I don’t think many people understand that if they use Lemmy or kbin, they are posting to the fediverse. There are other platforms and will be more to come. Referring to a post on “Lemmy” or “kbin” is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.
We should be referring to it as…
- I saw it on the fediverse.
- Hey fediverse users …
- A thread on the fediverse…
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
edit: A better example is email. You wouldn’t assume everyone is on Hotmail because that is the email provider you use. You say I’m sendingan eamail, not I’m sending a Hotmail.
If I was browsing Reddit and saw an interesting video, I might tell someone “I saw an interesting video on Reddit the other day” even if the video itself was hosted on YouTube. The technical detail of exactly where and how the video is hosted is not relevant to the conversation. The listener wants to know how I found it, not where it is stored.
The same is true for posts on the fediverse. The various instances are the websites that we browse. The technical detail of how they share content and how it can be accessed from various different routes just isn’t important most of the time. If you’re a Lemmy user, you’re reading the posts on Lemmy and there is nothing wrong with talking about it that way.
If I tell someone I bought a game on Steam or borrowed a book from the library, the fact that they are also available elsewhere doesn’t matter. If I tell someone I read something on kbin, does it matter that the same post also exists on different websites? 99% of the time, the answer is ‘no’.
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
I agree, but you’ve got it upsidedown. The fediverse is the platform that the instances operate on, not vice-versa.