I described it as “Mastodon’s Reddit”. Which is inaccurate, and I’m not happy with it. How would you phrase it?
A non-Fediverse person wouldn’t know Mastodon, would they?
Usually I say it’s like a thousand different tiny Reddits that all subscribe to each other. No central owner, no central operator. If any one of them gets unruly, the others can just shun them.
THEN I sometimes say “do you remember Mastodon?” And half the time they are like “oh yeah! That Twitter alternative!” And I say yes like that but for Reddit.
I don’t think a non-Fediverse person would be very familiar with Mastodon. They’d be more likely to go “What, like elephants?”.
I would keep it really simple, and just go for “Reddit alternative”. The whole Federation and decentralised business is going to be a sledgehammer if you introduce it to someone who’s not familiar with the concept.
I’ve found comparing it to email works well. It’s about the only (mostly) decentralised service that most people have used.
“It’s like Reddit, but is decentralised, like email is.”, “This makes it far harder to manipulate to hide information.”
Reddit for nerds and political extremists.
Reddit in slow-motion.
A collection of message boards.
Reddit with a slightly more community centred ownership structure so it’s a bit harder to enforce unpopular decisions.
It’s reddit but instead of r/ we have c/ and there are different servers, not just reddit.com, but most of them talk to each other. Also the devs are leftist authoritarians
tankies, don’t use .ml“Imagine a hydra with an infinite number of heads. Some of the heads are arguing, some have got their necks knotted, and some are french-kissing. One of them is wearing a pirate hat.”
Reddit.
Without the cunt on top who put it down.
And there won’t ever be one, because there’s no chair for him to sit in.
If you had a hundred small Reddits talking to each other like one big Reddit, oh and with fewer fascists and no ads.
What would win in a fight, a hundred Lemmy-sized Reddits or one Reddit-sized Lemmy?
I’d love to know if my enormous blocklist of instances and communities is unusual or if most people end up curating their global feeds massively to keep them interesting. Anime, porn, US-specific politics, authoritarian-friendly politics, furries, wojak-style barrel-scraping memes - I don’t want to downvote most of these just because they’re not my bag, but I suspect I end up with a tiny fraction of the total Lemmy+Piefed content.
I tend to block at the user and community level, my only instance block is feddit.de and that’s only because I don’t speak German and those folks are such prolific posters it felt like I was touring central Europe every time I’d go to the All feed.
Blocking what you’re not interested in is the second best part of Lemmy, IMO.
I’ve learned it’s a mistake to try to describe the fediverse to people. It’s right up there with getting them to care about privacy
I’d just describe it as Reddit, but less bots. Or reddit but less toxic. Just focus on what might draw them in and send them a link to lemmy.world or whatever home server you think they’d like
“less toxic” can be interpreted in different ways. For example, I don’t always find people on Lemmy to be more open-minded across tribal boundaries. But you can perhaps find your tribe and experience less toxicity that way?
Many parallel reddit-like services which can interact with each others’ content if they choose to allow it.
reddit without the reddit users
Decentralized and noncommercial reddit
First thing asked “Decentralized?”
And it’s one of those things where those who care already know, and those that don’t care won’t : “get it” by you explaining it.
“Decentralized?”
“Like email” is a quick way to explain that.
It really isn’t, I had no idea what people were on about when they said that and it sidetracked me from actually reaching a proper understanding. The analogy makes sense and seems apt, when you already understand the concept but not when you don’t.
“Oh, I’m good. I don’t need another email. I don’t even use the one I have”.
Is how that explaination would go.
Nah, probably more “like an email : doesn’t matter if you’re @gmail or @outlook, multiple servers can communicate together”
I found it pretty easy by explaining that if reddit is a website, then Lemmy is a search engine that just has a similar feel to it.
It isn’t accurate, but gets the point across to those who don’t understand tech.
