We just need to be better about simplifying the explanation. Don’t tell people “it’s a federated website using an activitypub backend to communicate like mastodon, but only links to federated lemmys not including mastodon instances…” Tell them “it’s a fourm that shares posts and comments with other fourms that agree to work together”. If they want more detail they can easily find it themselves.
I feel like the explanation using email as an example works pretty well. Most people understand how different emails from different providers can communicate, but their account is hosted on one platform.
Even better is to talk about phone carriers, because people seem to know those better than emails these days.
“Just because your phone is using Carrier A doesn’t mean you can’t call your friends on Carriers B and C”
We just need to be better about simplifying the explanation. Don’t tell people “it’s a federated website using an activitypub backend to communicate like mastodon, but only links to federated lemmys not including mastodon instances…” Tell them “it’s a fourm that shares posts and comments with other fourms that agree to work together”. If they want more detail they can easily find it themselves.
I feel like the explanation using email as an example works pretty well. Most people understand how different emails from different providers can communicate, but their account is hosted on one platform.
Even better is to talk about phone carriers, because people seem to know those better than emails these days. “Just because your phone is using Carrier A doesn’t mean you can’t call your friends on Carriers B and C”