You don't need an account on mastodon.social to interact with users on that server/instance. You can put up your own Mastodon/ActivityPub compliant server and interact with them. The example they like to use is how email works.
Another way to explain it, would be like if you could follow Twitter users from your Facebook account.
Very neat. I'm not very techy but I have friends who are, so I'm trying to get a better sence of what techy types are into actually doing with their computer knowledge.
It's the key of what ActivityPub/Federation is.
You don't need an account on mastodon.social to interact with users on that server/instance. You can put up your own Mastodon/ActivityPub compliant server and interact with them. The example they like to use is how email works.
Another way to explain it, would be like if you could follow Twitter users from your Facebook account.
Oh, so if you've got a lot of different mastadon affiliated sites u use, u can have all their content in one place, gotcha
Yep. The idea is that as long as they all speak the same language (the language being ActivityPub), you can interact.
Very neat. I'm not very techy but I have friends who are, so I'm trying to get a better sence of what techy types are into actually doing with their computer knowledge.
Yeah, I'm a fan of the idea. I think it's a good way of fixing the issues inherent in current social media.
I would want to do more, but I'm dumb and haven't had time to invest in learning it