Ecosystems and instances beyond Mastodon?

Also, it occurs to me if the TWG were to commit to running an additional federated service, IMO it would be more of a value add to stand up another fediverse app that provides complimentary services to mastodon such as pixelfed, write.as, peertube, loops, etc. instead of one that seems to be focused on text blogging/microblogging which mastodon already does.

Also yeah their website isn't loading for me either, and their codeberg readme clearly states it's beta software, neither of which exactly inspires confidence...

I would consider it if we were to set up a new instance. But since it involves migration, I don't think it's worth it, especially because of the issues you mention.

The fact that their page https://gotosocial.org/ doesn't even open for me doesn't inspire confidence at all. Not having a designated front-end doesn't sound good either.

I have no objections to hosting a GoToSocial instance in parallel with our Mastodon instance. I don't think very many people would be happy to migrate over permanently, though, so at best we'd end up hosting two services, which would certainly require more overhead than running Mastodon only.

My impression was that GoToSocial's real strength was for self-hosting; very quick to set up and pretty low maintenance. That's not really our situation, so I'm not sure how much advantage it would provide.

I'm kinda fine with whatever as long as the technical working group is on board with the extra labor this would require of them.

Oh, I'll add that I have a friend who uses... something not Mastodon... which I think might have been GoToSocial, and that I had some problems federating with them from my Hubzilla account. So GoToSocial might present some barriers to maintaining connections outside Mastodon for users who migrate to GoToSocial.

I would say lack of attention to web interface is a non-starter.

Finishing software, meaning spending all that time it takes to complete the last 20% of something, particularly user-facing software - is something that is easy to be unaware of unless you've spent time doing it.

When choosing between "server resources" vs "person time" - it's quite rare that it's better to minimise server resource usage. Ruby and Rails are really effective thesedays.

That said, I do really do love a good Go, Rust, Zig implementation... but practically I don't think it's the right option to choose here unless someone is unstoppably, personally motivated.

@robertguthrie really well said.

If we're on the topic of trying/switching software, I just want to throw in the wrench of https://bonfirenetworks.org, which is a new platform deeply politically aligned with us, co-led by a former leading Social.coop member. It is designed to be heavily customizable.

+1 for trying Bonfire. They are developing many features for the kind of community we are. Supporting ActivityPub indeed. Have a look at their site, <https://bonfirenetworks.org/>

"Nathan Schneider (via Loomio)" \ schreef op 1 augustus 2025 16:00:52 CEST:

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Good reminder thanks @Nathan Schneider . Is there a lot that runs on Bonfire yet, very easy to configure? Or is it still 'all to play for'? The very openness of Bonfire might mean a lot of work? But Bonfire is built under the ActivityPub protocol, yes?

I really dig GoToSocial. But instances this size aren't really the use case, more linux and self hosting nerds.

The character limit can be adjusted manually and we could just vote on that here. Some instances – like tldr-nettime, which notoriously revolves around complex topics – opt for (the Masto-fork) Hometown, which has more by default.

I love the diversity of the fediverse, and you can easily ride many horses. But we did grow out of the #BuyTwitter campaign, so we're clearly microbloggers.

@Robert Guthrie

I would say lack of attention to web interface is a non-starter.

If the goal is to eventually develop a web interface, then yes, bang on. But that's a non-goal of GtS. They're focused on building a resource efficient and feature-complete back-end, to be used with third-party clients that implement the Mastodon client-to-server API. The GtS devs outsource the UX design to people who enjoy that and do it well (hopefully), so they can focus on what they enjoy and do well.

When choosing between "server resources" vs "person time" - it's quite rare that it's better to minimise server resource usage.

If you're willing to host on AWS, and ramp up revenue to keep pace with server costs (as mastodon.social does), then sure. But that's an anti-goal of GtS. Which began as a single-account server, with the goal of being efficient enough to be run on an old PC in the closet. Thus decentralising server hosting, to further decentralise social networking.

I understand it now supports multiple accounts, but I think @Daniel Brandes is right that it's optimised for hosting small groups like families and social clubs, more than larger organisations like social.coop.

I agree with @Nathan Schneider that Bonfire is a more aligned choice for experimenting with a second fediverse service. Not only is Mayel well known to many of us, but so are many of its advisory circle, including @Lynn Foster , @Bob Haugen, @Doug Belshaw and Nathan himself.

@mike_hales

Is there a lot that runs on Bonfire yet, very easy to configure?

As I understand it, Bonfire consists of a base engine and a range of extensions (like plugins?) that can be combined in different ways, to make a range of web interface 'flavours' designed around different use cases. Which is quite innovative in itself. So far, Bonfire Social has 1.0 release candidate, and that's what I'd suggest social.coop kick the tires on.

