Guys, when you talk about the Fediverse to friends, family, or colleagues, how do you explain it?
Do you call it a “decentralized social network,” an “alternative to big tech,” or “a collection of open-source networks”? And how do you convince someone to create an account on Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc., without them getting scared by technical terms like instance, federated, or peer-to-peer?
I’m asking because my so-called friends don’t believe me and even call me crazy when I talk about this “nonsense.”
The future is open source, decentralized, and federated!
Most are too lazy/incompetent to inform themselves and stumble already on the ‘having to chose an instance’ as something to put into the too hard basket.
I still don’t really understand it tbh. I just know it’s not a corpo and I’ve never seen an ad on it, and for me those are wins
Got my first ad (or at least, the first I noticed) after submitting this. How ironic
Got my first ad (or at least, the first I noticed) after submitting this. How ironic
lol
I would not talk about the technical aspects of the fediverse at all. Most people genuinely don’t care and they’ll immediately ignore everything else you say if you start talking about what federation is.
Instead, the best introduction is to talk about what they will directly experience if they use the fediverse. I would say something like, it’s basically reddit/twitter, but with no ads and not run by a corpo.
I agree, no need to over-complicate anything. I think even describing the fediverse as being like email confuses people. I just say it’s like old reddit but nicer and no ads.
I don’t. I passively mention lemmy when I’m discussing my activities, and if they show interest I go into further detail. They have never shown an interest past “Whats a lemmy”
Yeah, I usually joke I’m too hipster for Reddit and use Lemmy when Reddit comes up, and nobody ever asks for more information. I feel like, at least in their current form, federated apps are too complicated/fussy for anyone who isn’t actively interested in moving away from centralized platforms.
“Imagine if social media were run by the people who use it instead of corporations selling ads through engagement at all costs.”
It’s also a good idea to share content without additional context whenever possible. Just send them a link to an interesting post. The more people get used to seeing interesting content on Lemmy, Masto, etc., the more likely they are to think it’s not “weird” and maybe make an account to comment on something.
Before anything, I would check if there is an active community they are actually interested in, and give them that. Otherwise, there’s really not much reason why they should use it. It would be like gifting someone a box full of manga to someone who is not interested in Japanese stuff. I’m saying this because a lot of people including OP seems to think decentralisation/federation/FOSSness are some major selling points to a lot of people, but it really isn’t. Content usually is.
It even applies to you too. If an instance banned you for mentioning Linux or FOSS, you wouldn’t really care that they were running open-source Lemmy, you would ditch that instance. If that happened with every instance, you wouldn’t use Lemmy at all.
Before anything, I would check if there is an active community they are actually interested in, and give them that. Otherwise, there’s really not much reason why they should use it. It would be like gifting someone a box full of manga to someone who is not interested in Japanese stuff. I’m saying this because a lot of people including OP seems to think decentralisation/federation/FOSSness are some major selling points to a lot of people, but it really isn’t. Content usually is.
It even applies to you too. If an instance banned you for mentioning Linux or FOSS, you wouldn’t really care that they were running open-source Lemmy, you would ditch that instance. If that happened with every instance, you wouldn’t use Lemmy at all.
Now you made me think man!
I say it’s like Reddit but with more Star Trek and less everything else.
I use email as an analogy. Most non-tech people are familiar with the idea of there being different email providers so I use that concept to describe the fediverse.
I just message them links using simpleX messenger that they don’t use.
It’s like existing social media they are familiar with except there’s multiple versions run independently which are connected together using a shared protocol.
I think the best way is just talking about an individual instance
