Don’t.
Just say: “this is like Reddit(/Twitter/…), but independent."
They will figure the rest if they have or want to.
I said that to my friend. It’s like reddit, but it’s not owned by a company.
He couldn’t comprehend how that was possible…
Email isn’t owned by a company, either. Maybe bring that up?
Based on how my conversations have gone, I’d just skip explaining the federation part entirely. Most people don’t care
I’d just say it’s like Reddit, but more friendly and less addictive. Sell that they’ll get all the important news and memes, but without the ads, bots, and garbage content shoved in their faces
I’d also pick a home server for them and help them set it up, lemmy.world is probably good as a default if they’re coming from mainstream socials
Truth is, most people really don’t care how it works. They just want it to work, and their first impression shouldn’t be choice overload or a data dump
As others have said, just don’t bring it up unless specifically asked.
Most users won’t care, and you might easily overwhelm them with data.
It is far better to introduce them to Lemmy/Piefed/mbin/kbin/Pixelfed/etc as a specific service, and answer further questions as they come up.
It’s like _____, but it sucks. But like, in a good way. Like the old Internet. It sucked, but that’s what made it so good.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The Fediverse :
Fediverse is social media for nerds.
Overexplaining it might scare away non-technical users. Just compare it to well-known social media but say it 's independent and more like e-mail in the sense that everyone can choose a different server with different rules but they all talk to each other. No one company controls everything. And that the algorithms aren’t secret or manipulative. Basically, just tell them the main advantages in an easy to understand way.
Send them this link https://fediverse.info/
Thanks! This sums it up perfectly!
It’s like reddit but without the numbers and without most of the hate. Who cares about the tech side?
What do they currently know about the Internet? Are they currently using a microblogging or discussion platform? Difficult to answer this without knowing that.
Tell them it’s like Twitter, reddit, Instagram, and YouTube all in one. You can sign up for whatever type of content you want, just like you would sign up for any of those aforementioned sites, but the difference is that the sites can all communicate with each, and are independently run by non-profits, community groups, and different organizations and individuals, rather than a single centralized entity. You can select an instance of the software that suits various interests or niches, or just join a large instance for a bigger pool of content to start with locally. No wrong choice, as even small instances can communicate with large ones, just pick one you like and suits your values or convenience.
Initially. It’s a link aggregator and discussion site, like reddit, but far more independent.
If they query it. It runs on a system a bit like how email works. Rather than 1 big monolithic system, it’s a bunch of small ones linked together. A federation of small services all acting as 1 whole. In practice it’s fairly transparent, just like you don’t care who’s hosting an email address, you can just email it.
It also makes it a lot more resistant to takeover and manipulation by big business. It can resist the Nazis bar problem better, like what happened to twitter. (Optional depending on the person involved).
The first gives them the basic idea. The second gives them a basic understanding of the structure, without overwhelming them, or panicking them with complexity.
Everyone now knows that email just works, but has lots of different companies involved. It makes a good comparison for how federation can work well online.
Explain that reddit (or you can use twitter–>mastodon) is three things, it is
- a company
- a software
- a social network.
Explain that the fediverse is the 2nd thing, and that because it is open source and community maintained you don’t need the 1st thing i.e. the company which makes the 3rd thing, the actual community and social network, able to be semi-decentralized and not controlled by one corporation and/or government.
The way this is accomplished is there are lots of individual communities/social networks that all “federate” together based upon a common protocol (called ActivityPub) so that interaction can happen between users from different communities without it being an issue.
Explain that lemmy and piefed are “reddit-likes”, mastodon is a “twitter-like” and pixelfed is a “instagram-like” as examples of what the fediverse version of common corporate social networks look like.
Most importantly, emphasize over and over again that nobody cares if you walk away from your fediverse account and don’t engage for months, nobody is trying to shove ads down your throat or pay off a massive Venture Capital investment, while people do often contribute to support their community after they decide they really like it, there is no monetization driving the whole network, people show up because they want to be here, that is it. Further if you don’t like the way a community is run there are real actual alternatives, it isn’t a binary thing like corporate social media.
It’s like running Linux, btw
It’s baffling to me that everyone thinks it’s hard to explain.
Everyone has at least one most of the time two or more email addresses. From work, some from Gmail and / or Microsoft. everyone understands that sending email to other providers will work regardless.
Why is it so hard to apply the same concept to Lemmy?
What question does the email comparison answer?
