• FistfulOfBottlecaps@midwest.social
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    2 years ago

    It’s because everything is buzzwords these days. They just think decentralized is another buzzword rather than a legitimate descriptor. I blame crypto.

    • lemdoeswhatreddont@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 years ago

      I try to stick to the email analogy, most people have seen email threads distributed across users on a bunch of mailservers. Don’t even have to touch the d-word

      • Gray@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        Do you think “instance” is a bad word to use for the different Lemmy servers? My wife thinks so, but I’m not sure what a better word would be to use other than maybe just “server”, but that also feels too techy. I do think “community” is a good non-technical word to use for the equivalent of subreddits.

        • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
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          2 years ago

          Not the guy you replied to, but to me personally the word instance comes across as technical, considering how its used in programming

          Not too sure if there’s a normal sounding alternative, defo could benefit from a non-techie perspective here 🤔

        • lemdoeswhatreddont@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 years ago

          “Server” has been pretty normalized (albeit abused) by discord especially, so it seems accessible to me?

          “Instance” does seem vague and overly techy to me, it’s an oop/code term (think “instantiate the class”) that’s been borrowed for casual use.

          “Community=subreddit” sounds pretty good, but runs the risk of being misinterpreted as more of a “community = discord server” thing…

          I’m also fond of matrix’s “homeserver”, a server that (while your home) isn’t your only location, but that might be entirely foreign to new users too.

          Definitely a tricky problem

    • FaceDeer@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Crypto is decentralized, though. It’s an honest way of describing it. I think that more to blame are the specific crypto users who gave it a “bad name” with their shenanigans and equally the people who took that as an excuse to dump on crypto in general.