I’ve tried Mastodon a few times, and that was my first exposure. The first time, which was I don’t even remember when, I joined mastodon.social, kinda got lost and never found anyone to follow and ended up just forgetting about it.

The 2nd was in 2020 after cth got banned and I remember someone in the Discord mentioning an instance I thought might be more interesting, so I joined it and it was definitely a better experience but again I just ended up forgetting about it after a while. Also when I came back later to check in on things I found the instance no longer existed.

I joined a third time around this time last year when some of my friends decided to join and I’ve used it a little more, but it’s still pretty on and off, so I think part of the problem is just that I’m not super into the Twitter-like style of things. Having to follow individual people ends up feeling kinda tedious and since almost no one only posts things I find interesting, I end up either following no one or following enough people my feed is largely filled with things that don’t interest me.

Aside from Mastodon I haven’t really tried any of the others, but Lemmy definitely seems like it works better for me, preferring to follow topics and interests rather than individual people most of the time. I have actually looked at Lemmy before a few times, and liked it, but found it hard to get over the relative lack of activity, so I hope that’s changing (and it seems like it might be).

I’ve heard of Mastodon around the time Elon bought Twitter, researched it a bit, but I’ve never been a Twitter user so I wasn’t particularly interested. My first real interaction with the Fediverse was 2 days ago when I tried Lemmy :D

If Matrix counts as the Fediverse, then Matrix. I set up Matrix to join the postmarketOS server, then mirrored my OpenRGB Discord over to Matrix with a bridge bot. However, due to lack of moderation and an influx of spammers I ended up making that private.

Then I set up a Mastodon account when Twitter started showing signs of failure and have mostly moved to Mastodon though I still occasionally check up on Twitter.

Now I set up a Lemmy account because of Reddit’s failings. Ready for the Reddit exodus. At least this time we’re moving to something not in the hands of a single corporation that can sell us out like Digg and Reddit did.

Mastodon around four years ago. Couldn’t get into it then (or again more recently when Twitter really started disintegrating), and I think it’s because Twitter-style microblogging just feels conceptually broken for me.

Lemmy solves all the problems I had with both Reddit and Mastodon- just need to spread the word for the next couple of months and hit some kind of critical mass with adoption.

Mastodon around a year ago. Hopped around to a few mastodon instances before finding alternatives. Been running multiple fediverse instances since then (and none of them are mastodon)

This is my first exposure Fediverse :D

I’ve just come here after the recent decision by Reddit to practically block most 3rd party access to their API.

Way back when Diaspora was first being developed and people were starting to talk about it.

Mastodon thanks to the whole Twitter debacle, although I have a hard time knowing if people or entities I follow on twitter are on Mastodon unless I happen to see them mention it. Trying out Lemmy while Reddit is in turmoil, and I’m finding it a better fit to connect to communities. Beginning to get a better understanding of the ‘verse now as a result of knowing about more than one implementation.

PeerTube. I was getting really sick of Youtube, heard about it and went exploring.

By the way, Matrix, while it is a federated protocol, isn’t part of the “Fediverse” (a word for federated software using the ActivityPub protocol [edit: and some others, see reply] , which are aimed towards social media rather than instant messaging)

I had known Mastodon for quite some time but never used it until lots of people came over there from Twitter (which I had never used) and then I set up my own instance.

And now I’ve also set up my own Lemmy instance, I am still using Reddit aswell, but I hope Lemmy gets enough activity for it to be actually useful (seems to be on a good path).

(Yes, I don’t mix Mastodon and Lemmy, because Lemmy just works so different from most other ActivityPub software, it would just confuse me.)

Also I have used Matrix for quite a long time now.

First exposure would probably be identica in 2010. For people getting started, these days I’d suggest less joining a specific platform and more by interest. Books -> bookwyrm , Video -> a Peertube instance, etc.

Probably matrix: I dug a bit into the perotocol and started hosting my own instance. Mastodon followed (but not selfhosted)

Tried lemmy for a bit but didnt like it. Right now i give it another try.

I was checking what the definition of Fediverse is, and when I go after the one from the Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

Then it was when I implemented Pingback to my weblog so it looks like it was 2005.

Later around 2012, I was involved in the Tent protocol which was an alternative to OStatus and build a client for it. But because how bad their handled their community a year or so later I switched to:

Indieweb where I implemented a set of protocols and markup on my website to be interoperable with other websites which implement the same set of protocols and markup like microformats, micropub, webmention, etc. To this day I still am using my own website as the main publishing platform and automatically cross post every note and picture to Mastodon.

Otherwise I joined Mastodon with my own 1 person instance in 2019. And later PeerTube with my own instance for my family in 2020 and today I joined kbin.social just to test it before I decide if I should set up my own instance or not.

[edit:] I forgot that I set up my own Matrix server in 2020

First exposure to federation was Matrix, though I did not fully understand it at first.

First exposure to the fediverse was Mastodon after Twitter imploded.