• @[email protected]
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    1510 hours ago

    “Works just like email” is always easy way to explain. Everyone who uses email understands that they can send a message to a @gmail.com account from a @yahoo.com account or any other server.

    • @[email protected]
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      210 minutes ago

      Ah yeah just like email. All I had to do to comment here from a different instance was:

      1. “Maybe if I click login it will somehow do federated login?” Nope.
      2. Ok what if I copy the /post/<id> from the URL and paste it in my instance. Nope 404.
      3. Hmm…
      4. Aha! I randomly noticed this text:

      You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]

      1. I did that, but it eventually (takes like 10 seconds) came up with a load of random posts and comments from here.
      2. Maybe… if I click on Fediverse memes@feddit.uk - 792 subscribers?

      Success!

      Just like typing in someone@yahoo.com. 🙄

    • @[email protected]
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      6 hours ago

      The most success I’ve had is just explaining that it’s a social media platform that exists across a variety of websites that all synchronize communities and posts and comments and votes, and you can interact with any of them from any other one

      The problem with the email analogy is that, for most people, email exists as the Gmail app on their phone. It does not occur to them how I can send an email from my Hotmail account to their Gmail account. The moment you say the word protocol, 80% of people’s eyes glaze over

    • @Takumidesh
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      9 hours ago

      I recently came across a scenario where the person I was talking ‘felt uncomfortable’ taking down my email, because it didn’t end in .com. I would be careful when making assumptions about the general population.

      • Robust Mirror
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        57 hours ago

        I’ve signed up to websites that had entry validation on the email field that flagged not having .com at the end as invalid. Literally someone that should know about technology decided it would be a good idea to make it that way.