You know how if your email app stops working you can just install another one and still communicate with anyone else with an email address? The fediverse is like that except it's not email it's twitter and reddit and YouTube all rolled into one. So if twitter was part of the fediverse when Musk bought it and destroyed it you could move to another server with a better moderation policy and pick up where you left off.

Think about your audience and the specific features that will potentially appeal to them.

Depending on who that user is, the same feature/quirk can be either a pro or a con.

There's lower user numbers here compared to something like Reddit, but the people involved tend to be of an average higher tech literacy.
So there's not as much noise, but there's also not as much signal.

As a user, you can spin up your own instance, which gives you complete control... But it also introduces a financial and moderation expense, not to mention inherently leading to fractured communities.

Just look at the Android discussion, it's occurring on at least:
Android@lemmy.world
Android@lemdro.id
Android@lemmy.ml

etc etc

An elevator pitch should be 30 seconds max, and if you’re pitching an fediverse project, it should be both novel and something that either solver a problem or addresses a need— again, in a novel way.

Since it’s an academic endeavor, bonus points for FOSS projects. Maybe think of needs in the developing world or those disadvantaged close to home and how you could develop alternative, federated services to meet needs currently serviced ineffectively by for-profit corporations.

The largest difference is not that it's federated (but that's a huge plus for avoiding bad moderators or owners) - it's that big tech is not running it. They are running almost every other social media network and abusing, exploiting and analyzing users to profit from users activity. Lemmy is free from all of that, which means it's the sane persons choice of social media.

Many people have mentioned that Lemmy doesn't feel as addictive as reddit, which is because it doesn't have an algorithm, no ridiculous points or flairs, and no ads and corporations. Discussions cannot be censored here as well, as long as they don't break the law. So Lemmy means people actually get back to doing things that benefit them instead of doom scrolling.

This is also the closest we come to a social media where people will tell you what they think, since it's semi-anonynous and downvotes doesn't matter. I appreciate that myself.

Maybe you can draw an analogy between decentralized services and decentralized government. The world has largely shifted away from monarchies and oligarchies in favor of democracies that intentionally spread power out among many people. You can argue that our economy needs to make the same shift for the same reasons. An Elon Musk or Tom Cook is analogous to an oligarch, with wealth at their disposal comparable to a nation-state.

The feature you are pitching is the distributed nature of the fediverse. It soöves the lock-in problem and the resulting absolute power the big social media companies have over your content and qhat you see.

Content manipulation is still a problem and there are several services that work dosrributed these days so its not the perfect pitch.

Still a worthwhile pick in my book.

Is the assignment to pitch something that already exists? Or is the idea that you would pitch for the adoption of it?