Last updated on February 5, 2024
The fediverse is an open network of social media and platforms, usually open-source as well that can communicate or federate to pass information between themselves. They usually use a protocol called ActivityPub and are nearly always seperate servers/platforms called instances with small user bases meaning that not one platform/service controls the data unlike the older platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) et al. Because of their decentralised operations many instances have different rules or purposes which means that choosing an instance can be important, for example you *may* choose an LBGT+ instance which would give you access to information that is more pertinent to yourself. Whilst this is not always true it can make your decision harder, although many ActivityPub services allow fairly easy transfer across instances, some do not and it can be difficult to transfer data, something which is changing though.
Wikipedia has a nice article about the Fediverse here that also includes a fairly comprehensive list of federated and ActivityPub based service HERE
I will be posting about individual platforms and instances in more detail in the future including some I host myself or can host for you! Watch out for more posts coming soon….
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