What does "the Fediverse" mean?

[bodling@deacon.social]

@evan I've always thought it meant either a light-hearted poem, or a poem about birds.

Fedi-verse, literally "feather-poem."

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@Bodling nice

[smallcircles@social.coop]

@evan

It depends on context. A generic category word, similar to web and internet, when referring to the technology side. An online social networking environment for people when referring to the socio-cultural side.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@smallcircles that's interesting!

[genxlife@toad.social]

@evan

The first 3 create the 4th.

[jordisalvia@xarxa.cloud]

@evan it's a network with principles.

[shonin@c.im]

@evan The Fediverse is a network built and occupied by a group of people who share some principles and aspects of culture.

[buage@mastodon.social]

@evan So sad I can only pick one

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@buage life is about hard choices

[dermoth@jasette.facil.services]

@evan All of the above?

[energisch_@troet.cafe]

@evan I'd also call it culture of networking, independent, flexible, dynamic, diverse and creative

[sodiboo@gaysex.cloud]

@evan@cosocial.ca the Fediverse, in abstract, means pretty much all of these things, but when people are referring to a concrete "the Fediverse", they first and foremost mean this network characterized by running on ActivityPub on the open, public internet (as opposed to smaller bubbles running over Tor and such), which happens to also uniquely specify a group of people (who use this network), a set of principles about moderation and federation and accessibility, and to a lesser extent, a culture, but the culture is much more subjective and more of a gradient across the network. the group of people are often more precisely referred to as "fedizens" and the principles might be called something like "fediquette". but "the Fediverse" refers to the network as a whole, containing all of these elements.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@sodiboo so, what did you choose?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@dermoth no

[sodiboo@gaysex.cloud]

@evan@cosocial.ca network, of course! but only after acknowledging that those other things can also definitely be described as the Fediverse

[lambic@social.linux.pizza]

@evan I picked "A group of people" but I think it's more like "A collection of groups of people"

[mcneely@indieweb.social]

@evan the correct answer is "yes"

[chuckmcmanis@chaos.social]

@evan To me, "None of the above". The "Fedi" part being Federation which is just a collection of distinct entities which retain their distinctness, and "verse" being shore for Universe which is the set of all entities. This thing is a Federation of computer nodes, out of the set of all computer nodes on the Internet, sharing a common communication protocol and interaction rules and controls.

[ncrazed@fd00.space]

@evan reposted with alt-poll

*runs*

[holdenweb@freeradical.zone]

@evan Personally I think "the Fediverse" is actually a network of a group of people following a set of principles to establish a culture.