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The Fediverse (commonly shortened to fedi) is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia computer file and other data across the network. The term Fediverse is a portmanteau of federation and universe.
The majority of Fediverse platforms are based on free and open-source software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol. Some software still supports older federation protocols as well, such as OStatus, the Diaspora protocol and Zot, while newer protocols such as AT Protocol connect via Network bridge. Diaspora is the only actively developed software project classified under the original definition of Fediverse that does not support ActivityPub.
Every instance is independent, and can set its own rules and expectations. Even so, much like how users of one email service such as Gmail can still send emails to users of another service such as Outlook, users may still view content and interact with users on any other instance in the Fediverse. A user on one Mastodon instance, for example, may view and interact with posts made by a user on a different instance even if it is not running Mastodon.
Instances hosted by different social networking services may also communicate with one another. A user on the microblogging platform Misskey, for example, may view and interact with posts made by users on Mastodon. Some Fediverse networks even allow users to interact with different social networking formats from the same platform. For example, a user on a social news instance running Lemmy can interact with another post from an mbin instance, a similar service, as well as microblog statuses from Mastodon.
Over time, the limitations of the OpenMicroBlogging protocol became more apparent, being designed as a one-way text messaging system. To replace the ageing protocol, OStatus was devised as an open standard for microblogging, combining various other technologies like Salmon, Atom, WebSub and ActivityStreams into a single protocol used for communicating between instances. StatusNet first implemented the OStatus protocol on March 3, 2010, with version 0.9.0, and OStatus quickly became the most popular federated protocol in usage.
Around the same time as OStatus was gaining popularity, the Diaspora social network was formed, using its own federated protocol. To illustrate the differences between the two protocols, the terms of the Fediverse and the federation began to enter common usage, mainly after 2017. The term "the Fediverse" was used to describe the network formed by software using the OStatus protocol, such as GNU Social, Mastodon, and Friendica, in contrast to the competing diaspora protocol under "the federation".
In January 2018, the W3C presented the ActivityPub protocol as a recommended standard. The standard aimed to improve the interoperability between different software packages running on a wide network of servers and to supersede both the OStatus protocol and Pump.io. By 2019, almost all software that was using OStatus had added support for ActivityPub. While Mastodon began to remove OStatus support, other projects maintained it in their code, such as Friendica (which also maintained diaspora support along with ActivityPub), and the term Fediverse has since come to mainly refer to the ActivityPub protocol and its supporting server software.
Developers of the AT Protocol, including Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, have stated they chose not to use ActivityPub because it did not natively support easy "account portability", the ability for a user to move their account, data, and social graph to a new provider without relying on the original server to authorize the move. In the ActivityPub model (used by Mastodon), a user's identity is typically tied to a specific server, similar to an email address; if that server goes offline, the identity can be lost. The AT Protocol aims to solve this by separating identity from hosting, allowing users to switch providers without losing their identity.
Although the two protocols are technically incompatible by default, third-party "bridges" such as Bridgy Fed have been developed to allow users on ActivityPub networks to follow and interact with users on the AT Protocol network, and vice versa.
Despite their differences, software exists that permit the Network bridge of user content between these protocols, including "double-bridges" that span multiple protocols for the purpose of distributing the same content.
Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in November 2022, certain major social networks, including Threads, Tumblr and Flipboard, expressed interest in supporting the ActivityPub protocol, as a large number of users began to migrate to Mastodon, a server that supports the Fediverse and was also the most popular alternative to Twitter at the time. Flickr also expressed support in supporting ActivityPub. , no information had been released by Flickr after the initial tweets by the CEO, with support for ActivityPub suspected to be on hold or cancelled.
In 2024, the local government of the Stary Sącz municipality in Poland launched their own PeerTube instance in order to de facto abolish its presence on YouTube. According to the government, they stopped using YouTube for official communications "in order to adhere to the appropriate regulations". In the same year, VIVERSE, HTC Vive's metaverse platform, implemented support for ActivityPub in their chat feature, allowing users to send direct messages to other fediverse users.
Ghost, a blogging platform and content management system, announced in April 2024 that they would be implementing Fediverse support via ActivityPub. The feature had been highly requested on its forums. In July 2024, Ghost started federating its development newsletter for the feature.
The release of Threads by Meta Platforms in July 2023 had included in its press release that it planned to support interoperability with the ActivityPub protocol. In December 2023, select Meta employees began to federate with ActivityPub. A roadmap was revealed in January 2024 that detailed the integration of ActivityPub in Threads.
A faction of fediverse server admins, some of whom have listed their names under a pledge named "Fedipact", have expressed resistance to open federation with Threads over concerns that Meta would adopt an "embrace, extend, and extinguish" policy towards the network, or that Threads' moderation would fail to prevent the spread of abusive content targeted towards marginalized communities.
In March 2024, Threads implemented a beta version of Fediverse support, allowing Threads users to view the number of Fediverse users that liked their post, and allowing Fediverse users to view posts from Threads on their own instances. On April 2, the official Threads account for President Joe Biden enabled federation on its profile, making Biden the first President of the United States to have a presence on the Fediverse. The ability to view replies from the Fediverse within Threads was added in August.
During the 2023 Reddit API controversy, the decentralized link aggregator Lemmy experienced a significant surge in growth as users sought alternatives to Reddit. The platform saw its monthly active user count rise from approximately 1,000 to over 66,000 within weeks of the protests, exacerbated by Reddit's decision to temporarily ban communities and users promoting the migration to Fediverse alternatives.
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