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.

Show it to them, send links to interesting posts shared on the platform.

I unfortunately prefer not to. I’d rather they find it out for themselves. There is no problem with my friends, just that they might also spread it to their friends (some of which, well, if you’d see their fb feed you’d not want them on here).

Then again, this being very “plain” looking kinda filters the chaff out, so there’s that.

From what I understand of internet use as a whole, there’s no way to convince someone to change their browsing habits directly. Most don’t care enough. If you tell them about something you’ve done or found on here, they might become interested and browse. It’s an open platform for lurkers, so share a link or two when appropriate. If they ask why you prefer it, tell them in a way that would be meaningful to them, but never do it unprompted. Don’t get your hopes up, but some might join.

I prefer not to. This is probably the only place on surface web I can shill opinions that average online users can’t grasp.