@david @HistoPol @markearnest @paul @fediversereport @fediversenews @Bluedepth @darren @juneussell @davetroy Most reporting gets this wrong, unfortunately, by focusing on Mastodon in particular. The ActivityPub info (main site at https://activitypub.rocks) isn't all that approachable unless you're a software developer already working with distributed systems to some extent, and the W3C rarely markets anything to the general public.

If you scroll down on https://www.fediverse.to, you can filter by a number of "Fediverse Software" implementations. These aren't necessarily all fully compatible, though.
For example, Mastodon and Bookwyrm exchange only direct messages but not timeline posts or book reviews (as of now. Nothing stops Mastodon from accepting book reviews later on, and it doesn't need any specific help from Bookwyrm to start doing so. That's the beauty of ActivityPub in my eyes).

Edit: Oh, and https://venera.social/profile/fediversenews is a good example too, of course. We're technically talking in a Friendica group post's comments right now, even if it doesn't necessarily look like that from our point of view.
(Use the "view original page" function in case this opens like a Mastodon profile at first, likely in the triple dot menu in most clients.)

@Bluedepth You're welcome, and thank you 🙂

Runs a bit in the family I think; I'm a teachers' son who somehow ended up doing mainly software development so far. (These skills are quite useful when writing documentation and reports.)
I'm trying to branch out a little for my own sake though, so who knows what the future holds.

I'd say my number one advice for explaining well is to avoid jargon and to be open-minded about which common ground to start with, then build from there without going into too much theoretical detail. (If anyone wants to explore more, they can follow those links, after all, but that shouldn't be necessary to see the main point.)

It's harder to do online than in person, since there's no live feedback and fewer clues where to start, but you can still take some shortcuts based on the context of the discussion.

That said, sorry for all those edit notifications 😅
I'm pretty typo-prone especially on my phone.