No.
There are no ads, no trackers, the timeline shows all posts from everyone you follow in chronological order, and there is no blockchain/cryptocurrency/web3.
Fediverse servers connect to each other using traditional sustainable methods that email and websites have used for decades.
I thought “decentralised” meant blockchain/web3?
No.
The so-called “web3” is just marketing crap that con artists have used to promote blockchain-based get-rich-quick schemes ⧉. Part of the deceptive marketing around web3 scams includes trying to steal the term “decentralised”, but in reality blockchain schemes are just about trying to make money through dodgy investments, they don’t care about their users.
Honest, proven, sustainable decentralised networks are nothing to do with blockchain/web3.
So, what is a true decentralised social network?
True decentralised networks are where many independent service providers talk to each other in a process known as “federation”, so that even people on totally different providers can still communicate. The Fediverse takes its name from this: it’s a Federated Universe of independent social network servers.
Federated networks have been around for centuries, and all of us have used them all our lives. The entire world is built around federated communications networks.
The postal service is federated, different post offices around the world exchange letters and parcels. You don’t need to use the German post office to send a letter to Germany, you just use your local postal service and they pass it on to their German equivalent. The traditional telephone network is federated, and so is email. That’s why you can make a call or send an email to someone else even if you’re using a completely different provider, because the providers on a federated network talk to each other.
Federated networks have been the default for human communications from the earliest days, since before computers or the internet even existed. It’s this sensible, sustainable, common sense tradition that the Fediverse is trying to bring to the modern social media world.