About Fediverse

It is a 'federated' social network running on free open software on a myriad of computers across the globe. Simply speaking, this means that many independent groups of people connect as peers to one another by running many different kinds of openly-governed software on many different kinds of networks. There's no central corporation, 'platform', 'back-end', or website coordinating and controlling all the activity. 'Fediverse' (often abbreviated to 'Fedi' and used as a prefix) has no built-in advertisements, no unaccountable algorithms, no big corporations dictating the rules. Instead, we have small, cozy communities of like-minded people, we work out moderation and other messy human issues at human scale. Welcome!

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Fediverse social networks differ from monolithic commercial platforms (like classic Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc) in that while your home server can be large or small, or can even be a million-user platform, it still brings you content from other servers and platforms to which your home server 'federates'. Classic, one-company commercial platforms concentrate millions of users under one website and control policy, where they impose standards for moderation, trust, and safety; they also hoard as much data as they can about each user to better target advertising directly and indirectly. Fediverse platforms, on the other hand, are developed by a community of people from all over the world, independent from any company or official institution, voluntarily federating to one another. You are free to register on any Fediverse website you like! Most Fediverse websites give you some freedom about how widely or locally you can interact. Most users choose where to create their first account based on the rules of the server they like and on how safe they feel about it, and how much agency they have to publish, read, and interact as they see fit. Once you get familiar enough with all our different networks and tools, you can spin up your own self-hosted or managed service and start administering a 'server' for your friends, family, or community. Join Fediverse and connect with thousands of people now!

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