What is the fediverse?

The fediverse is a network of independent social servers that can all talk to each other. nicagram is one of them.

The comparison that works is e-mail. There is no single e-mail company: there are many mail servers, each run by somebody different, and an address at one can write to an address at any other. The fediverse is that, for social media. The shared language is a protocol called ActivityPub.

What that means for you

• Your address here is @[email protected] — a name and a server, like an e-mail address. That is what somebody on another server searches for to find you.
• You can follow, reply to, like and share accounts on other servers, and they can do the same to you. Neither of you has to sign up twice.
• The other server does not have to run the same software. It might run microblogging or video software instead of photo software; the parts that both understand still work.

What that means about moderation

This is the part people are surprised by. Each server has its own operators, its own rules and its own moderators. The people who run nicagram decide what is allowed here and can act on accounts here. They cannot suspend an account on somebody else's server — they can hide it from this one, or refuse that whole server.

The domains this server refuses are listed at banned instances. Which server you pick therefore matters: it decides who moderates you, whose judgement you are relying on, and who you share a local timeline with.

Which server should I be on?

It matters less than it sounds, because you can follow anybody from anywhere. And if you change your mind, you can move and take your followers with you. That is the property the whole design exists to give you: leaving a server does not mean leaving the network.

Some of the other software in the fediverse is listed on the fediverse page.