Asklemmy

Stress the fact that federation isnt a new or confusing concept. They already engage with federated services without realizing it. Stuff like email, dns, Usenet, etc are all “federated” they just haven’t been described that way because they existed before that term was used to describe it.

It's like reddit but the reddit part works like email. You can get emails from yahoo.com on your gmail, just like you can interact with users and communities hosted on different instances.

I would lean hard into the ux being work in progress. Also as instances / communities mature I would expect the specifics on what federation means and the technology behind it will be less relevant to the average user.

I am a new user. To me it felt a bit like signing up with an ISP. There's a list you can choose from, rather than there just being a single reddit.

Once you sign up with an ISP, you can go anywhere on the Internet. Similarly, once you sign up with an instance, you can go anywhere in the fediverse.

Unlike an ISP, there are no costs or fees involved in signing up, though you are more than welcome to help fund the upkeep of an instance through donations. Unlike reddit, lemmy is not a profit-driven operation trying to serve you ads all the time.

In terms of choosing an instance, bigger is not necessarily better. Personally, I went with the medium-sized lemmy.ca as I am Canadian and it seemed to make sense, and have since learned that some of the bigger instances are struggling to keep up with surging demand as people seek alternatives to reddit.

Once you have an account, you can go into Communities, click on the All tab (which lets you see the whole fediverse), and start searching for and subscribing to whatever interests you. Communities are similar to subreddits, and there's a good chance you will even find one with the same name.

Would it be better to refer to servers as "websites"?

Users can make their own website or instance, there you can choose one to look through. It doesn’t matter where you choose to go since you can view all communities that are in the Lemmy network no matter what website they’re from.

Lemmy is like Reddit, except for that instead of one big Reddit server anyone can run their own "reddit" Lemmy server with its own "subbreddit" Lemmy communities (or "subs"). However, all of those Lemmy servers and communities have the ability to talk to one another. You pick a Lemmy server to login to and can then post and comment on any Lemmy servers that your server connects to.

I think the example of it working like email is the most intuitive for most people. We can all understand that @yahoo.com and @gmail.com interact with eachother despite being different service.

I would also make 1 or 2 recommendations of an instance you like because the overwhelming choice is too much for people. Imagine if you never heard of gmail or yahoo or outlook. Why choose those over @abcjoe.com? When @abcjoe.com end up sucking they'll probably just think all email sucks.

Lemmy is like a state/province made up of several cities. You start by picking a city ("instance") to live in (lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, etc.). You can visit and socialize in a pub (a "community" - like Lemmy.world's c/mildlyinfuriating) located in your own city. Alternatively, you can drive over to socialize in a pub in a neighboring city (lemmy.ml's c/memes). In the neighboring city's pub, you might socialize with people that live in your own city and those from other neighborhoods. If a neighboring city decides they don't like your city, they can tear up the roads between the two of you - this is called "defederation." You can fly your drone over and still see and hear what's going on in this neighboring city's pubs, but you can't socialize with them.

I'm sure this analogy breaks down in several ways, but it's how I have thought of it and explained it.

Honestly I would just tell someone it's just like reddit. Then if they wanted they would learn from posts they see. That's pretty much what I did. Used it exactly like reddit for a few days.

Like easy to see somebody complain it's too complicated if you try to explain and never even browse. But saying it's too complicated to use while using it and reading a post sounds ridiculous. Just start browsing.

Thank you guys for your input. I pretty much made the script and soon ill record and edit the video.

Instead of visiting the Mall of America and shopping at only what the mall will offer, using outdated infrastructure-- you can instead visit a variety of towns ("instances") which each host their own cute boutiques ("communities") specializing in a particular sort of item (whatever the topic of the community is). The instances can have their own rules that apply to its communities, but communities can also make their own rules, like a shop can. Skip the crowds and barely functional Supermall experience and find a better place to engage in discussion and get information.

You know how in older games, the community runs the multiplayer servers because the original company was either shit or shut down the servers?

Reddit is like the original company. Lemmy is like the user ran servers. It's basically the same thing as reddit, but we host it instead of them, which puts us in control over which "servers" we join, and we can choose which ones we like based on the rules.

I wrote this the other day:

https://yiffit.net/post/81869

Just sign up for kbin and spend a couple of days on All.

It's like if you could use one account/website to browse and post on another like a proxy (assuming both instances are federated with each other). I am posting from kbin.social here and can post without being on lemmy.ml since the websites are connected.

I want to write something that sounds very simple because every post I heard of federation made it sound complicated which did stop me from trying Mastadon with the Twitter drama. But it's really simple that even a idiot like me can quickly figure it out that it's like talking to a next door neighbour only its a website like if Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc could choose to directly interact with each other.

For a different examples imagine Nintendo, Xbox, Sony and PC playing a cross platform on a social game.

I found the fediverse confusing and found it helpful when /u/[email protected] explained the the relationship between Lemmy, Kbin, Mastadon, etc. to me as:

Imagine a world where Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit weren’t all competitors and users could easily see and interact with any content using their own preferred home interface. That’s happening in the fediverse.

I'd compare it to email. You can have a Gmail account but you can still email people on Yahoo Mail or Outlook.

I'd show it in action

This article is about mastadon instead of lemmy, but that doesnt really matter: https://ianbetteridge.com/2023/06/21/meta-and-mastodon-whats-really-on-peoples-minds/

I especially like this bit:

Mastodon is not a social network, which is where I think John and Dare start from. It’s a set of communities which may, or may not, choose to connect to each other. Those relationships are based on shared values and trust: my instance connects to yours because I trust you to moderate effectively, not allow spam, or whatever other ground rules we can agree on. Some communities choose to apply this loosely, and some more strictly (some communities, for example, won’t federate with others who don’t have the same expectations around moderation for everyone they federate with).

Don't even bother their eyes glaze over and their brain shuts down