Th4tGuyII

It may have been a little slow at times, but it just worked. It wasn't constantly trying to advertise to you, trying to get you to download apps, trying to force AI onto you, trying to harvest your data, forcing you to use online services, it was just an operating system and a good one at that

That's why I use the "little providers" wording. Most people using email will know, or at least have an idea of, what an email provider is because they had to sign up with one to have said email. It translates easier when trying to teach people what an instance even is.

I don't tend to go as advanced as mentioning that the different Fediverse socials can technically talk to one another (due to all running off ActivityPub). I feel like that just adds a layer of confusion for someone learning, for a feature they may very well not use.

Normally, unless you're insane enough to build a bridge to make that work.
Though if the person I was teaching asked, I'd just say no haha

Yeah - I do find it odd when people say Facebook is dying, because it really isn't. Unless Zuckerberg pulls a Musk anytime soon, it isn't going anywhere - unlike Xitter, Facebook is an advertising juggernaught that makes more than enough money to keep itself afloat.

And that's not even mentioning Facebook groups, news pages, business pages, the market place, etc.. they've got fingers in many different pies, and it shows.

And even more, while it may not be popular amongst tech savvy folks, it is still insanely popular amongst regular folks. I for one can vouch that a significant proportion of my non-techy friends use either it or Instagram as their primary social media.

Hell, that's why messenger is up there too - everyone has Facebook, so everyone has messenger, making it extremely convenient to message people you know. It's certainly why I use it a lot, it's where my friends are.

Meta dominates social media even now - just look at your list. Of the top seven, over half of them are Meta.

Unfortunately email is likely the only federated network most people will know and be routinely exposed to. As such, it is the best way to describe what a federated network is. I describe the Fediverse something like such:

"Think about emails. There are loads of different providers (Gmail, outlook, Yahoo, etc.), each with their own web pages, their own email servers, etc.. But when you email someone else it doesn't matter what email provider they use, as long as you have their address, you can email them (assuming they haven't blocked you).

That's because emails are federated - every email provider sends emails the same way, using the same underlying language (or "protocol").

It's like how different parts of England or the US have way different accents, but because they're all speaking English, you'll generally understand what's being said.

Now imagine instead email providers, you had loads of little twitters doing the same thing. You could make a post and it gets sent out to all your followers, etc. no matter what little Twitter they're following you on. That's what Mastodon is - it's loads of little twitters in a trenchcoat.

Now imagine you did that for Facebook Groups [or Reddit if they're savvy enough]. Loads of little Facebooks where you could make groups and post, and people could join and view these posts regardless of what little Facebook they're on. That's what Lemmy is [or Kbin for the cool kids].

Everything on the Fediverse works like that. You have loads of little providers (instances), which all talk using the same underlying protocols (based on a protocol called ActivityPub), and act as one big interconnected web of social media."

It's a bit long winded, but it's simple and doesn't overwhelm with jargon. If they know what emails are, you can explain this to them..

I struggle to see another pathway in, because as I said before, most people aren't exposed to literally any other form of federation. Emails are to federation what Pandas are to Wildlife conservation.

We're always told the people at the bottom rung of society, the people doing "entry level" jobs just need to work harder and harder to earn a proper living...

But how does that work really? Unlike a lot of high level jobs, none of these jobs just exist for the sake of existing, most of these "entry level" jobs are essential to society (we saw that much during the pandemic).

Somebody has to do them or society just doesn't work, so don't the people doing these literally essential jobs deserve to be paid a fair living wage? They're working just as hard as the people above them, yet they're paid peanuts in comparison

Congrats to Team 0% - the "last level" may have been a somewhat unceremonious fake out, but the fact of the matter is they can hold their heads up high and say they've beaten every completeable SMM level

The worst part about this is that I could actually picture him saying something like that

Completely off-topic - was scrolling past on Kbin and the image for the thumbnail reminded me of this stupid meme from years back

Well somebody ought to tell them that they should maybe put that +1000% margin they make on their drugs into that rather than lining their pockets.

God forbid the executives make a little less money - won't somebody think of those poor multi-millionaires! /s

Because it's worth knowing beforehand what a company is really like behind closed doors.

Some companies are great, some suck in standard corporate fashion, but there are some out there that are exceptional in sucking...

I'll use myself an example... the last company I worked for, our team was constantly given deadlines that were impossible to meet within work hours. The company basically refused to pay for what was essentially mandatory overtime required to catch up - wage theft by a different name.

Fortunately my role allowed me to push back, but most of peers didn't - we were all straight out of university, some needed the money/job, but most just didn't know how to fight in the corporate environment.

Not to mention that a few folks who did try to complain against the company conveniently found themselves fired for some miscellaneous breaches of contract. From what I heard, one was even fired based on their reaction to being told they were being dismissed - quite literally entrapment.

If you're wondering why we didn't sue or anything like that, again we were all straight out of uni, we barely knew what our working rights were...

Which is why Glassdoor was important - it was how most of these folks got word out about the company and tried to warn other potential candidates of what they were walking into.

The company knew about it too because they posted multiple fake reviews to try to drown out the real ones. I know for a fact that if they were able to find out who posted these, they would have retaliated, likely in the form of litigation.

...

At the point where Putin can quite easily have any popular opposition stricken from the ballot, imprisoned, or worse still coincidentally fall from a building or endure some "freak accident", is there all that much use in pretending any opposition ever had a chance to win?