shit - what kind of discussion is that?
  
  Good point, but then you are generalizing about 'white' men like they are all the same and they all have the same point of view.
  And by saying that it's unfortunate that the majority of users are 'white' it looks as if they wished these users weren't here.
- That's a lot of words for you to say you literally have zero understanding how the lived experience of people of color is very different.
  Beehaw wants to be better than reddit, which was mostly straight white men voices at the detriment of everyone else. It's really dishonest as even in the EU the loved experience of people of color is different.
  It's really ignorant and narrow-minded of you as white people are a minority worldwide but the majority in wealth and tech. A space that celebrates people of color is rare and why oh fucking why do you HAVE to make it about you?
- What is ‘white’ [...] Where I am from, we don’t make these distinctions on the color of a person. That and the fact that unless we are quantifying somehow the ‘shade’ of the skin color it’s impossible to make any serious category.
  i absolutely promise that your country does, whether you are conscious of that or not. whiteness, in any case, is a social construct (and even if it wasn't, race and ethnicity are also basically arbitrary) so you're not going to ever get a singular, satisfactory answer on this. the whole point at a sociological level is that it's an amorphous, hegemony-based category that transcends political barriers and basically divides the world into "haves" and "have-nots". it doesn't make sense because it can't ever, it's arbitrary, and it's not a "serious" category because it's not really intended to be.
  unfortunately, on that basis it's also the single most important (and unambiguous) descriptor of one's racial identity in a global context--so we're kind of locked into using it here because it is actually really important to know what our community looks like, and we don't literally want to use American census groupings.
  
  So are you saying 23andme is lying about my ancestry
  
  I meant that there is no official sanctioned discrimination (but of course there is racism in my country). If I remember correctly, in the US you have documents where you have to write your ethnicity or the color of your skin. This makes me think that there is an active effort by the government to categorize people based on the color of their skin. This for me is immoral.
  It also is ridiculous because there is no definition of what 'white' is or how much white is white. There must be like thousands of shades of skin colors but no definition of what white is.
  And I'm saying this because there also countries you may call white in Europe that are dirt poor and clearly in the have-nots bag so this 'whites have' and the rest 'don't have' is a very american way of understanding this.
  Again, just hoped for a less americanized point of view.
- I don’t understand why race is important in a medium where we can’t see each others.
  I think it matters if the demographics of the site skew strongly from the demographics of the countries represented, as that suggests something about the site might be offputting to certain people.
  Though I don't think this is the case based on the results?
  
  What could be offputting about this? I don't get it.
  Maybe there have been a lot of issues with these people you call 'white' here but I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary.
- Yeah, this whole thing REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. I'm going to get shit for this, but it comes off as really sexist, racist and - as someone who is neurodivergent - kinda condescending.
  
  Its the same oppression olympics game they always play. They think the more disenfranchised you are the more legitimacy there is to what you are saying.
- Where I am from, we don’t make these distinctions on the color of a person.
  Not everybody is from wherever you're from. There's a chart up there for that, too.
  
  So you don't care about people from other countries and you want to bring US politics to this site AGAIN like in reddit? Got it.
- The sad reality is that there is racism in more countries than the US. Even if it's "just" subconscious racism.
  Where are you from if you don't have to deal with that?

My only feedback is the words choices here were, unfortunate. It comes across as the author found undesired demographics which felt not inclusive.
In my opinion this is not being nice.
I am a minority in some parts of the graph and a majority in others. Reading this left my feeling I wasn't welcome here which I have felt ever day before reading this post.
- I think you should read the post again. To me it seems that a focus was put on being an inclusive and diverse space. That includes everyone and you of course too!
- Which part specifically made you feel not welcome?
  
  The part where he says it's "mostly white people which is unfortunate" was an odd thing to say.
  Doesn't make white people feel very welcome I'd imagine.
  
