fediverse What in previous times was known as "federated groupware". A federated system of servers with each supporting some number of users and using a loosely agreed upon W3C protocol, but with no overall central controller. Email and Usenet were the early version of the fediverse. In more recent times systems based around the OStatus and ActivityPub protocols are typically referred to as being the fediverse. Due to the ability to independently homestead and curate a community, the fediverse is generally preferred as a mode of public discourse by real hackers, and stands in contrast to the gigantic closed source corporate data silos which rose to dominate between 2005-2011, such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.