Once upon a time, the internet was born.
It was a simple place. Anyone could participate, anyone had the building blocks to make their own corner of the internet. Everyone was free, your home was yours.
Time passes, the internet grows. It becomes more and more capable, and more and more connections are made.
Eventually, companies become interested in the internet. They start to capitalize off of it. They build their own homes and invite everyone in, promising to make it easier to call a place on the internet your home. Social media is born.
It begins with Myspace, Facebook, SchülerVZ for all that matters. But it would not be long until it expands, without ever stopping.
More and more people run happily into the arms of companies that offer them a home, until one day, everything changes. They close all their doors, with you inside.
They changed the rules. Now your corner of the internet, your digital home, is theirs. Everything in it is theirs, everything you say is theirs, and you are locked inside.
You can hardly leave, and even if you tried you would leave behind all your friends.
The internet as we once knew it no longer exists. You do not exist if you are not on one of 5 websites, owned by 5 companies, which hold you and the internet hostage.
But just as the internet died, an idea was born. What if it did not have to be this way? What if we could share our homes, and connect in communities, without relying on the companies that got us into this situation to begin with?
A new home, where you can be free again.
It goes something like this: Anyone can open a home, they can invite anyone in, or keep it for themselves, and then everyone has a little mailbox.
This isn't just any ordinary mailbox, it automatically exchanges our words and ideas between homes, between communities.
This is federation. It allows us to build a network of communities, at large or in smaller scales, connect to each other, all without the possibility of someone to come in and buying it all up, or get people locked into companies' "homes".
This idea exists out there, as we speak. We call it the Fediverse, and it's a network of 'instances', individual homes and communities, that federate with each other.
We have to make space for change.