Summary:

Mastodon is a social network that has gained popularity as an alternative to Big Tech platforms like Twitter. It has a decentralized network topology, meaning users can set up their own servers (instances) and communicate with users on other instances. This type of network is known as the Fediverse, and it is based on the ActivityPub standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is a rebellion against centralized web control, and its core goal is decentralization. Mastodon is just one of many efforts to implement the ActivityPub standard, and while they are theoretically able to communicate, there are still issues of incompatibility.