  The part where he says it's "mostly white people which is unfortunate" was an odd thing to say.
  Doesn't make white people feel very welcome I'd imagine.
- I'm white and I understood it as: "It's unfortunate that we don't have more diversity yet." In no way was it meant to sound like "oh great, look at all of the white people."
  But what irks me is that whole "exclusion" of cis males thing. I'm being general here, but it seems more and more it happens under the guise of "creating safe spaces for people." It spoils and demeans the entire social experience even if maybe we don't see it from that perspective. I mean, I get it, not everyone is completely comfortable around others and sometimes there's underlying issues/trauma there, understandably. People are, and can be, just gross.
  On here, and this applies to everyone, it's an open, shared space for ALL -- not just "make a special space for me." That's the thing about equality...it needs to be equally divided to ensure we can have specific spaces for men, for women and for alllllllllllllllllllll of those who fit in between or don't fit at all into these categories. It just astounds me how a group can be literally screaming to be noticed and loved, and yet there is so much hate a vitriol coming from that exact same group shot back when people take notice, reach out and try to do something about it.
  Beehaw from what I have seen and experienced is indeed trying to proactive and advocate for all users, not just some.
  All I'm saying is you can't have it both ways -- its either inclusive for everyone, or its not. Simple as. If you want a blinders on, customized, experience where there is absolutely no interaction with anyone outside of who/what you deem acceptable... check out Facebook or Twitter. Or even find a trans-run trans-only board/community.
  Edit: punctuation
  
  Completely agree with you! I'm also white and one of the harder things I've had to come to terms with is that I shouldn't be automatically comfortable in all spaces. Where I live in the US, the default space is white and we expect BIPOC people to integrate into our spaces but we never put effort into integrating into their spaces. I would rather this be a space where more people are comfortable even if that means I might have an adjustment period...
- I understand, I'm a white cis man and I used to feel this way sometimes when reading things like this, but my perspective has since changed.
  The way I see it, Beehaw is actively trying to be an inclusive space, as opposed to a lot of other online spaces which really aren't so inclusive.
  My expectation would be that, naturally, POC, women, and lgbtq+ people would hang out more in inclusive spaces than non-inclusive ones, while non-minorities may be evenly spread of even favor non-inclusive spaces. Therefore, I would expect demographics of inclusive spaces to have an overall significantly smaller percentage of non-minorities.
  However, some of these numbers look relatively close to national demographics (at-least based on those I see on Wikipedia for the US), and may even have a smaller percentage of minorities than national average. I don't know much about statistics and I'm not a mathematician, there's probably all sorts of factors going into why those numbers are the way they are. Still, instinctively, those numbers look unfortunate to me, since they don't reflect my expectations of a successfully inclusive community.
  I hope nobody feels left out.
  
  Thing is, beehaw is pretty loud about being a safe space the neurodivergent and or folks with different gender identities and sexualities. That stuff is race agnostic and those people will likely fall in line with national percentages for race.
  Given that most of folks are from the US, which is about 75% white, and another big chunk is from nations that are 80-90% white, I can’t say that I’m surprised buy the numbers. If anything, given the users from Canada, western Europe, and Australia, Beehaw is probably a hair more racially diverse than the general population.

It seems like I'm probably the rarest Beeple here, since I'm from Vietnam (which is not even in the graph), and I'm not even 16 yet LOL
- Awwwww, welcome! I see you just joined a few days ago like me. Seems like a great time here 🎉
- Well, many of those countries only have 1 person! So if you didn't answer the form, no Vietnam

Us Aussies sneak into the top 5, yay.
As for the age thing, I'll just say I have posted to usenet :)
- I’ve posted to Usenet years before the HTML protocol existed.

I understand the arguments given by many of us regarding why knowing the demographics is important. Maybe I shouldn't feel this way, but I bear the burden of having to deal with the crap that comes with being at the intersection of many of the categories that are discriminated against in real life, and reddit/lemmy was/is a place where I could engage with others while not having to shoulder most of that. So it bothers me a little that it is being brought up here too, albeit indirectly. On the other hand I can imagine how this would be different if there was actual discriminatory behaviour in beehaw itself.

Maybe an interesting question: how does this compare to the diversity of admins? I guess doing an actual survey is bad for your anonimity, but some idea could be cool
- Maybe an interesting question: how does this compare to the diversity of admins? I guess doing an actual survey is bad for your anonimity, but some idea could be cool
  we are more diverse than the community as a whole because there are only four of us. we didn't separately poll our mods but they're probably a bit more diverse on average than the site just eyeballing it
- I was wondering about this, too - but including the mod team, as well. It's good to have a mixed group of folks when it comes to moderation purposes. Maybe something to consider when hiring for the new communities?

