That's a great start to an explanation, but first, you are assuming that people know how email works, and second, unlike email, federated social media has discovery, feeds, and in general content that gets pushed to you. How all of that works can be complicated and if you join a small instance, you may not realize how much content you are missing because of it.
In some cases, I think technical explanations aren't necessary. For some people, the recommendation could be more like
Here are some growing platforms that people are using. I feel that this one is the most viable long term, and so we should maintain a presence there in addition to whatever else we choose.
The marketing department doesn't need to know how email works in order to set up newsletters
The analogy the other day works well, aside from the LaTeX one which still feels like a stretch
Firefox : Chrome
Linux : Windows
LaTex : MS Word
actual Fediverse : Bluesky's Fediverseᵀᴹ
However I'm happy to be here. Mastodon is getting a boost right now too. Even if they didn't, and everyone on Twitter moved to bluesky, I don't expect those instances to close up shop
I wouldn't call it fake, but the concern is about who created, maintains, and/or controls the protocol
ActivityPub was developed by W3C, and it's properly decentralized. For Atproto, the concern is that Bluesky will exert control over the protocol once shareholders and profit get in the way of making a good product.
Last I heard they were discussing potentially moving the necessary registry/directory to a separate non-profit "like ICANN", but even with that they seemed noncommittal about it.
I'd love to see more diversity in the federated space. Competition and iterative development is how we make things better. But I need Bluesky to take those necessary steps before I feel comfortable endorsing it over ActivityPub