I think that we get stuck too much on how it works. We need to step back and ask ourselves what we are trying to explain.
The goal here is to have them try out a new social media. The media looks, feels and behaves like twitter. So the only explanation needed is “it’s like twitter”
You can then add what differentiate it from twitter “it’s open source” “it’s not controlled by big tech” “there are no ads” “it’s good a blocking nazi content (ymmv)”
IMHO advertising the decentralized “like email” nature of mastodon as a starting point is counter productive.
I think that we get stuck too much on how it works. We need to step back and ask ourselves what we are trying to explain.
The goal here is to have them try out a new social media. The media looks, feels and behaves like twitter. So the only explanation needed is “it’s like twitter”
You can then add what differentiate it from twitter “it’s open source” “it’s not controlled by big tech” “there are no ads” “it’s good a blocking nazi content (ymmv)”
IMHO advertising the decentralized “like email” nature of mastodon as a starting point is counter productive.