For the Philippines and Filipinos, Facebook seems to be the de facto “internet”, especially with how Meta offers free access to mobile users (basic FB and Messenger) even without a data subscription.
It’s free. It’s convenient. Our friends and groups are already there.
So how do we encourage (or convince?) our friends to try out federated social networks?
Whenever I shill Lemmy to the average person, the reaction is almost always a mixture of disgust towards the UI or that it’s too complicated. I disagree to the point that I’m honestly baffled why people think that — I mean, you don’t even have to familiarize yourself with federation; just treat it as a regular discussion board. There’s also the guys who buy into the “problematic dev” story when he has no control over what other instances do. But alas, perception is reality.
That’s not stopping me from shilling the community anyway. It just sucks that I’ve sworn off Reddit and have to rely on others to promote Lemmy. I did edit my flair in case someone stumbles upon my old posts, lmao.
Funny that’s the same kind of reaction I got from people when I tried sharing Reddit to them ~10 years ago. These days I share links to interesting lemmy posts with friends but I leave it to them if they want to sign up.