I dont fully understand either, thats why I wanted to join an instance to see the difference. So far it looks like Mastadon but you can filter your feed based on “most boosted”, “most liked”, “most commented”, instead of only a chronological feed only. it also has a feature called “circles” which I think is the equivalent of a facebook group but I haven’t tried it yet.

Thank you for sharing the links! I just signed to one of them.

I am also surprised how much money they were able to raise. I hope they deliver on the things they promised