With the advent of Threads people are becoming aware of something called ‘the fediverse’ (Threads is the new social network messaging app – think ‘Twitter’ only owned by Facebook Meta). The reason that the release of Threads has people becoming aware of the fediverse is because of this advisory when they sign up for Threads: “Future versions of Threads will work with the fediverse, a new type of social media network that allows people to follow and interact with each other on different platforms, like Mastodon.”

You may have recently heard about a new social network called Mastodon. Mastodon is an open source, completely free social network that is similar to, and on some level competing with, Twitter. However there are some important differences between Twitter and Mastodon. Here’s what Mastodon is, and what it isn’t.