decentralised social media is a really amazing idea that will live or die on the successful communication of the concepts
unfortunately "instances" and "federation" are not even a tiny bit self-descriptive and that's a real shame
here's a concept I just pulled out of my ass -
Instances > Planet
Federation > Galaxy
I'm a member of the mastodon planet and can see the planet timeline. to see all other planets at once, i view the galaxy timeline
don't even need to explain that really
@Fiona I like this idea, but I am not sure if the reasoning is correct. I don't think that most Facebook users actually understand the client-server model of communication either.
That said, the federated model may be more difficult to understand. I may say more about this in a bit.
@inmysocks people who use Facebook and Twitter are used to interacting with a single point of contact service. They understand the client-server relationship even if they'd never understand the correct terms for it.
This is different though, it's a whole bunch of very similar services that interconnect in a global fashion, and none of that is clear. Rethinking the analogy in the terminology would go a long way towards dealing with that IMO.
Fiona
inmysocks Of Doom, Naked KSC