this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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This completely depends who you're communicating with and what their level of tech literacy is, but also their level of interest in hearing the techy details. Most of the time I'm explaining it to middle-aged women who still have Facebook accounts, so that should give you an idea where I'm personally coming from.
If they're asking specifically about the term "Fediverse", usually because they heard me talking about it, I tell people that it's just the name for a group of different social media type sites that all communicate with each other instead of being completely separate like the ones they're probably familiar with. It's like having an account on Facebook, and using it to keep up and chat with your friends on TikTok too without ever having to make an account there.
Since one of the main hurdles during big switchovers is the "oh not another account to sign up for" feeling, this on its own is a pretty big eye-opener for a lot of people in terms of why it's better.
Then I'll talk about what the community is like here around our shared interests (mostly fibre crafts), because that's what people actually care about.
If they show no further interest, they still now understand more than at least 95% of people.
Some will be interested in giving it a go themselves, in which case I tell them to start with Mastodon, which is a bit like Twitter except not awful. I get them to join the default server unless they are quite techy, but let them know they don't need to understand what that means because they'll naturally pick it up and can easily move to another server later if they want, so it's not a big deal decision. I'll guide them through the basic gist, get them to make an introduction post, and use my modest reach on there to get them a few initial followers so they don't feel like they're shouting into the void.
The problem with most explanations is that enthusiastic nerds try to fit absolutely everything in at once. Federation, instances etc. And it's just too much especially for a non-techy crowd. Give them the info they actually need to get started and drip-feed the rest over time.