Hello everyone!

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@[email protected] i know someone who can explain it really well -- you should ask @[email protected]

[vwbusguy@mastodon.online]

@cwebber A logistical marvel of engineering designed for the sole purpose of distributing cat pictures at scale using everyday things you have lying around the house, like a NetBSD toaster. Moderation here means being careful not to overheat the toaster you are using to serve the cat pictures.

#fediverse

[pastathief@indiepocalypse.social]

@cwebber Wait, did I just get suckered? I just saw an earlier post saying you co-authored the ActivityPub standard!

[natty@astolfo.social]

@[email protected] It's actually called ActivityPub's Monster, Fediverse is the new email thing

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@cwebber it's a protocol for trolling commenters across different social networks.

[faoluin@chitter.xyz]

@cwebber It's an update for the Cats-Over-HTTPS protocol

[blindcoder@toot.berlin]

@cwebber Wish I knew. Still trying to understand this information superhighway thingamajig.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@Raccoon oh thanks this is very helpful

[ikanreed@mastodon.social]

@cwebber It's a tool for mansplaining on as many different websites as possible at once.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@blindcoder me too

[sam@social.coop]

@cwebber @blindcoder oh that one's easy! The Information Superhighway is a series of tubes that wants to be free!

[alyx@alyx.social]

@cwebber Actually, it's called the Mastodon Network

The US based company Mastodon Inc. recently bought ActivityPub.

/hj

(Some tone indicators might be helpful here)

[badumtss@framapiaf.org]

@Raccoon hi you might want to check who you just explained ActivityPub to and maybe retract/redact your post, but I guess the bait was too good

[canageek@wandering.shop]

@cwebber oh this again.

I think the Fediverse is Starfleet's social network

[jami@hachyderm.io]

@Raccoon @cwebber awwuh sometimes the mansplains are sweet and welcoming (and, in fairness, "requested" here).

[joel@piou.foolbazar.eu]

@cwebber let’s try this way:
ActivityPub is the name of a technical protocol. Like HTTP is for websites.
Fediverse is a short word for Federated Universe. Which means software using ActivityPub can communicate which each other and form a kind of universe. Like Web browsers can all access the same Web contents/sites.
There are several Fediverse compatible software focusing on various subjects (messages, photos, books, etc). You may access their content from any of those.

[orca@nya.one]

@[email protected] fediverse is coined using words "federated"+"universe", it refers to the nature of the network connected using ActivityPub protocol: servers (instances) are interconnected, and one user hosted on one server can reach a user hosted on another server (federated), because the former server will delivers the message to the latter server.

And there's not only Mastodon, too. For example, I'm on a Misskey instance, which is a suite of microblogging software developed independently from Mastodon. You can also subscribe to blogs (writefreely and wordpress with ActivityPub plugin installed), videos (peertube), photo-sharing accounts (pixelfed, which is similar to instagram) or even reddit-like forums (lemmy) as long as it supports ActivityPub.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@joel oh wow sounds pretty cool

it's wild that they could even figure out how to do that with social media

[sam@social.coop]

@cwebber @joel right? Joel forgot to mention this, but you should know that it was invented by Al Gore in the 1990's, isn't that cool?! *pokerface*

[cwebber@social.coop]

@Orca ahh gotcha thanks that makes sense

is misskey a fork of the shark one?