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!
I share posts they’ll like.
Or tell them about communities I’ve found I think they’ll like.
If they ask how to participate I pick an instance for them and just link them direct to the signup page, then show them how to sign in in an app.
That way there is basically no jargon. No complexity. If they sign up, they do so out of genuine interest for the content. If they ask what federation is, I explain. But the neat thing is, you don’t really need to know about it to have a good experience on the fediverse.
Plus when people see the @ with a url, they kinda just naturally get that it’s like email. They notice that it’s part of a users “address” and that it differentiates users, but they don’t really think about it past that.
Us being here for ideological reasons is extremely unusual. Most people don’t make decisions that way.
Besides. If you find good content FIRST and sign up to engage with it second, it is so much easier to become and remain a regular user.