Thanks!

I think so, I found it at my friend's house and thought it looked cool!

This makes sense, thank you. I'm becoming so aware of how little I know about software (I had to look up the term frontend).

Is this right: Mastadon is an open source frontend and ActivityPub is the open source backend. And Mastadon is kind of like a tool that people use to create instances. The instances keep all of their data on their own servers, but the servers can talk to each other so every server has access to data from every other server. So if Musk bought Mastadon, he wouldn't have control of all the individual servers' data, and if Musk bought a server, all the users who wanted to could switch to another server without losing any of their data. Does this mean that every server holds a copy of all of the data from the whole network of servers?

This makes sense, thanks!

This makes sense - Thank you so much!

but they can’t just drop $44 billion and nonconsensually steal the website from every user.

Thanks for the detailed response! Sorry for the dumb question but: Why can't someone buy Eugen Rochko's company for $44 billion?

This makes sense, thanks!

If that's the case then what does Eugen Rochko do? Or is it like Linux where Linus Torvalds works on Linux every day but doesn't actually own or control things that are based on Linux (such as Android)?

Isn't Mastadon run by an organization started by Eugen Rochko? Could this organization not be bought? Or does it not make a difference who controls Rochko's organization? Sorry to ask such basic questions - I find the Fediverse pretty confusing.

Is there anything that stops Elon Musk from buying Lemmy or Mastadon? Even if everyone were to migrate over to the Fediverse, what stops these websites from being bought as well?

This makes sense, thanks!

This worked, thank you!