Is it any service that includes the ability to federate? If so, are Matrix/XMPP/other non-ActivityPub services part of the Fediverse, or does Fediverse really just mean ActivityPub?
The context is wanting to promote a Matrix chat room on discuss.online: #online.discuss:discuss.online (see post). Does it belong in Lemmy communities like this one, [email protected], etc? Or does it not count as part of the Fediverse?
"federation" implies deep interconnect, a "bridge" on the otherhand is an artificial architecture of connection along narrow fragile terms.
Just because you build a bridge to the fediverse doesn't mean you are really part of the vibrant, free core of the fediverse city center, you are just mooching out or at best trying to arrange an alliance.
When two things federate on the fediverse it is like there being two cool places in a city where there are a million different ways to connect those two places together, often in surprising and novel ways that people didn't necessarily forsee. It also means that a fundamental level of design connections between any two things in the fediverse are durable and not subject to catastrophically breaking if any one connection in the fediverse is temporarily broken. This is NOT like a bridge at all.
A city of bridges is not a city.
So like, cool Bluesky has a bridge here now, I hope it doesn't get knocked out by a freak act of nature I mean enshittification....