Thanks for posting the results! Glad to be a part of this community 😊

Nice! Thanks for compiling all that!
Regarding the gender split... IIRC, most Reddit users are male. This actually does have a bit of an effect on Reddit's share of trans people. Worldwide, I believe it's about an even split between transmasculine and transfeminine people. But Reddit has more transfems than transmascs, and I'm pretty sure it's because people don't leave their preferred website when coming out as trans. In that same vein, I hear that tumblr leans more transmasc.
- Yeah, Reddit and a lot of forum websites are very heavily biased towards men so I'm not surprised we ended up inheriting that bias. I'd be nice to reach out to correct that bias.
  One other thing to note is that this doesn't give us any information on trans people which might affect how we assess that bias. It's something that would be interesting to see in a future survey.
  
  I frequently link posts from Lemmy communities to friends, family, and some co-workers in part to encourage wider acceptance and participation.
  If people keep up with the good content and keep engaging then more will come in time.

Thanks for sharing this, very interesting!
Also, shout-out to my 7 Danish homies! We almost made the graph! 😅🇩🇰

Thank you for the awesome shiny charts, Lion 🥹❤️
Also thanks to everyone who filled out the survey, it's great to know who's around and to see that most Beeple seem to be having a good time!
- Off topic, if you don't mind: how do I add pronouns to my name?
  
  Go to your settings, then beside "Display name", you can put in a nickname (or just your username) and then add your pronouns at the end.
  I also like to put a link to a pronouns website like https://pronouns.page/ or https://pronouns.org/ in my bio, but that's optional.
  
  Go to your settings and set a display name that includes them

Nice breakdown of users. I'm happy to see there are a number of people in my age group. I often feel like an outlier (pretty sure I'm the oldest person/token grandpa in two of my discord servers haha)
- Hey nothing wrong with that! The best wine gets better with age. 🤌

A los otros 4 weyes de México un cordial saludo 🫡.

Can we get a transcript/archived copy of the survey questions? Not the answers people provided, but just what questions were and the answers available to select from. Also an image transcription of the graphs would be helpful; the text in the images is difficult to read on Jerboa.
I'm curious where the decision to separate nonbinary and genderfluid into different categories came from. In the various queer communities I'm in, genderfluidity is considered to fall under the nonbinary umbrella, so breaking it out as a separate option while not breaking out other nonbinary identities looks a little odd to me.
I would be interested in knowing the trans/cis demographics as well; if, for all we know, Beehaw has equals numbers of trans men to cis men, this survey wouldn't reveal that or any other notable proportions.
I also want to include myself as another person who found the white/non-white question a bit uncomfortable. If it had asked me about being a person of color or some other phrasing, I wouldn't have blinked, but there is something unpleasant about being asked where I stand in a racial dichotomy as a biracial person. I don't know a better way to phrase the question that still captures the intent, though.
- The questions were :
  How old are you?
  What is your gender identity?
  What is your sexual orientation?
  What country do you live in?
  Do you consider yourself to be white or non-white?
  Do you consider yourself to be neurodivergent?
  Do you consider yourself to have a disability? We are intentionally not defining what is or is not a disability; please do not feel like your disability needs to be of a certain severity or scope to answer this one.
  Have you ever heard of the Fediverse before Beehaw?
  How confident are you in your ability to use Beehaw?
  How have you been enjoying your time so far on Beehaw?
  I think I'll try making a table with the data on docs.beehaw.org to see evolution over time and I wanted to have tables with the data but Lemmy doesn't have markdown tables it seems.
  I did separate genderfluid and non-binary. In my mind they were separate though I agree it falls under the non-binary umbrella. It's just I've heard genderfluid much more than any other nonbinary identity so it's the one I thought of adding. Maybe I shouldn't though.
  Yes, cis/trans is definitely a question we want to add! It'd likely be a separate question because I don't think I want trans people to have to say "trans woman" when "woman" is there, it kind of implies that one isn't the other.
  I do wonder if asking the opposite question "Do you consider yourself to be a person of colour?" would really be better.. I think I want an excerpt that we are going from a "white as purity" type of thing to make sure that people who are mixed understand. Do you think that would help?
  
