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!

  • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    I normally just say, “I read [x] on Lemmy.”

    If they ask and are genuinely curious what that is, I tell them it’s like a reddit offshoot, but the users control the network and servers with a high level of transparency in administration/moderation and run off software that can have tens of thousands of crowdsourced eyes helping to find and fix any bug or security issue.

    • njordomir@lemmy.world
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      6 minutes ago

      Yup, I just namedrop Lemmy and don’t explain unless people ask. Usually then the explanation is simple and about how I’ve chosen not to use Reddit for ethical reasons.

    • fajre@lemmy.worldOP
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      18 hours ago

      I normally just say, “I read [x] on Lemmy.”

      If they ask and are genuinely curious what that is, I tell them it’s like a reddit offshoot, but the users control the network and servers with a high level of transparency in administration/moderation and run off software that can have tens of thousands of crowdsourced eyes helping to find and fix any bug or security issue.

      interesting!