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Comment by _9za9 | Hacker News Reader

Mastodon is made with the ActivityPub protocol and Mastodon is a notable social network implementation of the ActivityPub protocol so when everyone is talking about the decentralized social network that they are joining after leaving Twitter, they will say Mastodon. If someone is talking about a federated decentralized protocol, then you will hear them say ActivityPub.

Your comparison is like asking why people say Wordpress when they mean CMS platform. I joined Mastodon rather than I joined the ActivityPub protocol. I joined Wordpress rather than I joined a CMS platform.

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    I joined Mastodon rather than I
    joined the ActivityPub protocol.

To me it is the other way round. You joined an ActivityPub node that runs the Mastodon software. If you are @denu@x.com and I am @jona@y.com - how did we not join the same network, independent of which software x and y use?

If x or y changes their software from softwareA to softwareB - did one of us then "leave" the "softwareA network" or the "softwareB network"? I would say no. We can still interact just like we did before. We are still on the same network, as long as x and y speak the same protocol.

There is no such thing as a ActivityPub node whereas there is such a thing as a Mastodon node. I joined a Mastodon node that uses the ActivityPub protocol, because the Mastodon node I joined uses this protocol, I can communicate with software nodes other than Mastodon that also use the ActivityPub protocol.

Maybe you are better off asking why people say Mastodon when they mean Fediverse. Even ActivityPub's user guide says to join a Mastodon node, they don't say to join a ActivityPub node.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/pub/guide-for-activitypu...

    There is no such thing as a ActivityPub node
    whereas there is such a thing as a Mastodon node.

It is simply the other way round. It is the same with every protocol and its implementations.

You run an Ethereum node, not a "Geth node" or a "Mantis node".

You run a BitTorrent node, not an "rtorrent node" or an "qBittorrent node".

You run a webserver, not a "Django behind Nginx server".

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