A Guide To Protocols Used In The Fediverse.

Diaspora: Clunky XML behemoth with some degree of privacy, a fuck tonne of metadata that has to be stored even by complete strangers.

DFRN: Clunky as fuck XML behemouth, but damn well works, with pretty good privacy, but by God, it makes your head spin.

Zot: On paper, the best of the lot, light weight, nomadic, more powerful and simpler than the others...but nobody understands permissions, so it's pointless.

Ostatus: Shouting at people anonymously.

ActivityPub: Privacy, as imagined by somebody with no actual experience of implementing privacy, reimplementing mistakes made by everyone else nearly a decade ago.