How does the Fediverse work? #ItWorksLikeEmail 

Over the past few days as a result of the recent #twittermigation and all the new #introduction posts I've made numerous comments similar to this, so I figured I'd just make one Pinned Blog post and link to it instead

I first started using the 'verse >10 years ago, back when it was just called "de-centralized microblogging" (which was actually pretty centralized from my recollection of identi.ca being the only instance that really was up more often than it was down) I never really used it as my primary Social Media for big part because I didn't really "get" it, until I gave up Facebook for Lent this year and decided I was finally going to dive all in to GNU Social whether I liked it or not.

Here is what was most helpful for me in understanding how this all works. #ItWorksLikeEmail

your email provider can have its own rules, (like you can't send spam), and you can choose to host your own server(where you make the rules, but most people chose not to), and you can talk to anyone else in the world who has an email address (regardless of whether or not you are both on yahoo.com), and while most people just use it, for one thing, it can be used for others (like posting to mail lists, or forums that have integrated mail support)