In this piece I take a look at how you can approach the term fediverse from different perspective, and how they all have different ideas on what the fediverse actually is.
Is the fediverse a group of communities with a specific culture? All software that uses #activitypub? Or decentralised social networks that interoperate with each other?
@fediversereport Another sociology student who used Mastodon once asked me what I meant with “the Fediverse”, so I answered from the top of my head that it was “the associative social network”, and he immediately got it. From this definition you can bring up the notion of free association, which is more sociological than technique (especially given that there are several protocols, for example some people put the Matrix standard in the Fediverse, and I think that endorsing on nobody's behalf something that's VC-funded and that optimizes for engagement will harm people).
