Not bad, but I personally don’t like centering the attention on platforms because then we are drawing attention away from the instances. By centering attention on instances, we normalize instances and allow them to thrive.
I’d say something in the direction of Discussion Instances for communities.
Lemmy is an open townhall hive that offers public sharing of links, letters and images.
Too long; Didn’t read: Read last paragraph.
We need to understand the target audience if we want to get a good description. Speaking for myself, I would set the target audience to chronically online people who want to leave corporate walldoms, but I’d also choose a type of communication that focus on the actual service instead of comparing it to other serices. I’d not copy paste description from inspiration source. I’d be willing to reimagine what it is that we are developing.
I’d use communication that is less branded, and more understanding of the soul of the service. Its like saying “orange soda” instead of “fanta”, “search engine” instead of “google” or “car” instead of “Toyota”. The difference is by using this kind of language, we move ourselves away from dependency on the producers towards dependency on the tool.
Understanding the soul also requires that we have a culturally connected understanding of that which we discuss. That is to use less technical communication and more down to earth communication. To not play into sophistication. Less abbreviations, less techno jargon, more plain english, more understanding the equivalents of real life. For example, in the Gemini Protocol of small web, they use the word “capsule” instead of “instance”, which it feel more physical and more real. “Instance” on the other hand makes it sound like a computer thing and not related to reality.
About the soul, we should ask ourselves what the service feels like. Lemmy feels like small townhalls, or like a guy in the street yelling “Guys! What do you think of this drawing.” Perhaps a little gossipy or something like that. Ask yourself, what does lemmy feel like for you? Or what do you want lemmy to feel like? From here I choose “townhall” simply because it works for the purpose.
The above example also gives weight to the idea of physicality. When something feels physical, it feels real, and we feel drawn to it. In contrast, the abstract “instance” makes it more of a curiosity. We can talk of “towns”, “homes” or “hives” instead of “instances”. We can talk of “continents” of loosely connected hives instead of fediverse of platforms of instances. From here I choose “hive” because it distinguishes itself clearly to prevent misunderstandings.
With the physicality and smallness of “hive”, we can also encourage small scale thinking. Because no hives has a million bees. If you see a hive of a million inhabitants, you are going to be drawn towards smaller hives.
I’d also center the attention away from platforms and towards the hives and their interconnectedness. In this way we emphasize the decentralization aspect. The willingness to associate with other hives. I frame this as a hive being “open”.
This means we can talk of fediverse instances as open hives. Mastodon becomes shortletter hives, pixelfed becomes open gallery hive, peertube becomes open video hive.
So to be blunt, I’d suggest open townhall hive.
I think the word “open instance” could be used in place of decentralized. So when we frame it as open discussion instance, it is a reference to how the instance is decentralized.