  Off the top of my head I feel like reframing as POC instead of white-identifying would ask the same question, but be less inflammatory to white people who are afraid of the word "white".
  Tbh though the reality is those who are focusing on the pedantic word instead of the intent are likely looking for a reason to be unhappy... But asking for POC identification is more in line with what I'm used to seeing in diversity reports (admittedly white VS non-white is a bit... Blunt).
  (edit for adding that white vs non-white being off-putting for a biracial person with mixed feelings on their race actually makes a lot of sense)
- Didn't forget! Here's a post about it with tables! https://docs.beehaw.org/docs/demographics/
  
  Hello, Sorry to jump into this thread so long after, but I just discovered Beehaw's wiki and was impressed by its look and reactivity. Do you know what software is uses to run? Is it WikiJS?
- While I am really thankful of the effort the admins put into this survey and their focus on diversity, I'm also now aware of how much misplaced hope I had for a even diverser community. Sure, if we compare this to any social media or real life communities, these numbers are great, maybe? But in the end it still means to share a community with mostly (cis) men who I'm usually uncomfortable around. On reddit, I could just mostly ignore cis men by joining subs that had a different demographic. But here there are still so few spaces and so few people on beehaw that it isn't possible. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any space on beehaw where there are no cis men? I will stick around for a bit longer, but I'm not really super comfortable with this community :/
  And as I already commented on the original survey and as the admins already answered as well, I was disappointed to not be seen as a trans person here.
  
  We're explicitly a diverse space. If you need extra considerations because you're still unpacking trauma, I would highly suggest seeking offline spaces - lean on your community, access available mental health resources or ask for help.

I absolutely spent time on forums both before and after Reddit's rise. Including there was a forum that was effectively a role playing game world in webforum format. It was pretty dope. I also was doing telnet to muds long after it was cool.
- I tried to start a silly forum-based role playing game once. I wanted the entire board to just be classified ads for and by superheroes and villains. From the mundane to the spectacular. It's an idea that still makes me laugh at the possibilities.
- Same, long-time user of forums. Lamented the relative death of the independent forum, and very happy to be here for a possible return of sorts.
- @Cube6392 @rancidity9480
  I made a kbin magazine/community for Play By Post recently but it hasn't gotten any attention. -shrug- If someone wanted to post there that could be fun.
  edit: or if there is some other play by post fediverse roleplay community I am unaware of.
- Oh hey, nice! For you & other people into roleplay online and such (and especially telnet to MUDs/MUSHes), check out [https://aresmush.com/](Ares MUSH) which is a pretty modern take on telnet roleplay. You can even roleplay on the website, or you can connect with telnet clients (which is what I've always preferred). It's really moved telnet roleplay up to at least the 2010s era. ;)

As expected, mostly white which is unfortunate.
Well, as the graph shows before, it's also mostly U.S-based. Those are really good diversity numbers if you factor that into mind. Like, way better than expected.
- I just checked 2020 US census data (https://data.census.gov/table?g=010XX00US&d=DEC+Demographic+Profile) and that's unfortunately not true unless I'm reading the data wrong. It says that people who identify as White form around 61.6% of people in the US.
  
  https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html
  It's 71.5, as of 2020. Also, if you take into account that most of our users are technical and online, then that number probably increases given the digital divide. Of course, this could all be negated by that very large "prefer not to say" percentage.

Cool Demographics! How should outreach be done?
- If you happen to find yourself in diverse spaces you could tell people about the space. But otherwise, we're open to suggestions!
  One thought that's already occurred is more dedicated efforts to grow communities that are useful to minority individuals or may attract them to use this site.
  
  One thought that's already occurred is more dedicated efforts to grow communities that are useful to minority individuals or may attract them to use this site.
  That sounds like a great idea, although not without its challenges (as an example, finding people both from those groups, and also willing to invest time into the community as leaders/mods). It would be very hard to found a community like that without finding someone who closely knows what that community needs and what would draw the group to a given social media platform; but if the process was done right their participation would certainly be a big draw for the site!
- That's a difficult question and something we'll need to figure out in due time. Depending on the biases we're trying to get away from, we'll probably have to look for places which can try to correct that.

Very interesting! Thanks for running the survey and sharing the results.

Always love me some data porn. Thanks for this!

Thanks for sharing the numbers! I've never been very good at knowing the usefulness of data as a consumer, but it's neat to know the average of users. 😁

Looks good!
Beeple has got to be the official term for us going forward!
Nice to see a pretty diverse crowd in here! A bit US health perhaps but that's too be expected. Doing my bit to represent the tiny percentages of other places :D

151 comments