Using the word “server” is super confusing to me. My kid has a rack of servers in his room. Can I join one of those? No. They’re not Mastodon or Lemmy servers. But I’m not joining the specific piece of hardware in some storage locker owned by Lemmy or Mastodon, either. Everything on the Internet is on a server. So what’s different, here?
I think your analogy is a good one, well, a better one. If you’re reading a newspaper, I think people have a better, inherent, understanding that the news might be different from paper to paper. But that’s less the case on TV or the Internet. It’s just news, regardless of source – it’s so monopolized.
Lemmy and Mastodon are “just the internet” to most people. A lot of them don’t even distinguish social media as a separate category. They only see the presentation format of, say, Facebook or Twitter as different, and that’s less and less the case all the time, as companies compete for each other’s users. They don’t really see them as different services, just different brands.
Source: I’m the person who teaches them to reset their passwords, how to print their paystubs, and how to get on Facebook.