Community Update about Meet.Coop services for Social.Coop members
Melissa Santos Wed 25 Mar 2026 2:44AMPublicSeen by 149Social.Coop is a member of Meet.Coop, a cooperative-commons videoconferencing service.
In the past, this offering was limited to a Big Blue Button (BBB) instance, hosted by a Canadian cooperative, that Social.Coop members gained access to after completing a separate signup process. Then, two things happened:
The Canadian BigBlueButton instance we were using was taken down for security concerns (October 2025)
Meet.Coop made accessible a Jitsi Meet instance, available at https://Jitsi.Meet.Coop, for members to use in lieu of the unavailable Big Blue Button while service was restored and potentially beyond (December 2025)
Note that for many people, Jitsi.Meet.Coop will be a better fit for virtual meetings, as it is a simpler experience and it does not currently require signup or login – please do use it for your personal virtual meeting needs if it fits! (I host a monthly craft club and book club on it, for example.)
Meet.Coop is now at the point where they are ready to provide again service using a Big Blue Button instance that we can use, but we are still working with them on setting up new users and recovering past meeting artifacts like recordings. They are also open to continuing to run Jitsi Meet in parallel for users and groups that prefer that, although this is not yet confirmed long term. I am posting this to let all our members know that these services are available, and in particular, to let interested parties know that if you need a Big Blue Button user or need past recordings recovered you should reach out to us.
Social.coop members are working with other meet.coop members to come to a good resolution.
Calls to Action:
Say something in the comments here if you need a user account on the new Big Blue Button server
Say something in the comments here if you need past recordings from the old Big Blue Button server
Use the jitsi.meet.coop server if it suits your needs!
You can always reach out to the email registrations@social.coop if you need to reach the Community Working Group to talk about this service or anything else!
CalixWed 25 Mar 2026 3:18AM
I will also be campaigning for Meet.coop to continue providing a Jitsi service, for all the reasons you laid out, and as part of a wider "product" strategy I developed during and since my stint as a Meet.coop operational member – but I definitely think it should require Meet.coop login (which Social.coop members should have again soon)
Nithin Coca @ncocaWed 25 Mar 2026 4:39AM
I was an active user of the BBB instance, and would love to see it back. For me, at least, Jitsi just does not work as well. Thankfully I have all my recordings backed-up - but it was concerning how the server was shut down with no notice, and I hope that in the future, we can have better communication between Meet.Coop and Social.Coop
mike_halesWed 25 Mar 2026 11:33AM
@Nithin Coca ncoca Shutdown of the Canadian BBB server was unexpected, we're sorry. It seems to have arisen because of a serious failure of some kind in the coop partner that did hosting, unable to maintain the server effectively being under commercial pressure arising from ¿ the US tariff wars ¿ staff leaving. It came as a shock to us all @ meet.coop. But heroic sysdmin contributions 🙏 are turning things around. We mean to be back in service as usual before long. (Perhaps with just a German server though; our understanding is that this doesn't cause significant difficulties for users across the Atlantic.)
Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OCWed 25 Mar 2026 7:04AM
I’d like a new BBB account on the new server
Games CommonsWed 25 Mar 2026 11:01AM
Hello! 👋 we would like a user account on the BBB server please
Alex RodriguezWed 25 Mar 2026 5:07PM
I would like a new BBB account on the server and to find my old recordings, please! I didn't have many but there were two in particular that I didn't get a chance to archive locally before the server went down @Calix
AdrianWed 25 Mar 2026 5:45PM
I would also like a BBB user account
Jonobie FordWed 25 Mar 2026 7:45PM
I love that we have this, and hadn't realized. Thanks for sharing the information!
Billy SmithThu 26 Mar 2026 6:24AM
Good to hear that things are working again. :D
I was using the Jitsi version, and I'd like a BBB account again. :D
It'll be interesting to see the difference. :D
Calix ·Wed 25 Mar 2026 3:15AM
Thanks for kicking this off, Melissa! @Eduardo Mercovich, @Matt Noyes and I were on the Meet.coop community meeting on the 13th, and I joined the new "money and communication working group" which met for the first time this week.
I'm pushing for a simpler set-up where Social.coop members get automatic access to Meet.coop through our auth.social.coop Single Sign On – other Meet.coop folks seem positive about this idea, so (unless anyone on the Social.coop side thinks this is a horrible idea for some reason) I would suggest that Social.coop members do not need to indicate if they would like Meet.coop services (it will be automatic).
However, I totally agree, it is indeed critically important to know if any Social.coop members had recordings that they need access to on socialcoop.meet.coop. The work on recovering recordings is starting now, and the tech folks working on it need to know how hard to go trying to track those down.
I'll be updating the "Socialcoop.meet.coop outage" thread on the Meet.coop forum with this, and taking to Matrix / Mastodon / smoke signals to try and find any Social.coop users who might be in need of their recordings, wherever they are – I just hadn't had time since the "money and communication" meeting yesterday, sorry.