Explained | What is fediverse, the social networking services Meta plans to join

The story so far: Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, recently launched its Twitter, now X, rival Threads. Users of social media platforms which use the fediverse can communicate seamlessly with each other, without the need to create or maintain separate accounts for each platform. For example, once Threads becomes part of the fediverse, users on the platform will be able to communicate and interact with users of other social media platforms which use the fediverse like Mastodon, without making a new account on it. While Meta’s Threads plans to join the fediverse, other platforms which currently make use of it include Pixelfed, a photo-sharing platform like Instagram; PeerTube, a decentralised video-sharing platform, Lemmy, Diaspora, Movim, Prismo WriteFreely, and others. One of the main reasons for social media platforms to use the fediverse is to tap into its decentralised nature.