Ever thought about how we make this place sound cool to other people?
Spoiler: It's not 'Fedi'-anything.
https://forbetter.ghost.io/the-normal-response-to-the-social-web/
How (mostly) 'normal' people respond to the ideas of the Social Web Marketing the Social Web is a headache. Only heightened by the clashing of heads as everyone offers an opinion. Picture those dinosaurs that have their skull on the outside. That's us. No wonder it's a headache. But even
@saskia Been saying this for years. Hell, even I didn't really want to join something that called itself "Mastodon" for a few years.
The whole fedi sucks at naming everything, sans a few exceptions. E.g. the loops project which doesn't feel the need to shove "fedi" or a weird obscure whatever in the name.
💯
The amount of times I've seen someone's interest instantly evaporate when you start adding these complicated words
@saskia "Social Web" is a completely meaningless combination of words. It says nothing. I LOLed when i saw that.
The web is inherently social, to some degree, after all.
Thank you for reading carefully and clearly missing the point 🙂↔️
@saskia what a great post Saskia! I feel seen, given the title of my blog and the fact I have managed to get so few people on board, ugh.
Just two things.
One: please do NOT underestimate the power and voice you have in this space. I’m super grateful for your fantastic work and advocacy.
Two: maybe setting up a contrast with Big Tech social platforms by saying “non commercial” social media could help people understand? How making money off of advertising and data harvesting is NOT done here?
Mostly agreed, but I’d be wary of the ‘non-commercial’ framing, for a couple of reasons:
First, it immediately raises the question of ‘what is it if it isn’t commercial?’ And ‘where does the money come from?’ These are both important conversations to have later. They aren’t the first conversations you want. The thing you probably do want is some framing (as you said) about it not being an advertising / data-mining platform. I think getting the media to refer to data-mining platforms as ‘social media’ is one of most impressive piece of marketing of the last couple of decades, there’s a lot of work needed to undo that.
Second, the Fediverse (sorry!) isn’t intrinsically non-commercial. A few news organisations run their own instances, for example. These exist as a commercial channel for them. If they provided a mechanism to pay to follow some of their accounts, that would be completely fine! If a company wants to create its own instance to better engage with its customers, that’s wonderful but also 100% commercial.
I think the messaging needs to focus a lot more on agency: you are in control of what you see. But for that to be a strong message, there need to be better discovery mechanisms. It was easy for me to find people here interested in (at least some of) the same things as me, but my partner wanted to find content about music, linguistics, education, and assessment, and gave up. I occasionally see posts that are relevant to these interests but I have no idea how to find them. The tradeoff for the data-mining platforms is that you see a bunch of things you want to see, in exchange for seeing things other people pay for you to see. The Fediverse needs to capture the advantage part of that without the down side. I’d love to see an onboarding flow that gave you a big list of things you might be interested in and made you follow the hashtags, as long as much more overt ‘you are seeing this because you follow this hashtag / person’ above every message so people understand how they are in control.
That means a lot, thank you ❤️
Definitely setting up as a contrast helps.
But, I've found myself having to over-explain a few times when I've brought up non-commercial aspects. Some people hear that and panic, thinking it means they won't be able to use the platform for their business like they do on Big Tech. I think the idea of non-commercial social is so crazy in our world it takes a while to understand.
@saskia Love this.
I was pondering what more approachable language I could use when I blogged about it, and opted to only refer to "Mastodon". I think normal people these days expect the brand-aligned app on their appstore, and the whole "choice of different software" thing is definitely a layer of weirdness they're not used to, and which isn't actually that important in a first explanation.
o O (but Harry, don't you understand? There's an open protocol!)
Shhhh... marketing
I 100% agree on the idea of brand-aligned social media. I think that's one of the reasons Bluesky has done so well in comparison (plus, the connotations of a blue sky are a lot clearer than Fediverse or Mastodon).
@saskia Speaking of branding. Some people would be attracted here if they could talk to (or at least follow) brands/organisations, but they just haven't come to the fediverse yet in any great numbers. Maybe we should direct more marketing at the marketers!
