* <<GBS.0906>> Fediverse Intro draft
Welcome to [service name], and welcome to...
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THE FEDIVERSE
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The Fediverse is a free and open social media network.

It is comprised of dozens of independent servers whose users can all
subscribe to, share, and interact with each others' activities.

The OStatus federation protocols make it work. OStatus is a bit like
email, but for social media. Y'know how you can email anyone in the
world, even if they don't use the same email provider that you do?
Well, it's the same in the fediverse: you can subscribe to anyone on
any federating server, and anyone can subscribe to you! Contrast this
with how Facebook, Twitter, and other "social" services work: to stay
in touch with people on Facebook, you must have a Facebook account;
to stay in touch with people on Twitter, you must have a Twitter
account; likewise for Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, Pinterest, and so
on. All of these services want everyone in the world to use *their*
servers, and their applications, which they control, and with which
they monetize all of your communications.

We think that's pretty anti-social.

In the Fediverse, it doesn't matter which service you're using,
whether you have an account on quitter.no, or rainbowdash.net, or
mastodon.social – you can stay in touch with all of the people and
organizations around the fediverse, regardless of which service
*they* use.

And if you don't like the service you're using – switch! If you
move to another server, tell your friends your new address and
re-subscribe to them on the new service. You're never "shut out" of
the network.

And – here's the *really* different part – if you don't like any
of the existing servers, you can *run your own*.

The fediverse is built upon free software. The most common fediverse
platform is GNU social: it's a plugin-based social media platform
written in PHP, and part of the GNU project.

You can install GNU social on a home server, a VPS, or a shared
hosting provider, and run your own Fediverse node. Then, because GNU
social is free software, you can tweak it, modify it, add and remove
features, and share your modifications with the community of server
admins and developers.

Other fediverse servers are also available; Hubzilla, Friendica,
Mastodon, and others.

..

The Fediverse is a *public* media space. If you want to send private
messages, use email, XMPP, SIP, or any of the other well-established
private messaging systems.

..

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Excerpted from:

PUBLIC NOTES (G)
http://alph.laemeur.com/txt/PUBNOTES-G
©2016 Adam C. Moore (LÆMEUR) <[email protected]>