>>86, >>92
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Mastodon, is in fact, ActivityPub/Mastodon, or as I've recently taken to calling it, ActivityPub plus Mastodon. Mastodon is not a Twitter clone unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning ActivityPub system made useful by the ActivityPub client/server API, federated cross-server API and W3C standard comprising a full social network as defined by the plants Richard Stallman has sex with.

Many computer users run a modified version of the ActivityPub system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of ActivityPub which is widely used today is often called "Mastodon", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the ActivityPub system, developed by the W3C.

There really is a Mastodon, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Mastodon is the GUI: the program in the system that deludes you into thinking you're using a snazzy web 2.0 thing like Twitter instead of an open source command line program written by some fat nerd in his mom's basement. The GUI is an essential part of a social network, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete communications protocol. Mastodon is normally used in combination with the ActivityPub standard: the whole system is basically ActivityPub with Mastodon added, or ActivityPub/Mastodon. All the so-called "Mastodon" distributions are really distributions of ActivityPub/Mastodon.