The Council of Venice guide to Mastodon, the Fediverse and the world of decentralized social network

	(The camera clicks on showing a slender Japanese woman in glasses wearing a white military style uniform with a blue beret) Greetings agents! I’m envoy Yuuko Shirakawa and I am here to be your guide to Mastodon, the Fediverse and the world of decentralized social networks. Let’s start with a basic question, what is Mastodon? Mastodon is an open-source social network, it’s a bit like a calmer, more friendly version of Twitter, but instead of having a central set of servers owned by a corporation, Mastodon is decentralized, meaning it’s a collective of servers owned and operated by many different people, all operating independently. These servers are capable of sharing content with each other using a standard protocol. How does that work? Think of it like making a phone call (stop snickering -_-), if you call someone on an ordinary phone, your phone provider will connect to the phone provider of the person you’re calling. You don’t need to be on the same provider to call someone. This works worldwide and seamlessly, because all the hundreds of phone providers in the world talk to each other so from the user’s point of view, it’s as if all phones in the world are on the same network.
	In a similar manner Mastodon uses an open-source protocol called ActivityPub that allows any applications using it to send and receive information from one another. This makes Mastodon part of a larger network of applications called the Fediverse, which is just a set of servers for different applications that use ActivityPub, this means that with one account you get access to a whole universe of social apps. Imagin if you were able to follow an Instagram account from twitter without making an account with Meta, and that’s the kind of activity that ActivityPub enables with in the Fediverse. For example, if you have a Mastodon account (on any server), you can also follow accounts on Pixelfed (the Fediverse version of Instagram) and see their content in your feed without having to create a Pixelfed account (just search for the user and server on Mastodon) and follow! Likewise, you could have a Pixelfed account and follow accounts on Loops (the Fediverse version of TikTok) and have the videos appear in your feed! This allows users access to vast amounts of content, whoever you are or whatever you’re into the Fediverse has a community for you and if they don’t then you can spin up your own server and make one! That’s the power of decentralization.
	Right now, you may be wondering, “if the Fediverse is decentralized then how are things like illegal content or trolls handled?”  Because Mastodon and the Fediverse are a network of totally independent servers, there is no central set of rules for them. Each server creates its own set of rules which its members must obey. Usually, the owner of a server sets the rules for that server, although some servers may consult their members about what should be allowed. If a user breaks those rules, admins have the option of either a temporary or permanent ban, and they can require manual approval for new users, thus preventing Trolls from registering new accounts when an old one is banned. “But what if a user from one server breaks the rules of another?” Admins have the option to block a user from accessing their server, meaning that the blocked user would not be able to see any of the content from that server, though they would still be able to see content from users on their own server and other unblocked servers. Admins can even block entire servers in a process called de federation where the admin lists the offending server in a do not share list. This prevents content from the blocked server from appearing in their users feeds and prevents content from the blocking server from being shared with the blocked server. This helps prevent harassment campaigns and trolling, and really badly run servers tend to end up isolated, because so many other servers defederate them, thus well run servers tend to have better content.
	“But what if I disagree with a rule? What if a rule is unclear?” You can ask the owner(s) of your server if you have any comments or questions about the server’s rules though ultimately the server’s owners have the final word on any rules they implement. If a server suddenly implements a policy you disagree with you can transfer your account to another server! The ActivityPub protocol allows for the interpretability of accounts so if you ever need to transfer your account for any reason all you have to do is access the setting panel to start the process! This concluded our introduction to Mastodon, the Fediverse and the world of decentralized social networks, in the next tutorial we will walk through setting up an account, basic etiquette in the wider Fediverse, and how you follow accounts on Blue Sky from Mastodon.