Social Federation simply relates to social media services and systems that the public self host, as opposed to big companies. Unlike social media services owned by big companies, federated systems are usually a lot more experimental. This has both pros and cons: It means administrators can change the design and domain of their instance, as well as managing plugins, but it also might be more expensive depending on what hosting provider you use (or electricity if you host at home), how much your domain will cost you per year, and what service you want the server to run. It all comes down to dependencies on real life and finances, your decision on choosing the platform you want the server to run and how you customise it, and the public’s decision for if they want to join.

It can be daunting at first, but just when you think you have given up, you realized you actually started a social instance unknowingly.