While you're correct, it's just a clunky term. I think some other way to refer to the whole thing will probably come along soon, and in a few years, people will regard saying fediverse the same way we look back on people talking about "surfing the information superhighway" or whatever.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Dang I totally forgot all about that term. Been awhile. Well it eventually reduced to "surfing the net".
The thing about the internet, is it was the thing to make it only one net. Previously there were weird systems like bitnet, VMSnet, where you had to juggle email address encoding standards to get balkanized college campus networks to talk back and forth to each other.
"The web" became the subset of the net, that worked with web browsers. Only one thing.
Was there a "The Facebook" period? Or was that just a movie name?
So then we passed through a period of brands. Reddit is a brand. It is not altogether surprising that people would refer to the fediverse in terms of brands. Lemmy, kbin, beehaw, whatever.
Email and the web had/have specific protocols associated with them. The fediverse has multiple protocols. We're using ActivityPub, which seems to have won as a standard. It isn't exactly catchy or smooth flowing off the tongue.
Ok, if we try to brain crunch all these previous trends, here's what it's going to be called, if it hasn't been already:
THE VERSE
The difference between the fediverse and the universe will be forgotten. Linguistically, people will not keep up with that detail. Only old timers / early adopters will notice that linguistic change.
Possibly, 'verse' will come to be seen as short for multiverse.
I mean, threadiverse works pretty well to describe this area specifically
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If I was browsing Reddit and saw an interesting video, I might tell someone "I saw an interesting video on Reddit the other day" even if the video itself was hosted on YouTube. The technical detail of exactly where and how the video is hosted is not relevant to the conversation. The listener wants to know how I found it, not where it is stored.
The same is true for posts on the fediverse. The various instances are the websites that we browse. The technical detail of how they share content and how it can be accessed from various different routes just isn't important most of the time. If you're a Lemmy user, you're reading the posts on Lemmy and there is nothing wrong with talking about it that way.
If I tell someone I bought a game on Steam or borrowed a book from the library, the fact that they are also available elsewhere doesn't matter. If I tell someone I read something on kbin, does it matter that the same post also exists on different websites? 99% of the time, the answer is 'no'.
New terms may emerge but referring to the platform seems weird, almost ignorant.
I agree, but you've got it upsidedown. The fediverse is the platform that the instances operate on, not vice-versa.
Until they try to find it on Reddit and they cry. Cry!
Referring to a post on "Lemmy" or "kbin" is like saying you saw a post on your Windows or Mac computer.
That's not how language works. Language evolves naturally and in this scenario people would instantly know that the user had seen something on a fediverse platform without having to use another awful '-verse' word.
Likewise you can't police how people use language. People use whatever makes understanding for both sides easiest on both sides
If someone logs into a website called Kbin and sees something interesting, it's fair to say 'I saw something interesting on Kbin' without having to give unnecessary explanations about what the fediverse is.
And once again, no one likes the word fediverse...
without having to use another awful '-verse' word.
They will stop using prefixes. They will just say verse.
based antiprescriptivism
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I'm not referencing the fediverse, it's stupid. But also, lemmy isn't a great name so I probably just won't mention anything like that.
"The Fediverse is stupid."
"The Fediverse is stupid."
Negativeland said Christianity is stupid.
Christianity is stupid.
Communism is good!
[then a lot of chanting and noisemaking]
🤓🤓🤓 just use whatever
This is going to reveal my ignorance:
How does the federation work from a high level? On Reddit, data is stored and managed by Reddit.
How about the fediverse? If the data isn’t centrally located, what is stopping some data from just being lost at any time? Who owns the servers?
If the servers are owned by anyone who wants to own a server, I assume there will still be popular servers that get the most traffic. And if those servers have high traffic, how will they sustain that model? How do they “keep the lights on” without ads?
Thanks for helping me understand.
How does the federation work from a high level?
Well, Captain Kirk goes out on the flagship and kicks some serious alien ass. Contrary to popular belief, he doesn't usually screw it, but he is almost contractually obligated to have his shirt torn. Spock bails him out with derisions of Something Something Diplomacy, I forget exactly what. And that's how the federation works. At a high level.
At a really high level, they all get zapped by plant spores and turn into hippies.
My understanding is that most instances are currently being either self-funded (sort of as passion projects), or accepting donations to cover hosting/maintenance costs.
Buy your local admin a coffee!
Good question. Not ignorant. The one thing we use all the time but never think of as federated is email. Multiple users from different providers can reply all and everyone gets a copy. That is one way to help think about how the fediverse works. People using kbin and Lemmy have replied in this thread. We all see it. we are just using different providers/software to read and reply in the fediverse.
Others have already commented well on funding.
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I personally like to call it "Fedi". I was reading a post / thread on Fedi and it said...
If someone asked where exactly it was I would mention the platform.
And in my opinion, everyone should be mentioning the name of the platform they are on. Because when you mention what software or server you used, it promotes it to non Fediverse people. And it also tells current Fediverse users about other Fedi platforms that they may like, and didn't know about.
That's how I found Misskey, and it's quite cool.
So many options to explore, and try out interfaces that may work better for you.
We are all on the Fediverse, we all should be promoting that in any way we can.
Share, educate and take pride in our diverse community.
What if I want to call it Freddy?
I just consistently mention it because it's a huge topic atm and it's to everyone's benefit to clarify. If I'm over here talking about how I'm SO glad I can mute instances willy-nilly as I please but don't mention I'm doing that from kbin, that's going to send a lot of frustrated lemmings scrambling through their settings.
Generic is "(the) fedi/fediverse." But where I'm specifically from may carry connotations in UI or culture for those here, and those not here would maybe prefer a platform name they can actually look up, as has already happened to me once.
I do think the "Blaaah, we got X amount of users and we're the biggest in the fedi!" posts are borderline odd, because yeah, we're not going head to head anymore. The tribalism we've had drilled into us for decades, we have no need of now and I don't wanna see any of the platform politics that's always been in the past. Thankfully, it seems to be stemming from genuine enjoyment instead of elitist gloating, and it keeps itself to a minimum.
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