You know how you can have an account @gmail.com and I can have an account @hotmail.com and we can still send each other emails? That’s because gmail and hotmail (and every other email server) talk to each other when you send an email between them.
The fediverse is just applying the same model to other services. Lemmy is this for a Reddit-like forum. Mastadon is this for a twitter-like feed. And so on.
This makes it nearly impossible for one company to “ruin” any federated service, the way twitter has gone under Musk and the way Reddit seems to be heading in advance of its IPO. Google might ruin gmail someday, but all you have to do is sign up for another email address somewhere else.
i wonder if the corporations will try to push to change laws in such a way it would cripple or outright prevent fediverse from functioning. That seems to be general way of things on how they handle competition they can’t directly attack
It’s hard for me to imagine any legislation that could affect fediverse that doesn’t affect email (unless email is explicitly excluded from the legislation I guess), which is good because email is one of the few parts of the internet that even old farts understand. No chance they vote in a bill that kills e-mail.
The ELI5 is actually pretty easy: e-mail.
You know how you can have an account @gmail.com and I can have an account @hotmail.com and we can still send each other emails? That’s because gmail and hotmail (and every other email server) talk to each other when you send an email between them.
The fediverse is just applying the same model to other services. Lemmy is this for a Reddit-like forum. Mastadon is this for a twitter-like feed. And so on.
This makes it nearly impossible for one company to “ruin” any federated service, the way twitter has gone under Musk and the way Reddit seems to be heading in advance of its IPO. Google might ruin gmail someday, but all you have to do is sign up for another email address somewhere else.
i wonder if the corporations will try to push to change laws in such a way it would cripple or outright prevent fediverse from functioning. That seems to be general way of things on how they handle competition they can’t directly attack
It’s hard for me to imagine any legislation that could affect fediverse that doesn’t affect email (unless email is explicitly excluded from the legislation I guess), which is good because email is one of the few parts of the internet that even old farts understand. No chance they vote in a bill that kills e-mail.