Wafrn: As of now it’s the Tumblr-style microblog platform that it’s closer in terms of content and energy to the original. Goblin has the pro that being a misskey fork has more app options, while wafrn only has only that for now it’s in close beta (although I access it through the phone browser no issues), but Goblin seems more serious in its content and interactions (or at least that was my perception)
I think misskey and it’s forkeys are it own thing in both terms of features and user base. Akkoma (can’t speak about plain pleroma) and Mastodon are similar, but Mastodon has , how to say it, this issue where they spend years shitting on features half the Fediverse have to then add it and pretend they’re doing something revolutionary. Also, I don’t know why but all the Mastodon servers I’ve been have had limitations or outright forbid image uploading, telling you to instead open a pixelfed account; I’ve never seen someone like that even in the crappies key/oma instance. That not even mentioning the toxicity (much of it inherited from twitter during the migrations) that exist in Mastodon.
Piefed like that you can join or abandon communities by topic on piefed and that it ask you if you want to see content with certain topics. Lemmy has the advantage that it has more app options, but it’s harder to filter content there and, at least on the server I was, half of the time the search gave no results. Tbh, I think we need a Lemmy fork because that’s the only way the community it’s ever getting all the user friendly changes it needs. The things that Lemmy lacks it lacks on purpose, there’s an active decision to not have them. Different from kbin, I actually like Lemmy, but I agree that PieFed has a lot of potential and as of now haven’t had any issues with it.
People can perfectly understand terms like instance or server…if they are explained to them.
They are also accustomed to concepts like social media and social network that can also be used to explain the Fediverse. Each server is its own social media platforms interacting with eachother through a distributed social network.
But, I actually think the Fediverse require an intermediate point between social media and social network, or something above it.
If the Fediverse (including in this case all decentralised protocols like ActivityPub, Zot/Nomad, Diaspora, Ostatus, AT Proto, etc) is a Social network and each particular instance it’s own social media platforms that interact within the network, the software they run and the community they form part of within the wider fediverse is an intermediate stage between social medium and social network.
Now, if each server/instance are social media platforms and the software they run are the social network; the protocol or protocol they use is/are a network of networks and the Fediverse a network of networks of networks of social media platforms.