@susankitchens
Quick summary: There is a social media open source software called Mastodon. Site owners create their own "instances," places like this, but the software creates an additional column called the fediverse to see what's going on in other instances.
There was a kerfluffle because Coso blocks several countries that don't respond to complaints about bots and forum spamming. Mastondon's creator responded by cutting off our interaction with the fediverse.
@susankitchens
J responded by "forking" the software (disconnecting from any further updates by the Mastodon developer) and going forward creating all the additional features that you only find here.