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Who you’re trying to invite over?
You don’t. That’s established relationship shit (romantic or otherwise).It’s like running Linux, btw
I use Fedi btw
This will become our new catchphrase:-)
Much better than: “Do you even Fedi, braugh?”
It’s a cool community without all the ads, nazis and psychos. It has 100% more real Humans.
And 100% less AI!
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.
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?
The email analogy is just bad, may as well say it’s like toast because any type of bread will fit any toaster
Any type of bread following the same standard will fit into a standard toaster.
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.
It’s like reddit but without the numbers and without most of the hate. Who cares about the tech side?
I dont want to sound too jaded, but people will sign up for anything without reading the TOS. It’ll be fine, just try to give them the best possible first impression so they stick around.
The practical thing that trips up most people is the wealth of possible servers to register with. Give your friends a leg up and give them a signup link to a reliable, friendly instance you think will fit them (probably one you’re already on).
Just give people a low-friction way in, let them get a feel of the fediverse/a specific, local feed. In my experience over-evangelising the nuts and bolts only turns them off the whole concept.
I think we often try to sell the fediverse too hard on the technical and idealist perspectives. Yes, federation is great and, yes, isn’t it lovely that there is no manipulative algorithm, or no billionaire can buy it out and build it into his failed space exploration empire?
But the majority of internet users don’t care about those things. Even for those that do, it’ll be way down their priority list.
Ugh, posted before reading the other comments. Loads of people put it shorter and better already. This is just a +1 to all of the above 👍
Heh, I’m upvoting you anyway for taking the time…and for good attitude in this reply
A picture is worth a thousand words. The Fediverse :
Send them this link https://fediverse.info/
“It’s an alternative to {insert service here}, but if a feature of the platform, an administration, its userbase, etc., are a problem, you can easily find alternatives without abandoning the whole network. Do keep backups of your communities though!”
Also would need to rewrite to not sound as technical, but features-wise, I’d recommend Mbin, Friendica or, once it matures more, PieFed, since all 3 are overarching, being able to access Reddit-like posts, Twitter-like posts, and those compatible with either.
If they don’t want to come over it’s fine. My mom is still on Facebook. Just let them do whatever they want.
Most social media are commercial, privately owned, proprietary, centralised, and hence prone to enshittification. If a company will start to make anti-consumer moves to increase profit, most people will be too locked-in and invested to care to switch. Fediverse is a collection of independent instances in one decentralised network, constantly competing with each other with no full monopoly possible, and working under an open and forkable protocol.
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.
I think this does a good job https://fediverse.info/
