The Fediverse

All the Mastodon Instances that together form the entire “Mastodon Galaxy” are part of something much bigger called the Fediverse.

Besides Mastodon, there are many other free platforms. Some of them, like Pleroma or Misskey, are also similar to Twitter, but others are very different.

• PixelFed is similar to Instagram;
• PeerTube is similar to Youtube;
• Friendica is similar to Facebook;
• FunkWhale is similar to Soundcloud;
• Write.as and Plume are blogging platforms;
• Hubzilla is a powerful multi-functional platform.
• Immers.space (web.immers.space) is an alternative “metaverse.”

And there are more…

All of them, like Mastodon, don’t have a unique central server but are a “Galaxy” of many Instances. For example, there is no “main” or “official” Friendica instance, you can choose among different PixelFed Instances and so on…

Please note that what on Mastodon is called an “Instance”, on other platforms may have a different name (for example, on Hubzilla it is called a “Hub”).

And all of these platforms interact with each other, forming the Fediverse. What does that mean? Well, imagine that you could natively receive Facebook statuses on Twitter, or even liking and commenting on a YouTube video using your Tumblr account.

That’s what the Fediverse is! You have an account on Pixel Fed. Ok, I don’t use Pixelfed but I can follow you from Mastodon! A friend of mine doesn’t like Mastodon but prefers the more Facebook-like Friendica. No problem: he can follow me from Friendica and we can both chat and interact, staying each one on the platform that we prefer.

Also, remember that the whole Fediverse is an innovative work in progress where not everything works yet perfectly and some adjustments on your part may be needed. Things will likely work differently from what you expect and the developers may not have time or interest in implementing things that you think should be priorities.