Your explanation of federation that it "works like email" will be misunderstood
Your explanation of federation that it "works like email" will be misunderstood
The linked post shows how most non-tech people's understanding of email is very very different from most of the people here.
If you want to get non-techy users, then there is absolutely no need to even use the word fediverse or to try to explain what any of this means. If you want to help a friend get onboard, just send them a link to sign up on the same server that you use, or a nice general purpose server. That's it. They sign up, they use it, and THEN they can start to learn about fediverse shit if they care to.
"you know how you can't talk to someone on Twitter.com from facebook.com? But you can email from your @gmail.com to someone with an @yahoo.com address?
That's the difference, federated social media is like email in this way."
I'm mostly sure even my elderly parents understood it when I said it...
I don't think it matters. the specific ways in which email services work or are used are not what the analogy is supposed to explain.
it's supposed to explain how two people who log in to different lemmy instances is different from logging into Facebook and MySpace, or Twitter and Threads.
"how does it work? aren't they different sites?'
"you know how you can have a gmail and someone else can use an outlook email but you can still send emails to each other"
done. even 70 year olds would get it. problem solved. easy, approachable analogy.
I now after many years of living understand most people don't care or even want to understand how anything works. It completely baffles me.
Everyone I know says I'm smart but nah, I was literally in special Ed classes in school. I'm proven slower than the rest, but I am just curious and want to understand how things work which no one else does. It blows my mind how uninterested people are in the things they use everyday
In my experience, the majority of people doesn't have the slightest clue how mail works. Somehow you type it in and provide it with an address into one of the three indistinguishable fields that are titled "To", " CC", "BCC". And by some black magic it either appears on the screen of the other person. Or it doesn't. That's about the amount of knowledge.
So comparing something to this is kind of meaningless.
Me, explaining how Lemmy is similar to email…
Don't explain anything, there's literally no point. Why are nerds so insistent that people understand technology?
Just tell people to make an account on any instance, whichever one you like best, and let them experience federation. Even if they never really understand what is happening they can still use the service. It's not like any of them understand how email works, and yet they all use email. Understanding is worthless. Stop being nerds.
I don't expect non-tech people to ever come to or care about this place, or Mastodon.
Part of social media is predation. There is a draw to Facebook, even if it is the endless sea of bullshit emanating through it, the marketing of products and echo chambers.
people would love to be entertained by our intellectual discussions!
They watch Adam Sandler movies, lad. We've already lost.
It's a draw. We have no draw, other than being DIY NPR (now with 5% more tankies). It's a draw, but it won't draw them. It's not what they care about.
If you tell someone that fedi instances are like email providers and that your instance is transfem.social, that creates three expecations in your audience:
1)The main, or possibly only, way to access your fedi account on a desktop is through the transfem.social website.
2)The main, or possibly only, way to access your fedi account on a smartphone is through the transfem.social app. This app is completely separate from the apps that could be used to access a fedi account on another instance.
3)The primary difference between transfem.social and other fedi instances is the UI of the website and app.
Frankly, I don’t think this is that big of a deal. First introduce them to an instance, then once they figure that out, show them the apps and other ways to access that instance.
I honestly think it stills explains it pretty well. Most casual users will not download a specific client and will be fine with the whole idea of an instance being tied to its user interface. It still explains pretty well that it doesn't largely matter what instance you sign up for and that any instance can talk to (mostly) any other instance, just like with email.
So yea, I still think it's a good analogy. It's not perfect but yea, that's to be expected from an analogy.
I think people can handle a simple series of instructions, like (1) download the Voyager for Lemmy app, (2) click the middle button, then click...
What they likely get confused about is the plethora of choices, especially when they aren't even sure that they want to join yet.
At the risk of bringing up unwanted drama, 100% of the time whenever I mention Lemmy to someone, they have admonished me for having done so. But putting myself into their shoes one day, I did a Google search (🤮) for "Lemmy", and aside from the singer, the top hit to an actual instance is... surprisingly to me, lemmy.ml. Next I note that the default search method there is "Local", not "All". NO WONDER they were telling me how politically "extremist" it (Lemmy) is! They see NONE of the posts from Lemmy.World, sh.itjust.works, etc., unless they are submitted to a community on lemmy.ml. Instead, what someone would see by default is "death to landlords" and all the other posts promoting the violent upheaval of Western society, as ofc capitalism is to blame for literally everything (well I mean...), except somehow only the Western variant is in the wrong and everything done by the likes of Russia or China or North Korea is absolutely fine.
