What is the Fediverse?

File:Fediverse logo.png

Fediverse logo

The Fediverse is a giant Network of social media platforms.

Imagine

Imagine Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Co were all part of one giant network. That's basically what the Fediverse is, except the parts are less well known, free software & federated replacements to those.

In the Fediverse you can use your "Twitter" account to interact with "Facebook" users, share "Instagram" posts, comment under "Youtube" videos, listen to "Bandcamp" music, follow "Wordpress" blogs, take part in "reddit" discussions and more.

How does it compare to traditional social media?

Traditional social media is neither social nor media. Meaning it's not made for you, it's made to exploit you and it's full of misleading ads and fake news.
That is because the aim of traditional social media is to make a whole lot of money.
The aim of the Fediverse is to benefit the people.
The aim of traditional social media is to control and steer the users.
The aim of the Fediverse is to empower the users to control the Fediverse.

Terminology

• An identity is basically your profile. It has a unique address and is hosted on one of the many servers, also called instances.
• An instance is basically a small social network hosted on one server. Each instance can have it's own set of rules as for what content is allowed. You can also host your own instance. Each instance runs one software.
• The software used on an instance is essential for the user experience and possibilities.
• Many software projects use the same protocol which enables instances to communicate with each other. Most software projects use Activity Pub. Some projects might not have full federation with other pojects yet.
• The Fediverse (federated universe) is the sum of all identities, on all instances using any software, communicating with any protocol.
  To be exact the Fediverse doesn't even include just social media projects. Any software that federates using one of the protocols is part f the Fediverse.
• an example for an identity is @PaulaToThePeople@ClimateJustice.social. ClimateJustice.social is the instance the identity is on. The software it uses is Mastodon. Thanks to the ActivityPub protocol it can follow identities on other instances that use e.g. Mastodon, GNU Social or Pixelfed software.

What are Fediverse software projects?

Fediverse projects are the different software parts of the Fediverse. Many of them are replacements for more well known social media platforms.
See below which software emulates which other social media platform:

	Traditional social media	Fediverse replacement
Microblogging	Twitter	Mastodon, Ecko, Pleroma, GNU Social, Misskey
Social network	Facebook	Friendica, Diaspora
Events & groups	Facebook	Mobilizon
Photoblogging	Instagram	Pixelfed
Videohosting	Youtube	PeerTube
Blogging	Blogger	WriteFreely, Plume, (Wordpress)
Book cataloguing	Goodreads	Bookwyrm
Audiohosting	Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, ...	Funkwhale
Link aggregation	reddit	Lemmy

3 things you should know about the Fediverse

What most people will tell you about the Fediverse is that it's free software, federated and free from adds, spying and so on. But what does that mean.

Federation

The email allegory:

Everybody knows you don't need to use the same email provider to communicate via email. You can send a mail from riseup.net to gmail.com and the other way around. That's about the same way that "federation" in the Fediverse works. Federation just means that different or decentral servers or instances can communicate with each other via a protocol. Just like email uses POP, IMAP or SMTP protocols for federation, the Fediverse uses mostly ActivityPub.

Free Software

All of the software used in the Fediverse is Free Software.

Free Software is software that follows the 4 freedoms defined by the FSF:

• Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

If you yourself can't read or write code, so you can't study, change and distribute the program, you still have some advantages. You can trust the program, because other people studied the code to make sure it does (only) what it's supposed to do. You can request a feature to the developers and if the community deems that feature a good idea it will often be adopted.

No spying, no ads, no algorithm, no shadowbanning, ...

The Fediverse runs on donations, not on selling your data, so there are no targeted ads, there are no ads at all.
What you see on the Fediverse only depends on who you follow, not on algorithms or shadowbanning.

Further Reading

How do I get an account?
Getting started with your Fediverse account
Best practices
Fediverse - the advanced page on the Fediverse

External Links

Fediverse Town The forum for questions about the Fediverse

Fediverse Guides

The Fediverse: the distributed social network
Guide to the Fediverse
DE: Fediverse – So geht gutes Social Media
DE: Das Fediverse