Federated protocols have been used for email and message boards.

Multiple times, in fact, counting FIDO and Usenet and Bitnet as separate developments.

So it isn't like this is a new idea, or like it's impossible to do with current copyright law.

Also the phone system, per the video. That's run by large corporations, often with monopolies, but at least they interoperate.

it's amazing the international telephone system even worked at all.

ma bell was quite centralized but there were many attempts to get them to interoperate both domestically and internationally, even to the point of having a very rigorous regulation regime (nationalization too.)

If we required all big social to interoperate (open complete APIs, etc.) it would solve a lot of woes.

In fact Usenet is still very much alive for the purpose of evading said copyright laws

Sadly it's no longer alive for its original purpose :(

The point of saying "fediverse" at all is to foreground interop via the ActivityPub protocol, rather than Mastodon which happens to be by some measures (ie "the most populous one or two instances run vanilla") currently the most popular user agent.

You might as well argue that, because not every browser ever written has an active userbase, HTTP is pointless.

And Wikipedia isn't even a fediverse... It's a central wiki run by a good, benevolent dictatorship.

If it went down tomorrow, it would certainly be mirrored and re-upped almost immediately, but it's not "federated" in the same sense as e.g. a Mastodon, IRC, email, or USENET.

Wikipedia is somewhat federated, just not in the same way that the fediverse is.

Each language edition of Wikipedia is its own little island that connects with the others. Then there's Wiktionary, Commons, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikivoyage and Wikidata. They all have their own policy, moderation, culture etc. but they all connect with each other.

They all link a bit more like how IRC servers come together to form a network - it's a closed system of federation rather than it being open to the world - and the Wikimedia Foundation does sit on top providing a level of governance and technical support.

I don't think they're federated. They don't transparently share data using a common protocol under the hood. They simply link to each other. They're a web.

Wikipedia is just someone's server. Owner may turn it down without asking authors of its content. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/wikipe...

The English edition of Wikipedia blacked out, but IIRC other language editions did not.

Plus there was a huge community discussion - and vote - that was held in the days before the blackout. It wasn't the WMF making a unilateral decision to do anything.

I can't figure out what any of this has to do with the fediverse. It sounds like you're complaining about the web3 grift. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I think when people hear "*-verse" there are two common hot takes: (1) this is something that doesn't include me, and (2) move on folks, nothing more to see here.

IPFS has nothing to do with the "fediverse" (although I'm not sure what the latter is exactly), apart from being distributed in some sense.