It turns out to be a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”, to indicate that Mastodon comprises many different servers, also known as “instances”, which are interconnected.

Notices where this attachment appears

1. Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 17-Nov-2022 01:50:48 JST Chris Trottier

   Lovely article by @zoesqwilliams about her journey from Twitter to Mastodon. It really is.

   But I feel it needs a corrective.

   It's not called the Fediverse because Mastodon is comprised of many servers.

   It's called the Fediverse because there's literally a universe of federated protocols, apps, instances, and tools that talk to each other.

   Mastodon is just one of those apps. There's also Pixelfed, Peertube, Misskey, etc. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/16/could-this-be-twitter-without-the-toxic-slurry-my-week-on-mastodon