The fediverse, explained

The Verge

The buzziest new thing in social networking is a big deal. It’s also very confusing. And it’s not actually new. (...)

.

So what is the fediverse?
It’s an interconnected social platform ecosystem based on an open protocol called ActivityPub, which allows you to port your content, data, and follower graph between networks.

What?

Ugh, I know. Let me try again.

The fediverse is as if you took X, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook and made them all interoperable so you could post anything from anywhere, and all your followers would be guaranteed to see it. And if you wanted to leave one platform for another, you could bring all your content, all your followers, all your everything with you. (...)

But all of this stuff only works if there is a standard, and I’d bet $10 that ActivityPub is going to be that standard. It’s the one that’s overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium, it’s the one with the most momentum, it’s the one Threads is supposedly going to support — it’s just kind of clearly winning. (...)

So why would I leave Instagram and Facebook?
That’s the big question. Do you like Instagram and Facebook?

I mean, sure. It’s where all my friends are.
That is the single biggest problem for the fediverse. A lot of folks I’ve talked to say that, basically, if we’d built social media like this 20 years ago, the world would be better and smarter and we’d all be richer and better-looking. (Or something.) But we didn’t. We built it on a bunch of closed platforms that turned out to be really sticky, really lucrative for the companies that made them, and frankly kind of user-hostile. But it’s really, really hard to convince people to stop hanging out where their friends are and go join something new just because it’s better. That transition will take a long time, if it ever happens. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #fediverse #social_media #activitypub #x #Twitter #tiktok #snapchat #instagram #facebook #youtube #algoritm #interoperability #mastodon #hubzilla #diaspora* #Bluesky #threads #AT_Protocol #Farcaster #Nostr #Reddit #Pixelfed #Lemmy #PeerTube #Friendica #BookWyrm #Goodreads #Misskey #Flipboard #Medium #hubzilla