Is it any service that includes the ability to federate? If so, are Matrix/XMPP/other non-ActivityPub services part of the Fediverse, or does Fediverse really just mean ActivityPub?
The context is wanting to promote a Matrix chat room on discuss.online: #online.discuss:discuss.online (see post). Does it belong in Lemmy communities like this one, !fedigrow@lemm.ee, etc? Or does it not count as part of the Fediverse?
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So, the term Fediverse basically refers to the ActivityPub protocol and the associated server software. Technically, it’s not just ActivityPub, but also the AT protocol and nostr. Another layer to the Fediverse, at least in my mind, is having some federation. Meaning Bluesky isn’t apart of the Fediverse, even though it’s built on the AT Protocol, because of it’s isolation. Since there’s no interaction with Lemmy, Mastodon, PixelFed, or other federated social networks, it’s not part of the Fediverse.
I think that ATP and nostr are sometimes included as part of the Fediverse because they both have bridges that allow connection. Without the bridges they’re isolated.
ATP still requires millions to host a relay https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342799/free-our-feeds-social-media-ecosystem-at-protocol-bluesky
This isn’t the same thing.
Bluesky has something called fedibridge (third party), where your entire account is forwarded to mastodon and acts like a native mastodon account when viewed from mastodon. (It works the other way around too, mastodon accounts can be viewable on bluesky thanks to it).
A relay is something that hosts the viewable content on the ATprotocol. Currently, the only relay that encompasses the entire AT protocol is hosted by bluesky PBC, though there are a few very small relays for specific niches.
Thanks for sharing the article though, I had not heard of free our feeds.
I was mostly referring to the fact that the day Bluesky decides to ban bridges, ATProto won’t be part the Fediverse as per the definition of the comment above.
I personally prefer to just consider them as out from the start.
It seems like you’d say that Matrix isn’t included? It’s not ActivityPub/AT/nostr
Matrix is not federated, it has nothing to do with the whole ActivityThing. They are two separate universes. Maybe there are bridges that I don’t know of, but essentially they are not interconnected.
It’s federated, just not to the ActivityPub universe, right? People have been able to join rooms on discuss.online using their matrix.org accounts, which to me counts as federated.
Matrix servers can talk to each other, so yes, they are federated. But Matrix is not ActivityPub.
I think by now pretty much everyone here heard about Matrix at some point or another.
Personally I think Matrix and XMPP belong go the Fediverse in the loose sense. ActivityPub isn’t designed for messaging, and they offer good protocols for that.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse:
The majority of Fediverse platforms are based on free and open-source software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol. Some software still supports older federation protocols as well, such as OStatus, the Diaspora protocol and Zot. Diaspora* is the only actively developed software project classified under the original definition of Fediverse that does not support ActivityPub.[5][6]
You would have to look at those citations to see how authoritative they are. This may also still be open to interpretation?
