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Fediverse is a new term, so it is typically used when trying to explain newer technologies (email & RSS are well-understood and need less exposition). So for that reason, yes, you'll mainly see it used to describe new things.

It is a portmanteau of federated universe, and as such encompasses the full universe of technologies old & new that are considered "federated".

Federation is a system whereby you sign up to a SaaS, and can then interact with other users of other SaaS due to each of the services synchronising data via a unified protocol. Email is the best-known of these; SMTP is the protocol.

RSS is a greyer area. The nature of RSS (heavy on subscription, lighter on publishing) makes it less like other tech in the fediverse which are heavier on the publishing/sending/broadcasting side. Given the prevalence of self-hosting, it could be closer to being classified as properly decentralized except that there is a clear server/client distinction. It's somewhat subjective: either way if RSS (& WebMentions) are considered outside of the Fediverse, that's only because their paradigm isn't compatible with federation (making the original comment about Fediverse competing with things like RSS/WebMentions moot).




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