Hey all, I just wanted to give my personal view, now is the time to start talking about the Fediverse seriously with friends and family. I always have casually, but I’m starting serious talks with them now that the political climate has… shifted.
We are not the only ones who are concerned about our online privacy. Even people I thought didn’t really care are suddenly concerned (or realizing) that their private chats and DMs may not be as private as they thought. I’ve found that many more people are interested than were even just a few months ago.
Fediverse is a bit harder, I’ve found it’s easier to convince family with “It’s a more private space for us to share vacation photos like we used to”. Even my aging relatives know that facebook isn’t safe to upload intimate family photos to, and they’re looking for a solution. Friendica works well for this (and it’s relatively easy to host a family instance).
Matrix has honestly been easier. It works similar to Discord so those users have been easier to transition, and you may be surprised how many of your friends are only in Discord to chat in your small servers anyway. If the majority of the conversation moves, they probably will to.
The biggest takeaway is, although we are techies, don’t talk about the tech. It turns people away. Let it come up naturally. Describe the places as private, away from prying eyes. When asked “Well can I talk to other people?” Say yes, you’ll show them how when it comes time for it. Don’t bother with saying it’s like email, or this, or that. To them, it’s just an app. Send them to the registration page you want them to join at, and let it flow from there.
Good luck!
Matrix servers are too resource heavy and few people will want to run one next to their already expensive to run Mastodon or Lemmy instance.
Here at slrpnk.net we have a working XMPP integration though, which is extremely lightweight and works great in giving every member a XMPP account on the same address as their fediverse id.
I want to be able to draw people into Lemmy by sharing a link to a Lemmy post. The issue is I’m on Voyager, and maybe the link is to the original post on lemmy.world. They see the post in a much uglier user interface. Kinda a turnoff from the fediverse.
Voyager has a web version, so send them that. But the way they handle linking and data fetching - from what I can tell - doesn’t guarantee a post will load if the viewer logs into a different instance than the person that shared the article. So you get a broken link. Also not fun.
I’m writing a client that solves this among other problems. A native app and website that look consistent across devices, scale up to take advantage of larger screens, and handle links consistently even if you’re on a different instance.
That way you get the best experience possible with the native app, and when you share a link, your friend sees the same post in a nice user interface that draws them in.
Sounds like an interesting app you’re building. I’m working on an ideas that sounds like it would compliment what you’re working on. Shoot me a link or info if/when available.
No ads is another great selling point that people will understand!
Another option to think about is Pixelfed. It looks almost exactly like Instagram so it’s easy to use and easy to tell family that “it’s just for the family photos we want to share privately with each other”.
Pixelfed doesn’t do real privacy tho does it? You can’t have locked down accounts, at least that’s what I thought
You might be right. I haven’t looked too deeply. Kindof a shame if true.
