I just spent 20 painful minutes trying to explain the Fediverse and Mastodon to our local community association president. She made it seem like I was trying to explain string theory to a gerbil.
@shoq@davidtoddmccarty Adding to that, people need to know you have to follow a bunch of people in order to see what everyone’s talking about, just like you would if you were meeting people at a party. Sign up. Follow. Discuss. End of story.
The irony is that Twitter went through this in ’06-’09. Journalists said no one would ever understand it. Techies said blah blah SMS blah blah, permutations of visibility, tons of jargon.
All people really need to know is how to get started.
@shoq Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create an explanation of the fediverse that an 80+ year old person can understand. If you can explain it to someone who did not experience computers, etc until they were over 50, then you have a really good message. Also, try using props.🤷♀️
(I know!!! I have found it easier with some to compare it to e.g. Napster, if they ever used that, where people with different computers were sharing all the things)
@maria@shoq I think this gets easier once other non-microblogging projects on fediverse gets more mainstream. Its much harder for people to relate to an explanation that tells how there is different server software for microblogging. Its easier to show them how you use your twitter-equivalent to follow friends on an instagram-equivalent, and then seemlessly also use the same account to comment on a video stream that uses a twitch-like.
@shoq maybe I’m over simplifying, but I think of it, basically, as an archipelago, or a cluster of islands, not terribly different, but safer as a group than as a single unit. The differences in software, capabilities, hub functions, whatevs, can be left for a later lesson. As compared to a single, giant and therefore vulnerable place…?
@shoq The way I explain it is, think about it like this, its set up a lot like twitter use to be, but... instead of it being like Twitter its different because instead of signing up for 1 network like with Twitter you get to choose which network you want to be a part of based on your interests, kind of like a mixture of a news group from the olden days and twitter in the way that it functions, but not Twitter because its different networks instead of 1. but... if you wantto move outside that network to talk to people on other networks, there is what's called the Federated timeline or fediverse, which is people on multiple networks speaking to each other but your still apart of that 1 news group, so if at anytime you want to close your connection to the fediverse, its as easy as just... closing the timeline for the fediverse.
The minute i told her that existing instances live on donations, she starts coming unglued, muttering something about "we're a nonprofit and can't be involved in anything like that." WTF? I realized it was pointless to continue. I came home and had a drink. Okay, two drinks.
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