Trying to pitch the Fediverse on its technology backend to non-technical people is a bad approach, but so is trying to pitch it in terms of digital detox or “better” culture.
The backend is for the tech people, and the rest is your regular messy people. There are as many good pockets of the Fediverse as bad, because that’s the internet.
In light of that, it’s questionable to what extent the Fediverse should be pitched as a distinct thing in a similar vein as those platforms some Fediverse software emulates. Fediverse, open social web, whatever you want to call it is of main relevance more to those working on it and trying to promote it among developers.
To those of us using these platforms, it’s probably better to simply invite those to our respective instances/sites as simply another site/app without all the jargon and background.
Forget Lemmy/Mastodon/Pixelfed/etc. except insofar as it’s in the URL or needed to search apps. Ultimately they’re backends, and many weren’t going around inviting people to their sites or enthusiast forums talking up apache or phpbb or the like.
The Fediverse is an emerging subset of the open web with improved interconnectedness, and so what’s more important than it is reinvigorating the spirit of the open web by reminding people there’s more beyond the closed web by inviting and encouraging them to visit our open spaces alongside their own. It’s closed web/walled garden thinking to discourage visiting a variety of sites and using a variety of apps.
The open web thrives, enduring, enveloping and eroding the enclosures despite their efforts to ward off its persistent being.
TL;DR:
Invite people to these spaces without the technobabble, don’t give them shit for visiting/using enclosed sites/apps.
Celebrate the open web by showing them more places online to check out alongside theirs.
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I’ve been arguing for over 2 years now that the actual value proposition of the fediverse is Community+. There are several Lemmy and Mastodon instances that are built around this – tenforward.social is a Star Trek themed and focused Mastodon site, where the vast majority of local chatter is focused on Star Trek, and startrek.website, beehaw.org, midwest.social, ttrpg.network, etc. are all community or interest focused Lemmy-based websites – and they all seem to actually work in that model. People aren’t signing up to the Star Trek Lemmy site to talk primarily about Call of Duty or American politics. They get their Star Trek community, and they can engage in those general interest discussions that are being hosted elsewhere, and everybody wins.
The key to growth, then, really is getting enough special interest and community websites up and running on the fediverse, and letting people discover the the power of being connected to people on other social media websites without having to sign up over there, too.
If Bluesky was using ActivityPub, there’d be no issue here right now. We’d all be able to get Community+Bluesky and be all the happier for it. But they’ve created their own system that’s prohibitively expensive for the average person to utilize without having a direct connection to Bluesky’s hardware, meaning the control forever remains in the hands of corporate interests and the rich. And that’s just a play at being the next Amazon. We’re either locked out, or we’re under their thumb. And that’s not really where any of us who are engaged with this fediverse project wanted to be.
I think this is good advice, but has some caveats. If you skip the technobabble and politics about free (as in freedom), what’s left? If it’s just a platform that feels more complicated to sign up, because you have to learn about instances and it’s not clear which one you want, plus your friends aren’t there, plus it’s just 45k users total instead of a lot…?
I mean we then need some positive thing. For all I care, we might call it detox. But what’s the detox? We’d need something like a substancially better (healthier/more welcoming) culture, less posts that make up for that with quality… And I’m not 100% sure we’re there… Feel free to disagree or comment on my perspective… I mean the atmosphere here is nicer than on Reddit. But not radically different, in my opinion.
If you skip the technobabble and politics about free (as in freedom), what’s left? If it’s just a platform that feels more complicated to sign up, because you have to learn about instances and it’s not clear which one you want, plus your friends aren’t there, plus it’s just 45k users total instead of a lot…?
The complication arises by making the mistake of pointing people to the backend, and the backends confusing matters by presenting themselves as platforms like existing corporate platforms. As noted, you reduce that by inviting them to join or browse your respective instance (or if you’re self-hosting, to whichever open instance you think is amenable).
You’re right though that some positive thing would help, and that’s really down to whatever positive thing you found and want to share with others about these spaces. For me it’s as simple as them being open and ad-free. I’m reminded of it every time I find myself trying to browse enclosures without having an account and they simply won’t allow me to browse much before prompting me to sign up or subscribe to view more.
In a way that’s kind of the irony of the fediverse, a major feature is that you don’t have to sign up at all in many(most?) cases.
every time I find myself trying to browse enclosures without having an account and they simply won’t allow me to browse much before prompting me to sign up or subscribe to view more.
Yeah, like Pintrest and Facebook an a lot of services these days. I avoid those like the plague. That’s enshittification and for the users: living within small confined spaces. Though, that’d get me started babbling about freedom and starting the technobabble on how the internet is supposed to liberate information, and not confine it…
as simple as them being open and ad-free
I generally recommend uBlock to my friends. With that, 90% of the internet is ad-free. And I don’t mind watching the advertisements itself… It’s (again) the other things that come with it. The tracking, selling of data, being an object to the ad selling algorithms…
I can’t help but immediately proceed to the technobabble… Maybe with a few exceptions. I could explain why it’s stupid to watch 2 ads before each Youtube video.
I usually just describe fediverse platforms as being community built and run, rather than corporate platforms owned by a company. And then if folks have questions I can answer whatever they wanna know more about 🤷♂️
To me that feels like the best balance I’ve come up with so far, but maybe there are better approaches out there still :)
Fediverse: a network of community built and run platforms.
I like that.
Sound advice.
PS: punctuation and capitalization are conformist and bourgeois but they do make it easier to read.
