I’ve been wondering if the AOL walled garden works as a metaphor for the non-fediverse Internet.

For my friends old enough to remember pre-Internet AOL, I have described the difficulties getting your mind around fediverse concepts as similar to the paradigm shift we all went through when first wandering out from AOL onto the open World Wide Web (ie, HTTP websites).

What do you mean, there’s more than one area to talk about the latest episode of Friends?! Isn’t that confusing? How do you know where to go for that content?

In AOL, I can just enter a keword. What’s this about a search engine? Why do I need to use some unrelated website, like Hotbot, to find out where people are talking about Friends?

For a couple of my friends, this analogy has sparked their openness to digging in a little and learning about Lemmy, etc, and it’s made then more forgiving of the fact that certain aspects are not intuitive right off the bat.

That’s a great idea! Thanks for the suggestion!

How long did your approval take? I’m in no rush at all, just want to make sure I’m not missing something I need to do! :-)

Hi, all! I wish I had kept the snippet I included in my application to join this instance, but from what I remember, I expressed hope and trepidation about the future of the Fediverse.

My dream outcome would be for apps like Lemmy and Mastadon to create a norm where user content is stored in a client- and organization-agnostic manner, much like today’s websites tend to be accessible via whichever browser software you choose to use. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the human effort, knowledge and experience that is stored in replies and discussions on various websites were available to other websites and entities, rather than being under the control and whims of individual website owners?

My fear is that—as of today—the Fediverse remains fairly challenging for the average user to grok, join and participate in. I’m trying to think of ways to reduce the barrier to entry, but I don’t know how much I can really contribute other than my opinion. There are some who say that a high barrier to entry is a good thing, but I disagree. I don’t think we can use someone’s ability to navigate to (and within) the Fediverse as a proxy for the worth of their contributions to discussions,or their life experience they can bring to the table. But that’s just me…

One thing I know for sure: I found out about Lemmy during the Reddit Crisis of 2023, and in researching Lemmy I discovered SDF. I love this organization, I’m glad I found it, and I am really happy to be here. Thank you guys for hosting this instance!