I like explaining it via analogy to email, since it's something even laypeople are familiar with.

[sortekanin@socialhub.activitypub.rocks]

I like explaining it via analogy to email, since it's something even laypeople are familiar with. I mean email is federated in a sense as well, or at least it uses an open standard.

People are used to the idea that one email might be at domainone.com while another email is at domaintwo.com, but these emails can still talk to one another. Just imagine that, but instead of email, it's social media actions like posting, commenting, liking stuff and such. I feel like that gets the general idea across pretty well. It doesn't explain a lot of the edge cases though.