So Social is the domain, and Mastodon/Piefed are the instances in my example?
If that’s the case, why not make everything (instance).com?
why not make everything (instance).com?
The cost of a (word).com domain can be tens of thousands of dollars if nobody owns it to millions of dollars if someone does. The cost of a (word).social domain is like $10.
Yup, this is why most Fediverse platforms are hosted on domains with TLDs that seem unusual (.social, .io, .ml, .xyz, .land, etc). Since most of these projects are funded by donations (if funded, at all), the domain is an excellent place to cut costs on a project like this.
The cost of a .com Domain can be under $10/year
I just bought bitwaba.com for like 8.49 a couple months ago.
Mastodon.social is the address to that specific Mastodon instance. Take a look at this site for more info.
why not make everything (instance).com?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that? Are you suggesting everyone to use a ().com? If so, because they are rarely available and if they are, quite expensive.
.com, .net, .org, and .social are called Top Level Domains
You can register a second level domain
(e.g. “google”, "lemmy”, “cnn”) with a specific TLD, resulting in a domain name
(e.g. “google.com”, “lemmy.social”, “cnn.com”)
We have our instance on .ca
for example, since we’re a Canadian instance. Other instances might use .eu
being in the EU, or .fr
for France
Some instances pick the TLD (.com, .ca, .org, etc.) to have a fun name. For example, https://sh.itjust.works