Here's an old example I just happened to have handy:
(setting aside truth or falsehood, it definitely has a bias to it, as in both sides were equal, and yes this was prior to the USA election)
The #2 search result by DuckDuckGo btw is Lemmy.World (the #1 is ofc the musician:-), probably bc it has ~80% of all Lemmy users on it, so that is appropriate.
We need to put ourselves into their shoes, not our own as if we were ourselves on the other side of that conversation, but appreciate how they will approach the issues. And the methods used by more mainstream people differ from ours.
Either that, or accept that we are strictly another forum community used chiefly by Linux users, and that we will never be more than that.
I have seen people not think someone with a gmail email could email to someone with a yahoo email
I have also seen teachers who teach ICT be confused when seeing a email that isnt one of the popular ones
I really think there is no problem here. There is one side that screeches, "We need more people in Lemmy! Lemmy is too obscure and hard to use! We need better UX and less techno-babble when people are trying to sign on!" We also have the opposite side saying, "Fuck the normies! I want my federated server @tek.know.kult for the most austere obscurantists only!"
Let's be real, guys. If your federated server is weird and obscure, the normals are not going to really encounter it, and they're not that into all the federation beef. They want to go to lemmy-website.com, put in a username and password, and fuck off to look at funny memes and rage at news stories.
I would say I am at least on the right side of the bell curve when it comes to tech literacy, maybe even the top quartile, and I only sort of understand how the Fediverse works, and no offense guys, I don't really care that much. I looked at Reddit for the funny memes and to rage at news stories, and when they took my favorite app away (Sync for Reddit), I couldn't be fucked to get advert-aids on the official app, so I jumped ship. Lemmy is just a bit less engaging, just a bit less addictive, and frankly I'm perfectly happy with that. Huzzah for having a bit more of a doomscroll-life balance.
People will come along with FOSS as well as CS options for joining the Fediverse, things like Threads and Voyager and BlueSky, and the culture of Lemmy will shift likewise. The great news is that with Federation, it will be easy to create islands of autists and weirdos to keep their purity cults as funny as they want them to be, and I think that's beautiful.
I know how email works but it sure didn't help me understand the fediverse.
It's just one thing in email servers functioning that is similar in the fediverse, everything else is not similar. It is just confusing to compare the two to anyone not yet knowing how the fediverse works IMO.
"It's like the postal service!"
"It's like the internet!"
Just say it's like reddit (or a social media) but free and open and anyone can have/make one, or use an existing one. For free.
/Rant off
Personally I disagree with the statement, first off, I don't see an alternative explanation offered. the point is an easy analogy to give them rough concepts. looking at the problems listed in the OP.
Gmail users believe the only ways to access a Gmail account are through the official web client at mail.google.com, and the official Gmail app for iOS and Android.
First off there... so the web client off the bat.... what's the problem there, that we aren't burrying them with "oh if you like you can use alexandrite, or one of 30 other web clients, and then tell it the instance". The point is we're trying to reach out to the non tech savy. If their assumption gets them to something that works, then there isn't a problem, just as not knowing that they can install an e-mail client to check their gmail, isn't stopping them from using gmail.
Now the andriod/ios clients, that is the one drawback, you do have to tell them the name of one of the apps, and tell them to pick the website they made their account on from the dropdown. It's not a huge deal but it is an extra step. If the goal is to reach out to the non tech savy though, the goal has to be to minimize the steps as much as we can.
Then it goes on to say people are picking instances based on moderation politics etc... Lets face it regular people don't... and they don't care. Really like 2% of people actually hit points where moderation is a visible thing to them. usually because they are on the edge of a political side.
I didn't pick my email my employer did. Other then work ionly use email for account verification, password reset and trqcking shipping. No really i have only sent a dozen or so emails not related to work.
One way to help the feediverse is to drop federation. No one uses that word no one knows what it emans. At best they will be "so its like Star trek".