It’s been difficult to broach the subject and explain the technical concepts to the average person. I did have some success in first sharing the email comparison, which lead into interoperability.
I’m just curious to hear people’s success stories, if you have any.
I don’t, because it’s my escape from most of their bullshit.
Why would I tell them about “the fediverse”? Tell them that you use Lemmy or Mastodon or whatever. If they are interested then give them a link to a good instance. That’s it.
Definitely. People don’t care what’s behind. They just want an app or a website.
How likely are you to recommend Lemmy to a friend or colleague? Give a score from 1 to 10.
It really depends. I would only recommend lemmy if they’re a techy. If they’re highly integrated into mainstream social media then it would be a 7/10 recommend. If they want to find an alternative then 10/10 recommend.
Fair. I just find it interesting and want to share it. I should just let them decide on their own if it’s something they find interesting or not. I’ll try to remember to just give them an app recommend instead.
I don’t tell people about the Fediverse.
I just showed one of my friends the memes on it and they said tell me what this platform is
Nice, you won one.
Will you share your name with them? Did you communicate with irl people on the other place?
I’m not sure exactly what you meant here, but I probably wouldn’t tell most people who I am on here. That’s not to say I wouldn’t share in other places, it probably just depends on the platform really.
“It’s like email. You can have an account on Gmail and still send emails to Outlook”.
Edit: just saw that you mentioned email, so that’s usually the easiest analogy.
About success stories, I don’t have many, people I know IRL weren’t interested in Reddit, so Lemmy is the same.
I like using a mall as a really basic analogy for the shared social space:
There are multiple entrances to the mall through various shops, but once you’re inside, you can go visit wherever you want.
That’s actually a great one.
I like that analogy, thanks
I don’t. When people say, “Do you use r/?” I reply with, “I left it during the blackout.” That usually ends it.
Why not tell them about Lemmy (or other alternatives) instead?
Most of my friends are fully entrenched in mainstream social media and i don’t think there’s much interest in doing something different. I have a couple of friends and family members who i think are probably here, but we don’t talk about it.
i don’t think there’s much interest in doing something different
See that’s the part that I don’t really get though. Why is it so difficult to break free? People always want to complain but never want to be part of the solution.
Interesting that you don’t talk about it. Is that just because you prefer to keep your identity here separate from real life, or some other reason(s)?
Most people i know don’t complain a lot about the other places. When i bring up the constant marketing and such, they mostly don’t care. When interacting with people you know on social media there’s an expectation that you follow them, post/respond appropriately, etc. It’s tiring. I would use a different account.
I dont. Its honestly not great. I’d rather that effort went to preserving and repairing the existing tools of the free and open web – the old protocols are extensible. Imagine if we had an RSS client with a “reblog” feature!
“Federation” adds overhead and honestly creates as many problems as it solves. It’s not a selling point, its a price tag.
Don’t talk about the high concept of federation, talk about the community that the different services offer.
The classic misstake is to oversell and miss the point that the other party is focusing on.
Don’t: “Lemmy is so awesome, it can’t be shut down, it is federated, you can even run your own instance and have total control”
What the other party hears: “Lemmy is awesome, and you have to do a lot of stuff to join.”
Do: “Hey, have you heard about Lemmy? It is a Reddit clone with a much calmer community, I have had a lot of interesting conversations over there”
This puts the focus on the community rather than the service, people join social networks for the interaction, not the tech.
So far I don’t. I’m still learning the platform. So far I think what I imagined Lemmy to be ISN’T what I imagined it as. It COULD be that. It chooses not to. Not only is there a lack of organization, but also the policies of the platform basically PROHIBIT them from becoming moderated in a fair balanced way. Yes I see that modlog. It does nothing if the moderation team is also corrupt.
I’m not saying it currently is or isn’t corrupt. Thats not the issue. The issue is, a lot of people come from reddit because their automod is now banning things due to bad AI. Even if you appeal, they claim a human looks at it, but that’s not true.
Instead, I come to Lemmy, thinking that each instances mod team ONLY had control over their instance. If that mod bans you, I THOUGHT they’d only ban you from that instance. You take your account to a new instance. Their mods could then choose to accept your migration, or deny it. You find an instance where a human reviews your reason for being banned, and if you did anything wrong you’d be rejected there too. If that instance finds you did nothing wrong, they accept you.
This allows mods to keep power over their individual bubbles. Yet not have the ability to gain authoritarian control.
And yes, it ALSO means that users who do ban worthy offenses WOULDN’T be banned platform wide. And at first glance that sounds wrong. It means that yes, the far right would have a place to fester. But also every other instance would defederate from that one instance. So they would essentially be an echo chamber that the rest of lemmy would never see. It also means if you’re on an instance that is turning into a place you don’t agree with, you can migrate before that instance becomes defederated.
As it is now, this is just reddit, with more steps, and more confusing.
That level you describe also exists – instances are self-policing their users, though it’s an admin thing, not a mod one (mods are for communities).
lemm.ee just posted some numbers for the year and after kbin.social, which seems to get many spam accounts, they’re mostly banning lemm.ee users for misbehaving. No great need to ban .world users because .world admins are keeping their own ship clean, “are your users a bother to me” is a big factor in federation politics.
OTOH not giving communities the ability to police themselves would leads to problems because the only way to deal with anything would be to choose the nuclear option: You might get heated in a discussion about your favourite comic book character and lash out, calling people names, but otherwise be perfectly reasonable, the mods temp-banning you from their community is the right approach, there, not making you switch instances, or depriving others of the furry porn you post to the same instance as the comic community is on, or whatnot.
I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. I’m not saying thats mods/admins shouldn’t have the ability to ban you from their community. Temporarily or permanently.
I’m saying that, to take your example, you get into a heated debate over a comic book. And the mod or admin there bans you. Not from their community, not from their instance, but from ALL of Lemmy.
That’s what I think shouldn’t happen. I don’t think ANY admin or mod should be able to ban you from the whole platform. They can certainly ban you from their space, but not from all spaces at once.
They can’t ban you from the whole platform it just so happens if some admin wants you gone chances are your home instance admin wants you gone, too.
Alright, now if your home instance mod bans you, you can then still log in, and move your account to a different instance then, right?
I’m not exactly sure but often the whole comment history is nuked so there’s really nothing left to migrate.
They already can’t do that
I really don’t agree that it’s ‘just reddit with more steps…’
This place really feels different to me, and better. I like it here. Sorry you’ve been having mod troubles. I’ve not run into problems there, so can’t really relate.
I don’t because it’s fucked
I don’t, sites like this are they best when their a hidden corner of the internet
“Reddit rapes us because they control it, not us. This is like that but we control it, not them, libre software. They can get fucked!”
Yes, literally, it works for me. Most people don’t give a shit beyond that, that’s all they need to join. But, start with a chat app first. Also, this is a replacement but they only need to add an app, not replace yet.
“Cool place, like a bunch of connected forums, but avoid the .ml instances and Hexbear”
I’m not a weirdo, so I don’t. My friends don’t have to buy into my version of wasting time
weirdlybacksaway