Mastodon *used to* block referers by default, but since 2022 organisations can start to see engagement stats a little better like so: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/now-witness-the-power-of-this-fully-operational-fediverse/
This technical message would definitely need a marketing spin on it though!
It would be super interesting to ask attendees their thoughts on the naming system and see if there's a difference between 'Fediverse' and whatever you choose to replace it with.
@saskia I like to use the pub/club analogy. Here on the social web you can choose multiple 'local's because of the people who frequent them, because you can have conversation about topics you choose and precisely because it is _not_ chock full of corporate marketing or influencers forever trying to improve 'reach' or sell things.
You choose. You support the pub/club as you see fit. You get to speak to the owner/operator if someone is behaving unacceptably to you. You can also leave if you want.
I do love the pub analogy!
I tried it out here though and not many people got it, maybe too British? Works in the UK though, that's for sure.
@saskia This is a great read, and helpful for someone who struggles with figuring out how to 'sell' the idea of things here - I come from a very technical approach which almost nobody else (in a very general sense) in my relationships does.
I suspect a whole different article could be written about the branding, which, for my $0.02 worth, I think is a real disservice when people say 'Mastodon' instead of Social Web (or even the F word... lol). My completely conflicting opinion on the topic suggests 1) People truly do need a single branded thing, and 2) People generally to completely understand the difference between Gmail, Hotmail and/or any other Email service and app. So I believe it's possible (or should be) to avoid talking about Mastodon as "the branded Social Web *thing*" but... then what?
Maybe part of my conflicting thoughts is that I think the Mastodon app is very weak and that hinders my whole desire to suggest it to anyone, too.
@saskia What really made me think was that AirBus analogy of yours: I totally do understand your reasoning how normal people and therefore greater amounts of people would go for the fly with us experience thing.
Personally however an ad like that would make me want to run away. I'd rather fall for the hydraulic pumps.
I never liked the term Fediverse myself. I might have picked it up sooner if the thing had some better name.
@saskia I'm afraid though if it was made more appealing to normal people it would probably seem even less appealing to me. I rather wouldn't have picked it up at all if the branding gave me the impression of something more generic or something more like typical social media.
I never used social media before joining Mastodon.
I'm aware this point of view is very personal. One might call it plainly egoistical when I say I don't even want greater numbers of normal people around here.
This feeling is shared by a lot of people and there's nothing wrong with it! There's room for everyone here though and the decentralised nature means that we can create our own quiet corners with 'our people'.
@saskia I suppose you do make that statement with sound technical arguments in mind. It makes sense to think that this should be possible. Yet I guess it's an outlook based on a good deal of optimism.
Pessimists among us might say things would go do the drain anyway.
@saskia But I dare to say that probably a great part of the current Mastodon or Fediverse crowd feels that way to some extent. Maybe not saying it out loud. Maybe not even noticing it.
As it is I'd say it's a rather special biosphere and therefore not for everyone by design.
Thank you so much for sharing this perspective, @saskia!
What you wrote is exactly the reason why I created Knitting Our Internet: to explain the Fediverse to my grandma. I call it Fediverse, but only after one your of journey through the history of the Internet. It’s not a pitch, a class, or an explanation, it’s interactive time travel (speaking of marketing jargon 😉). You are most welcome to join it next week on June 6 at 14 at Public Spaces.
Anyway, I am not sure I fully agree with your points… I want to talk about this more!
This should absolutely be a talk for the Open Social Web track at DWeb Camp! I would love to see you present these ideas there. We are missing talks like this right now! I can happily fast-track your proposal 👀😉
Knitting Our Internet is an interactive journey through the history of the Internet, and a collective rethinking of its future.The activity consists of a face-to-face workshop, providing tangible and simple examples about how the Internet works, simultaneously questioning the very essence of today’s mainstream social networks. Its main purpose is to expose the critical limits of surveillance capitalism, centralization, and its environmental impact.After acknowledging the challenges the digital domain is currently facing, participants are encouraged to reinterpret social networks starting from decentralization, envisioning more human, collective, and participatory digital futures.
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