Tell them it's Social media. That's the comparison they need. For why they might want it: it's not controlled by a corporation.

Ok the confusion may be that what you think is surface level is the inner working. Surface level to normal people is the user interface. The surface level of Lemmy for instance is it's like social media. Just like the surface level of emails is "dear sir blah blah blah regards" and cc this person. You say email and they think of that surface level. Talking about how it works with intercommunication between instances like email intercommunicates is literally the inner working. And leads to the exact content of the tweet, you should reread it. Ok I'm just repeating myself so that I'm out.