Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter Outreach

Wednesday, 17 September 2025, 16:15

A hands-on peek into the Fediverse

Schuh
Göttingen

The Fediverse is a decentralized social network built on the ActivityPub protocol where a multitude of services, running on myriads of instances (independent servers), federate with each other and enable connections between any of their users, not unlike e-mail. The micro-blogging platform Mastodon, the photo-sharing platform Pixelfed and the video-sharing platform Peertube are among the best-known Fediverse services. Mastodon in particular, which has recently been recognized as a digital public good by the UN, offers a rather charming alternative for what was once "Academic Twitter". This "contributed talk" is intended more as a discussion forum, and can take one of two forms, or elements of both, depending of the audiences' preferences during the session: Either a guided exchange between science communicators who already actively use Mastodon or other Fediverse services and would like to discuss their experiences with each other, or an interactive workshop for astronomers just getting started with truly social media, with ample opportunity to ask questions and share tips.