Hi there, thanks so much for your nice explanation and taking the time to respond. :-)

Two questions, and please understand that these come from someone with a non-dev background:

1. According to wikipedia Lemmy is 4 years old and in alpha/beta, but Mastodon is 7 years old. The AT protocol was only introduced in 2018, and most of these networks have implemented it. And on another Wiki page there are images showing how they can all talk and connect with one another. So is this not the case? Lots of people have commented with the fact that they don’t want them all to connect, as it will muddy the waters. But with the reading done, it gave the impression that these networks can all interact, if they’re federated of course.

2. And this might be a terrible question: Would it be possible to install say Mastodon, Kbin and Friendica instances on one server if it’s just one person that’s playing around to test the behind the scenes and see what they can do? Assuming you could then link them to sub-domains: eg. Kbin.websitename.com Mastodon.websitename.com, etc?