this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
1933 points (95.1% liked)
Fediverse
28351 readers
603 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Apparently anything beyond filling out a registration form is too complicated for a lot of people. Heck, even that seems to be too much for some people, hence the popularity of login with Facebook or Google features. Personally I'm happy to be away from people who can't figure out simple concepts. But, I'm the exact person you described in your post, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They can. They have no problems doing it for a well-advertised product who has somehow convinced them that "everyone uses it".
I feel like it's more convenience than simplicity that's the issue. Though, I'd argue that the whole federation thing is way more complicated than what most people would likely tolerate. I tried to explain it to my husband, and it was even hard to explain succinctly. Like, I'm sure someone has come up with a way to say it, but it's not as straightforward as you make it sound. At least, I don't think it is.
I always use the email analogy - you and a friend can be signed up with different providers but still communicate with each other. It's helped me explain the concept to a few people.
Same here! I'm always surprised by people now refusing to consider the idea, just wanting one universal company/service. It's like they can make room for email in their understanding, but can't do that again today. 🤷♀️
The email one is good. Someone I was explaining it to said "so it's like Napster for social media?". After thinking about it for a second I just said "yes! That's pretty close". It's not really like Napster, but that's a good enough analogy that they understood.
I'd say it's not picking a server which is complicated. I think people don't really get the concept of federalized social networks. Honestly, I myself had some minor issues understanding how this works and I was studying software engineering in university. Hopefully this concept lifts off hard in the following years, because I think it's a future of the internet.
I like Mario Galaxy as an analogy. Facebook, Reddit, etc. aree all like big planets. The difference with the fediverse is that we can make all the small planets we want, and each of those planets has its own communities, and it's easy to hop around to different places.
But I know not everyone plays Mario Galaxy, so maybe it's like The Little Prince?
I really don't think it's complicated, people just don't have a clear analogy to work with because it's something new.