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What do you define as the Fediverse? My understanding of the term is that RSS & Webmentions are part of the Fediverse. Email is probably the best-known part of

What do you define as the Fediverse? My understanding of the term is that RSS & Webmentions are part of the Fediverse. Email is probably the best-known part of the Fediverse. ActivityPub is just a new/upcoming technology that's as much a part of the Web as RSS. Not everything in the Fediverse is part of the Web: email, mastodon & matrix are examples that exist outside of the Web (though mastodon is mostly Web-based, and there is also webmail, Element webapp, etc.). And obviously, not everything in the Web is part of the Fediverse: mainly Facebook, but also most SaaS out there.

dgellow 6y ago
Where do you get that definition from? I've never seen email or RSS feeds to be considered part of the fediverse. In fact I've only seen the term being used for ActivityPub and Diaspora.
- lucideer 6y ago
  Fediverse is a new term, so it is typically used when trying to explain newer technologies (email & RSS are well-understood and need less exposition). So for that reason, yes, you'll mainly see it used to describe new things. It is a portmanteau of federated universe, and as such encompasses the full universe of technologies old & new that are considered "federated". Federation is a system whereby you sign up to a SaaS, and can then interact with other users of other SaaS due to each of the services synchronising data via a unified protocol. Email is the best-known of these; SMTP is the protocol. RSS is a greyer area. The nature of RSS (heavy on subscription, lighter on publishing) makes it less like other tech in the fediverse which are heavier on the publishing/sending/broadcasting side. Given the prevalence of self-hosting, it could be closer to being classified as properly decentralized except that there is a clear server/client distinction. It's somewhat subjective: either way if RSS (& WebMentions) are considered outside of the Fediverse, that's only because their paradigm isn't compatible with federation (making the original comment about Fediverse competing with things like RSS/WebMentions moot).

dgellow 6y ago

Where do you get that definition from? I've never seen email or RSS feeds to be considered part of the fediverse. In fact I've only seen the term being used for ActivityPub and Diaspora.

lucideer 6y ago
Fediverse is a new term, so it is typically used when trying to explain newer technologies (email & RSS are well-understood and need less exposition). So for that reason, yes, you'll mainly see it used to describe new things. It is a portmanteau of federated universe, and as such encompasses the full universe of technologies old & new that are considered "federated". Federation is a system whereby you sign up to a SaaS, and can then interact with other users of other SaaS due to each of the services synchronising data via a unified protocol. Email is the best-known of these; SMTP is the protocol. RSS is a greyer area. The nature of RSS (heavy on subscription, lighter on publishing) makes it less like other tech in the fediverse which are heavier on the publishing/sending/broadcasting side. Given the prevalence of self-hosting, it could be closer to being classified as properly decentralized except that there is a clear server/client distinction. It's somewhat subjective: either way if RSS (& WebMentions) are considered outside of the Fediverse, that's only because their paradigm isn't compatible with federation (making the original comment about Fediverse competing with things like RSS/WebMentions moot).