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How can you explain the Fediverse to someone?
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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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You know how you can send an email from Gmail to someone with a yahoo.com address and it just works? It’s like that but for social media.
Seriously, though? Everybody goes to the email analogy. The email analogy really doesn't work.
Not only does it raise more questions than it answers, but it is also not a way people conceptualize social media and it generates the false assumption that the posts themselves exist as the component units of the entire thing as opposed to being tied to the format of the instance.
The thing is you don't even need to bring up interoperability for somebody curious about a specific federated app. In practice, most of the experience doesn't require wrapping your head around that part and somebody can explain the details the first time you get a weirdly formatted posts in your streams.
It worked for me. Also since you're so critical about the email analogy, what's your solution?
Literally saying nothing.
The wonders of interoperability are a small anecdotal thing for techheads. You don't need to think about that at all, barring some edge cases or being lightly confused by somebody posting more than 500 characters on Mastodon.
You just... tell people Mastodon is like Twitter or Kbin is like Reddit and let them have at it. A million federation evangelists will answer their questions in three months when they ask how come they got a notification from being quoted on a different platform or something.
How should those federation evangelists explain it? You've basically just passed the job to someone else lol
Yes, but crucially I've passed the job to someone else who is a) already doing that full time in excruciating, obnoxious detail, and b) who is behind the massive barrier to entry that is making an account and starting to use the service.
By that point the people asking the question already know the basics and are engaged. At that point the problem is stopping people from scaring them away by overexlpaining federation, not getting them to understand how it works. It's not the same.
How would this person describe The Fediverse?
Constantly, through obtuse similes that only make sense if you already understand what is being explained to you and mostly to each other, rather than to anybody who wouldn't know.
But still, by that point you have an account, so you're already set.
Obtuse similes... Like the email thing...?
Okay, look, I'm being mildly facetious here, but the genuine, serious point is that the differences interoperability introduces aren't that big of a deal in common use, they're not a selling point to average users and there are plenty of readily available resources to catch up after the fact.
The selling points should be about the features and content. You seriously don't need a tutorial on interoperability before making an account, just perhaps a suggestion of a good default instance to join on the service of your choice.
Imagine being on the Fediverse and not wanting to explain to everybody how it's the best thing since sliced bread
Oh, wait until you hear what I think of the name "Fediverse".
That weirdly makes sense. I hate it. But kinda makes sense with some people.
So, basically like email.
Yeah my emails are not posts everyone can see.
It's okay for tech savvy people but I'd go with something seriously less techy.
Like it's social media (Reddit, twitter, but not FB I guess) it's just that it's not controlled by one company. It's an enthusiast thing.
Yeah I thought about that method but it seems to just make it more complex
I hate to break the news, but yea the fediverse is more complex
I know it's more complex, just if you are trying to explain what the Fediverse is to someone who's older or someone who just thinks it's another social media instead of a whole new way of looking at the internet it's hard to explain to that person who isn't really looking actively for an 'alternative' for 'x' platform.
Gotta start with simple context they understand and you can add the complexity later.
Especially when trying to explain that Mastodon and Lemmy can't talk together but you can still follow / subscribe to people
"Imagine you could see someone's twitter page from your Facebook account. It's like that."
And anyone can set up their own facebook/twitter site and you can choose which one to sign up with. Then you can interact with other people on other facebook/twitter sites.
I like this one
Also works for describing blocking of users and domains!