Here’s an analogy from a non technical person.

Fediverse is the universe.

The protocol is the laws of nature by which the universe functions.

Lemmy is a galaxy or cluster of galaxies in the universe.

I’m in marketing and work on company websites from an SEO and content development perspective. Nothing too technical but I’m aware of some of it even if I don’t know how make a server/instance I’m aware of it’s benefits.

Also, I’ve done social media advertising and peeking behind that curtain opened my eyes on how advertisers use our data so it made me interested in open source and community run projects over company run software.