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A kind observation that exclusively calling this place "Mastodon" has a bit similar energy as saying "I just sent a GMail."
"Fediverse" (or "fedi") is a more inclusive, general term.
Mastodon is just one of many software projects that talk to each other to create this multi-instance social network:
https://axbom.com/fediverse/
(kudos to @axbom for this fantastic infographic!)
There are blogs, Reddit-like communities, video instances and many more, all part of fedi.
@rysiek@mstdn.social> Yeah, and how many people are using these other instances? The emigration from Twitter only involves Mastodon.
This is demonstrably not true, Pleroma users numbers also went up for example.
And secondly, that's like saying "how many people are using this Firefox thing? everyone is on IE6 anyway!" 20 years ago. Knowing about options, even if you don't use them, matters.
Telling people that the fediverse exists beyond Mastodon is cool. Trying to claim that people are misusing "I'm on Mastodon" when it is clearly the primary tool Twitter émigrés are using is silly. It's like getting snobbish at people for talking about how they "got on Firefox" when /actually/ they got on the INTERNET because the INTERNET is BIGGER than Firefox just look at all those MUDs running off Telnet
My point isn't that the original comment is technically wrong, and saying "this other instance is popular too" is missing the mountains for a pebble. By how many more orders of magnitude do you think Mastodon is being mentioned right now?
tl;dr it's a weird, myopic, stereotypically sneery techbro flex, and it's not a good way to reach people
@elizabeth sure, I take your point to heart, I'll keep it in mind next time I'm mentioning this.
This whole conversation reminds me of a Quora conversation where a tech-minded dude was angry with everyone who liked their iPhones, because Androids were technically better on this, that, and the other technical point - and got really upset when it was pointed out to him that nobody cared; they were just looking for usability, not peak performance.
I'm not saying @rysiek is upset, but this feels like the same kind of "not getting it," to me.
@axbom @elizabeth @rysiek absolutely. “I’m on Mastodon, so I have access to the Fediverse” is a gentle and technically accurate way to put it.