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!
A free and open source social media platform supported only by the users and not by spying on its users.
Yeah but then there’s still no buy in from friends and family. They are most likely going to retort “Well none of my friends use it”. We could have open source social media in 2020s but people don’t want to use something they don’t know. Meta is comfortable for them and they are OK with being tracked and monitored by Meta intelligence, its stupid that they rather live like that but only they can change their minds
It’s (insert platform here) for furries, communists and nerds. If I want to explain the basic concept, I talk in terms of phone carriers
Memes
I don’t, because they’ll ruin it.
I don’t, because they’ll ruin it.
lmao
I start sending fediverse links containing memes etc. and eventually they sign up on one of the sites.
I don’t really bother until they’re looking for an alternative. Most people IRL aren’t even on Reddit.
I just tell people I saw it on reddit because my friends and family won’t use or understand reddit never mind lemmy.
Unsuccessfully so far, that’s for sure
The amount of gatekeeping I’m seeing here is insane
What do you mean?
I link them to a post i think they’ll like. Then if they ask i say “its like email the servers send around the posts and comments around to each other, but some are blocked from each other to keep out known bad actors (kind of like known spam email servers)”
I only do so if they talk about reddit, then I explain that it’s like reddit, but some subs are hosted on a server in Germany, and others on a server in Canada; regardless of where it is, any user form any of the servers can see posts hosted on any server.
I don’t really get into the non-federated details (like unfederating from hexbear, etc.) unless they ask.
I don’t bother explaining it unless asked. I just share content with them. They can figure it out if they’re interested.
If I am asked, then it’s “a decentralized platform similar to…” whatever. Most folks are “don’t know, don’t care” when it comes to anything technical.
Open source Reddit alternative
Simple.
Just like you introduce Linux!
'You like reddit? It’s like that but the extremists and bots wear their other side* outfits."
