* <<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) <adam@laemeur.com>