You don’t. Instead, you recommend a specific community/instance that they’d like to participate in. And if Fediverse doesn’t have such a community your friend wouldn’t stick with it anyway.
For most people the advantages of federation doesn’t matter at all. What matters is their ability to connect with their fellow human beings on topics they care about.
Tell them it’s like Twitter, reddit, Instagram, and YouTube all in one. You can sign up for whatever type of content you want, just like you would sign up for any of those aforementioned sites, but the difference is that the sites can all communicate with each, and are independently run by non-profits, community groups, and different organizations and individuals, rather than a single centralized entity. You can select an instance of the software that suits various interests or niches, or just join a large instance for a bigger pool of content to start with locally. No wrong choice, as even small instances can communicate with large ones, just pick one you like and suits your values or convenience.
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.
Don’t.
Just say: “this is like Reddit(/Twitter/…), but independent."
They will figure the rest if they have or want to.
I said that to my friend. It’s like reddit, but it’s not owned by a company.
He couldn’t comprehend how that was possible…
Email isn’t owned by a company, either. Maybe bring that up?
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.
Fediverse is social media for nerds.
Based on how my conversations have gone, I’d just skip explaining the federation part entirely. Most people don’t care
I’d just say it’s like Reddit, but more friendly and less addictive. Sell that they’ll get all the important news and memes, but without the ads, bots, and garbage content shoved in their faces
I’d also pick a home server for them and help them set it up, lemmy.world is probably good as a default if they’re coming from mainstream socials
Truth is, most people really don’t care how it works. They just want it to work, and their first impression shouldn’t be choice overload or a data dump
it’s like Reddit
Yeah, that’s only a small corner of the fediverse, though 🙂
Mastodon is like Twitter, friendica is like Facebook, loops is like tik tok, etc etc
In theory they could all federate, but again that’s not something new users need to know about (and there’s only a few such links anyways)
As others have said, just don’t bring it up unless specifically asked.
Most users won’t care, and you might easily overwhelm them with data.
It is far better to introduce them to Lemmy/Piefed/mbin/kbin/Pixelfed/etc as a specific service, and answer further questions as they come up.
I’ve mentioned to a group of folks in a conversation about where we go online nowadays that I really only comment on Lemmy anymore and have been asked about it with much interest! I’ve got two people to join, as well! I’ve just said “Oh it’s like if Reddit kinda sucked to get started with but it’s very small and there’s like .05% of the LLM/fake engagement bait posts”
When they asked how to join, I just had them check out the join lemmy site and said I chose dbzer0 cuz yarrr, and they said “oh that’s cool” and later told me they joined.
I don’t know their usernames and they don’t know mine tho, I keep all online stuff completely separate from other online stuff and also real life.
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
Sometimes you need to own that you went ahead and replied before bothering to read others’ comments. Thanks 🙂
It’s like _____, but it sucks. But like, in a good way. Like the old Internet. It sucked, but that’s what made it so good.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The Fediverse :
Why would you wanna scare them off so soon? Haha jokes aside, pretty easily.
It’s similar to most other social media or forums, but not owned by any one company. It’s split up and run by everyone and anyone.
There’s also additional privacy by default in the sense that most apps won’t have telemetry or metrics to track your every move within the app, but scrapers on the internet I would presume are still active.
Send them this link https://fediverse.info/
Thanks! This sums it up perfectly!
“It’s like other social media, but it was made by communist nerds to be free, no ads, no spying, no government ID, no psychological manipulation. And it’s all open and connected, so you can see posts from other websites and upvote and comment on them.”
you can see posts from other websites and upvote and comment on them
Don’t mention that.
When I learnt about the Fediverse, I was intrigued by that functionality, wow, one account for everything, that sounds cool. In reality this is very underdeveloped and in practice you still need separate accounts for every platform and any attempt to interact from one to another is a pain. Almost turned me away from the whole thing when I thought I couldn’t figure it out.
I would rather take the “communist nerds” part off. But your explanation is good!
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.
