Fediverse?
You probably came here because some friend of you mentioned “fediverse” to you, while you responded – fediverse? what is that?.
And your friend did not really wanted to explain it, so you was sent here instead.
Great! I will try my best into explaining what the “Fediverse” is, and how it might save your digital life.
The Fediverse is a name of a network of tens of thousands connected servers, consisting of many different kind of software that “speaks” to each other. The most popular software is Mastodon, that basically is a Twitter clone. The big difference is that the code that is being used on the server is publicly available to everyone, so that ensures that the code is secure and does not hide any hidden “feature” such as data collection on a massive scale, such as Twitter.
Mastodon is developed by many, but the leader and founder of the project is Eugen “Gargron” Rochko that wanted to create a social network because he was tired of having his friends and family being on different networks. And if he wanted to keep in touch with he had to create account on different places (MySpace, Twitter, Viber, Telegram and so on). And so Mastodon was born.
Today, there is thousands of Mastodon servers up and running, each one with it's own characteristic, culture, rules and people. Servers for those who love beer, cats, politics, Linux or just being social. Most of the servers is connected to each other. Yes, you can join that super-niche server that focuses exclusively on cats with moustaches, while still connecting to your friends who is on that instance about helicopters – is'nt that awesome?
Or, if you just want to listen to someone explain how it works, here is a Peertube (which is also a fediverse compatible piece of software) video explaining how it works