Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I collected the ones which subjectively seem best, here is the list for a quick overview:

• An open source discussion platform for communities.
• Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities
• Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
• A decentralized network of forums
• Discuss interesting topics and join communities on the Fediverse.
• A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.

Based on these suggestions and the discussion, the best option seems to be: A decentralised discussion platform for communities.

I will keep making more updates to join-lemmy.org based on this post and the previous one. Once that's done I will likely make another post to show the results and gather additional feedback.

It's really hard. Here's my best shot:

A discussion platform for communities.

Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums, allowing you to interact with a federation of sites where no single entity holds total control.

Edit: I think it flows a little better without "next-generation" so I removed it.

Lemmy: the Mastadon of Reddit.

I would honestly drop the "link aggregator" part completely and just call it "discussion forum" or "discussion platform". "Link aggregator" sounds pretty technical and like it just collects links which seems almost pointless. And the links aren't even mandatory when creating a post.

Communities, free from corporations.

The decentralized forum for countless communities

Lemmy: Wow that's a lot of communists

I think the main problem is "link aggregator" which doesn't make a lot of sense as the main function is discussion. For a minimal change you could go for "a discussion platform for the fediverse".

If "fediverse" is too obscure; you could try just "a decentralised discussion platform". Decentralised isn't technical, you can't fully describe the fediverse in a sentence but "decentralised" gives a clue.

“Like Reddit, but owned by the people”

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.

Think results based for the end user and not technically.

• A place to find your people
• A place to find your community
• A place to converse in the fediverse
• A place to find your interests
• A place to share your interests and find new ones
• A place to discuss anything with anyone
• A community of digital communities
• A modern digital discussion forum to share ideas in interest groups called communities

Seize the means of communication /s

I agree that federation is the central feature of Lemmy, besides it being libre software, however the term "federation" is something that already requires a newcomer to open up a search engine at best or get scared by the unknown and leave at worst.

It should exist, but in very layman's terms, something like:

"A social platform for independent online communities of all topics, owned by people and not corporations, all in one place"

Mastodon also does a pretty good job on their main page, it's easily understandable by anyone, and scrolling down gives you a much better picture of what it really does if you are interested enough to learn.

Build communities without the middle men.

it's decentralized reddit. or better yet, a decentralized network of forums.

i usually make the email analogy, where you can use any provider to access the same email network preventing vendor lock-in, but i don't think that's very catchy.

Your own discussion network

Forum for the fediverse

Lemmy talk about it: open source for open discourse.

Or just:

Lemmy talk: open source for open discourse.

Lemmy talk: open discourse with open source.

social media without the censorship

I would rework the other stuff, like the whole branding because all that hacker green doesn't help in feeling the communities. And the images for the same reason... Also there are some features that are worthless listing like "you can have an avatar"

Also the censorship thing...

Let's say that the homepage kinda reflects the state of lemmy people as a group right now and it's not so nice imo

Focussing on being a clean forum with nested answers and human curated algorithm and idk, just pointing some low hanging fruits

On a side note I wonder if having the page as onboarding for users instead of explaining the software is the right target. Ideally it should be communities trying to outreach to have people on their servers, not the software asking to join people who use the software (?)

But I digress.

On a marketing level point of view, while we are clearly the small fish, it's not bad to leverage being enemies of Reddit. Like in the past we've seen much more Apple vs Microsoft while now they ignore each other.

"Reddit if was not owned by venture capitalists who keep ruining your life" lol (too long)

Anyway, is there any kind of data to know if people actually join lemmy by joinlemmy site?

A community poll for Lemmy users would be good.

"A forum for the Fediverse" is my preference

Reddit without corpo