fediverse — the name of the social network made of interconnected servers, like Mastodon and others — got another boost of legitimacy on Tuesday when the @Potus (President of the United States) Instagram Threads account shared its first unified post. The account run by the Biden team posted a message regarding the president's support for reproductive freedom on Threads, an upcoming competitor to Twitter/X.
Soon after, Threads users noticed that his post bore Threads' federated sharing logo — a circular shape resembling planets orbiting a star, giving a sense of the interconnected universe that makes up the federated universe.
Image credits: Screenshot of themes
Although many consumers may not know the terminology yet, the fediverse is an idea that is shaping up to become a more prominent part of the future of social networking in the coming months, especially in light of Meta's embrace of the technology and the underlying ActivityPub protocol.
In short, the term refers to the interconnected servers that run social media networks and that can talk to each other. Mastodon, an open source publishing service similar to Twitter, is a prominent member of the consortium, as are other platforms such as video sharing service PeerTube, Instagram alternative Pixelfed, discussion forum software company Lemmy, publishing platform WriteFreely and others.
Together, these services form a “social network” with 9.9 million users, of whom approximately 1.08 million are active on a monthly basis.
When Meta introduced Threads, its text-focused Twitter/X competitor, it said it planned to standardize the app so that users on Mastodon and other networks could see and respond to Threads users' posts.
Late last year, Threads began testing this integration, and in March, it opened federal participation to Threads users in beta. This functionality is not yet fully rolled out, and still has some limitations. For example, currently, Threads users cannot see who has replied or liked their posts from other servers and cannot share their posts with polls. But these are the features that will come in the future.
Despite the lack of this functionality, the @Potus account's embrace of federal engagement means Biden's posts will have a broader reach, as they can be viewed by users who aren't already on Threads, X, or other non-federated social apps.
