Jumping into the fediverse can feel confusing at first. Unlike traditional social media, the fediverse is decentralized, with multiple servers working together, which brings opportunities but also ...
You can sign up for an email account with many providers. They handle your account and store your mail.
You can still send and receive emails to people from other email providers/domains.
I’m not a huge fan of the email analogy, because nobody knows how email works who isn’t a tech nerd anyways.
See: people who ask what your gmail is, not what your email is.
I’ve started explaining it as picking a user and server name you like, and then that’s how and where you login to the ‘fediverse’.
Less tech people have seemed to follow that at least, since it’s a much simpler thing they can understand: they get what a username is, they get what logging in is, and they get that a username and a login lets you access something.
And before everyone comes in with why that’s a horrible explanation, I know. It’s terrible, but it’s terrible enough that I’ve got family members who can’t keep left and right clicking sorted out to understand what I’m trying to say and how all these things are related.
Not OP but use emails as an example.
You can sign up for an email account with many providers. They handle your account and store your mail. You can still send and receive emails to people from other email providers/domains.
I’m not a huge fan of the email analogy, because nobody knows how email works who isn’t a tech nerd anyways.
See: people who ask what your gmail is, not what your email is.
I’ve started explaining it as picking a user and server name you like, and then that’s how and where you login to the ‘fediverse’.
Less tech people have seemed to follow that at least, since it’s a much simpler thing they can understand: they get what a username is, they get what logging in is, and they get that a username and a login lets you access something.
And before everyone comes in with why that’s a horrible explanation, I know. It’s terrible, but it’s terrible enough that I’ve got family members who can’t keep left and right clicking sorted out to understand what I’m trying to say and how all these things are related.