The Killer Feature of the Fediverse: Account Providers & Groups

I’ve been on Mastodon for a while now and find it a fantastic tool. The whole world around the Fediverse is inspiring because there are plenty of people busy building a new social network based on an open standard, without any large entities in charge.

However cool Mastodon may be, I actually miss the Fediverse’s killer feature: communities. Yes, Mastodon revolves around communities and each server is a community in its own right, yet not entirely, because you also get federated content from people on other servers all in one big timeline. That can be very confusing.

There are an awful lot of communities or groups that organise themselves via WhatsApp groups or Facebook groups. These communities create a group because they share an interest, live near each other, are friends or family, go to school together or do sports together, and so on. They’re all small social networks.

Another point is that you’re never in just one community; you participate in loads of different networks. What you do in each group can vary greatly. In one group, you might be a passive participant, while in another you’re more active, and perhaps you even manage a few other groups.

So why do people find Mastodon so confusing? Because it combines a few conceptual things that make it neither fish nor fowl. On Mastodon, you have to create an account on a server (or instance). Such a server is presented as though it were a community, with its own rules, customs, culture, and so forth. But then you actually end up in a kind of global timeline of all Mastodon activity from everyone you follow (including those on other servers). It gives the impression that you’re logged into some worldwide network, with all the accompanying expectations (search, discovery, reach, and so on). But then it all turns out to be a bit disappointing.

If you want to participate in multiple communities on Mastodon, you basically need to open accounts on different servers. While it can sometimes be nice to keep things truly separate, it’s also quite a hassle to manage all those separate accounts.

Some people will say, “But we have hashtags, don’t we? Couldn’t those be considered communities?” Well, you can use them to find content on a certain topic, but how effective it is to follow a hashtag depends on which server you’re looking at, as there is no global search function. So you can’t really call that a proper community.

There’s also https://a.gup.pe/, which creates a kind of group account. If you follow such a group and send a message to the group’s address, all other members of the group will see your message. That’s basically what you want, except Mastodon’s interface isn’t really designed for group thinking…

What I would like is for the Mastodon software (or any variant thereof—I’m referring to Mastodon here, but it could be any other ActivityPub implementation) to act less like a community and more like a provider of an ActivityPub account. Just as you might get an email address from a provider, you should be able to get an AP account from provider X or Y. Perhaps even from your email provider, your ISP, or your local council?

These account providers themselves do not form a community. Just look at mastodon.social or mastodon.nl: they are large groups of people who have accounts, but don’t really share much beyond that. For this reason, moderation and house rules play less of a role. If a user posts content that’s out of order, it essentially falls under the same legislation that hosting providers are subject to: illegal content may not be hosted. If an authority reports it to the host, the host must take action. The same goes for whatever you do with your AP account: that’s covered by the law, and your provider must enforce it.

After that, it should be possible to use your account to create communities or groups. Maybe on your own provider’s server, but perhaps you should also be able to create groups on another server. There might be sites that let you create AP groups for free, while others might charge a fee. Or perhaps your children’s school might set up its own server where AP groups can be created. These groups or communities would then be separate from your individual account.

ActivityPub would then make it possible to follow everything going on in the different groups you’ve joined from within a single interface (that of your account provider). Maybe not in one single timeline, but in an interface where the group takes centre stage. It’s more like an activity aggregator that lets you easily see what’s happening in each group and makes it simple to post content to a group.

Moderation would also be more effective at a group level. It’s perfectly understandable that different groups, depending on their topic or target audience, want to have their own rules. The class group for your children needs different house rules than the group where you meet your fetish friends. Something that’s acceptable in one group might not be well received in another.

Bottom line: I believe the killer app of the Fediverse is a tool that lets you effortlessly create groups and take part in multiple groups & communities. Federated, easy with a single account, featuring a generic interface, but with a great variety of communities.

This tool could also distinguish itself from other networks and tools such as BlueSky, which are much more focused on being one large, generic loudspeaker. No, let’s cherish the groups, communities, or collectives you’re already involved in, and build a tool that helps facilitate those groups. Easier than Mastodon, and better than Facebook groups. It should be almost as straightforward as creating a WhatsApp group, but with posts and the richness of a federated social network...

Should we apply for some funding at NLNet some time ???