With 200 respondents on the #poll the results indicate that one third of fedizens feel that #Mastodon and #fediverse are the same.
This is an unsurprising outcome, since #ActivityPub - at its heart a very flexible and powerful communication protocol, yet underspecified - has seen primarily uptake and adoption in one narrow field of #SocialNetworking:
The federated #Microblog.
And there is very little incentive in the developer ecosystem to bring change to that, making it a fait accompli.
👋 Welcome to the world of #microblogging, the mastodon or fediverse.
Has "Mastodon" become a category name, rather than a product / brand name? In a similar way "Jeep" became a category word for "all-terrain vehicle".
So often I see people use #Mastodon, where they refer more broadly to #fediverse. And I think "How about all the other fine #microblogging apps other than Mastodon?"
Look how many others there are: https://delightful.coding.social/delightful-fediverse-experience/#microblogging
What do you think: Has "Mastodon" become a category name?
@smallcircles I agree it's incorrect to say the Fediverse is the same as the Mastodon implementation. However, I think it's also incorrect to say the Fediverse protocol is #ActivityPub. It uses some of the ActivityPub spec but there are many parts that are not specified by ActivityPub (HTTP Auth, WebFinger, NodeInfo, Mastodon Client API, relay protocol, search, streaming events, ...). And the parts of AP the Fedi uses are not always spec-conformant.