3
What exactly is the Fediverse?
(discuss.online)
Is it any service that includes the ability to federate? If so, are Matrix/XMPP/other non-ActivityPub services part of the Fediverse, or does Fediverse really just mean ActivityPub?
The context is wanting to promote a Matrix chat room on discuss.online: #online.discuss:discuss.online (see post). Does it belong in Lemmy communities like this one, !fedigrow@lemm.ee, etc? Or does it not count as part of the Fediverse?
So, the term Fediverse basically refers to the ActivityPub protocol and the associated server software. Technically, it's not just ActivityPub, but also the AT protocol and nostr. Another layer to the Fediverse, at least in my mind, is having some federation. Meaning Bluesky isn't apart of the Fediverse, even though it's built on the AT Protocol, because of it's isolation. Since there's no interaction with Lemmy, Mastodon, PixelFed, or other federated social networks, it's not part of the Fediverse.
"federation" implies deep interconnect, a "bridge" on the otherhand is an artificial architecture of connection along narrow fragile terms.
Just because you build a bridge to the fediverse doesn't mean you are really part of the vibrant, free core of the fediverse city center, you are just mooching out or at best trying to arrange an alliance.
When two things federate on the fediverse it is like there being two cool places in a city where there are a million different ways to connect those two places together, often in surprising and novel ways that people didn't necessarily forsee. It also means that a fundamental level of design connections between any two things in the fediverse are durable and not subject to catastrophically breaking if any one connection in the fediverse is temporarily broken. This is NOT like a bridge at all.
A city of bridges is not a city.
So like, cool Bluesky has a bridge here now, I hope it doesn't get knocked out by a freak act of nature I mean enshittification....
I think that ATP and nostr are sometimes included as part of the Fediverse because they both have bridges that allow connection. Without the bridges they're isolated.
ATP still requires millions to host a relay https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342799/free-our-feeds-social-media-ecosystem-at-protocol-bluesky
This isn’t the same thing.
Bluesky has something called fedibridge (third party), where your entire account is forwarded to mastodon and acts like a native mastodon account when viewed from mastodon. (It works the other way around too, mastodon accounts can be viewable on bluesky thanks to it).
A relay is something that hosts the viewable content on the ATprotocol. Currently, the only relay that encompasses the entire AT protocol is hosted by bluesky PBC, though there are a few very small relays for specific niches.
Thanks for sharing the article though, I had not heard of free our feeds.
I was mostly referring to the fact that the day Bluesky decides to ban bridges, ATProto won't be part the Fediverse as per the definition of the comment above.
I personally prefer to just consider them as out from the start.
It seems like you'd say that Matrix isn't included? It's not ActivityPub/AT/nostr
Matrix is not federated, it has nothing to do with the whole ActivityThing. They are two separate universes. Maybe there are bridges that I don't know of, but essentially they are not interconnected.
It's federated, just not to the ActivityPub universe, right? People have been able to join rooms on discuss.online using their matrix.org accounts, which to me counts as federated.