this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
73 points (98.7% liked)
Fediverse
42901 readers
286 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Initially. It's a link aggregator and discussion site, like reddit, but far more independent.
If they query it. It runs on a system a bit like how email works. Rather than 1 big monolithic system, it's a bunch of small ones linked together. A federation of small services all acting as 1 whole. In practice it's fairly transparent, just like you don't care who's hosting an email address, you can just email it.
It also makes it a lot more resistant to takeover and manipulation by big business. It can resist the Nazis bar problem better, like what happened to twitter. (Optional depending on the person involved).
The first gives them the basic idea. The second gives them a basic understanding of the structure, without overwhelming them, or panicking them with complexity.
Everyone now knows that email just works, but has lots of different companies involved. It makes a good comparison for how federation can work well online.