this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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ELI5
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Explain it to me like I am 5. Everybody should know what this is about.
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Once upon a time, people thought that it would be fun to have a place to learn and play and talk together, and the more people that came, the better they would all learn from each other. So they got together and built this place in one fixed spot. And they DID learn from each other, and it was fun and amazing. But some people were greedy and wanted to control all of it so that they could feel like they were better than everyone else. These greedy people forced the people to give them more and more money to be able to use the spot. The bad guys would treat the people who wanted to have fun badly, and use information about them against them. This made people sad.
Then one day, somebody said, "Hey, why can't we just have a bunch of little spots, so that nobody can hold us hostage?"
But the other people were afraid they wouldn't be able to play with some of their friends or learn from other people if everybody was separated. Until some people came up with the idea that all these small communities could agree to share everything they were doing with each other, small spot to small spot. Nobody owned all the spots now, and people were free to choose spots that were more convenient for them, without having to be afraid that others wouldn't be there, because all the small spots still made one big spot!
And that dear, is basically the fediverse in a nutshell. Now go to sleep, you have a big day tomorrow. tuck tuck
This is how I'm explaining the Fediverse to everyone from now on. This is perfect.
Really? Cause this explanation doesn't actually explain anything, but certainly provides us with an enemy 'evil money guys'.
The more I think about it, I think this dumb talking-down explanation just muddies the water.
I mean, this is Explain Like I'm Five. I feel the goal would be to dumb it down as much as possible and I feel that this is a very good, if somewhat cheeky, way of explaining the very very basics of the Fediverse.
Is this missing a lot of nuance? Of course. But everyone having a bunch of different spots that can't be held to some "bad guy's" standards while all those spots are still able to share and talk to each other, is a very good way to explain to someone who has no understanding of instances and servers and especially if you needed to explain it to a 5 year old.
Thanks, exactly. If somebody had just said "Explain it to me" it would have been a much different explanation. But "explain like I'm FIVE"... well, I explained it in ways a five year old would relate to. Experience: Parent whose children used to be smol.