How do I explain what is the Fediverse to someone who I'm trying to invite over?
2026-07-11 04:03 UTC
Replies (14)
-
@schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-07-11 04:08
What do they currently know about the Internet? Are they currently using a microblogging or discussion platform? Difficult to answer this without knowing that.
-
@unitedwithme@lemmy.today 2026-07-11 04:12
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.
-
@hoohoohoot@fedinsfw.app 2026-07-11 04:12
Its a caffe bar Everyone can join one Everyone can make one And you can send stuff to any other caffee bar, or receive.
-
@banause@feddit.org 2026-07-11 05:12
Don’t. Just say: “this is like Reddit(/Twitter/…), but independent." They will figure the rest if they have or want to.
-
@stoy@lemmy.zip 2026-07-11 05:21
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.
-
@Zier@fedia.io 2026-07-11 06:04
It's a cool community without all the ads, nazis and psychos. It has 100% more real Humans.
-
@OpenStars@piefed.social 2026-07-11 05:21
It’s like running Linux, btw
-
@hperrin@lemmy.ca 2026-07-11 06:37
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.
-
@theneverfox@pawb.social 2026-07-11 07:10
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
-
@shrugs@piefed.social 2026-07-11 06:24
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?
-
@altphoto@lemmy.today 2026-07-12 06:04
If they don’t want to come over it’s fine. My mom is still on Facebook. Just let them do whatever they want.
-
@Fedizen@lemmy.world 2026-07-12 06:10
Fediverse is social media for nerds.
-
@nitroemdash@lemmy.wtf 2026-07-12 07:05
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 lock-in and invested to care to switch. Fediverse is a collection of independent servers in one decentralised network, constantly competing with each other with no full monopoly possible, and working under an open and forkable protocol.
-
@halm@leminal.space 2026-07-11 10:57
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.