Stephen Downes

This is a long and detailed article describing the concept of federation in a non-technical way. Though written from the perspective of Bluesky's AT protocol, the concepts also apply in large part to other types of federation, such as Mastodon. The main message is this: "As more products are built in the open social paradigm, there';s going to be a shift. People might not ever start using technical concepts like 'decentralization' but they do understand when data from one app can seamlessly flow into other apps. People might not care about 'federation' but they do notice when they log into a competing product, and their data is already there, and their reach is intact." Good writing and many clear and helpful illustrations.