@OccupatusMens welcome to the fediverse! Keep in mind that you can always change your instance later, and feel free to ask any questions...
Looks like you will need a crash course. :)
You probably already noticed that there is no "single" server. Your account lives in one of them (mstdn.social), mine is on communick.com and yet we can follow each other just fine.
When people talk about "The Fediverse", they are talking about all this constellation of independent, *federated* servers. There is no single central authority. All servers can talk to each other as long as they use the same protocol - called ActivityPub.
@raphael gotcha. thx
next you'll see there are other types of servers (besides Mastodon) that also use the ActivityPub protocol. Examples:
- Pixelfed (https://pixelfed.org) is an alternative to Instagram
- Peertube (https://joinpeertube.org/) is for video, alternative to Youtube.
- CastoPod (https://castopod.org/) is a podcast hosting platform that I told you about.
All these support ActivityPub, which means that, e.g, someone on a Mastodon server can follow someone on CastoPod.
@raphael this is great and makes sense. Now I understand the ActPub protocol.
@raphael Thx! What's the 'fediverse'?