Bonfire is built under the ActivityPub protocol, yes?

Definitely. But it brings a number of new features that Mastodon lacks, like 'circles' and 'roles' that offer granular control over who sees a post, markdown editing, and particularly support for groups.

From my reading of Mike's OP and the comments so far, the proposal is to stand up a second fediverse instance for those keen to experiment, not to kill the current Mastodon instance. I don't think abandoning Mastodon would be wise unless and until a replacement has been thoroughly use-tested and stress-tested, and there is overwhelming consensus to do so.

@Danyl Strype Thanks for tagging me. FWIW I would be very up for social.coop having a Bonfire instance alongside the current Mastodon provision.

Not trying to derail the conversation, and perhaps this is for another thread, but I'd also be interested in social documents, for example. So things like CryptPad or Docs.

Everything is relative, but it seems that GoToSocial is not intended for an instance or membership base of our size:

GoToSocial’s niche is small or single-user instances […]

Just wanted to bump this, and highlight the fact that social.coop could really help the Bonfire project by setting up an instance;

"Bonfire even quotes some people saying that they’re interested in the project, but find it confusing as to what it actually is. Bonfire has chosen for the approach that they do not want to run a flagship server for Bonfire Social. That however is now leading to the situation where there are no people running a Bonfire server in production for a community yet, making it hard to demonstrate in practice what Bonfire Social actually looks like. This poses a challenge for their crowdfunding effort."

https://connectedplaces.online/fediverse-report-144/

@Danyl Strype thanks. I personally would be very interested in trying out a parallel Bonfire instance, partly because I want to get a lot deeper into testing it for some other projects, and partly I think it would be good to move from Mastodon at some point to software that will support branching out significantly from microblogging. I do have a test Bonfire instance set up for one of these projects (Mutual Aid Network in Madison), but that will move slowly until offers/wants becomes closer to a reality in Bonfire. It's on the list. In general, I think that combining social networking with economic networking is an important leap to take into our future.

That said, it seems like a lot of work to run parallel instances? I'm no sysadmin, so I can only guess. But I do know that it is for sure too early to just make a switch to something like Bonfire, given its newness. So, seems like the tech group has the biggest say, or really the only say, in if we even can assess it as a co-op in this timeframe.

And sorry to add to the thread-hijack. Can we edit the name to be more general?

What’s preventing people from trying these things personally? Any “parallel instance” would be functionally the same on any server, and doesn’t require social.coop, no?

What is the value add of social.coop specifically blessing and hosting a parallel instance?

All of this suggests social.coop needs to think more deeply about our strategy as a service. What do our members NEED out of social media that is not being served by our current singular focus on providing a Mastodon instance, a Loomio forum, and funding for interesting projects?

To be clear, I use Ivory as my Mastodon client, haven’t actually gone to social.coop in years, and would not personally be impacted by a wholesale switch to GoToSocial if it retained and continued to add all the functionality of Mastodon… but for those reasons I also see absolutely no benefit to switching or establishing a parallel instance with the same functionality.

If you want to experiment with something, experiment with it. If you want $500 of our member fees to set up an instance to try it out, propose it, and clarify benefits and impacts to existing members, if any.

I see that people are bringing up Bonfire again. Does anyone actually have their hands on a functioning instance? Is it federated? I last checked them out years ago, via both the social.coop sandbox instance and the official sandbox instance, and while the features were nice, the loading was prohibitively slow, even on our non-federated instance.

When they posted their big announcement recently about going live, I visited their website again and it seemed they'd taken down their test instance. I'd love to learn that their updated software is zippier and works well, but I'd want to see actual evidence of functional software before we make any serious move to set up an instance.

@Dynamic 

I last checked them out years ago, via both the social.coop sandbox instance and the official sandbox instance, and while the features were nice, the loading was prohibitively slow, even on our non-federated instance.

They've released a 1.0 version fairly recently, which is an implied claim that this is a stable and performant version.

I'd want to see actual evidence of functional software before we make any serious move to set up an instance.

Surely the best way to test that it stand up a test instance? At the moment it seems like everyone is waiting for someone else to do that. Maybe a group that aligns with the Bonfire team's values, and shares some community members in common, would be the right people to do that?

@Danyl Strype 

If someone on the social.coop technical working group wants to set up a test instance and see how it works, that'd be awesome. That would be a good way of getting information on whether or not it's a platform we as a community ought to explore.

@Dynamic I have a Bonfire instance but it is for a specific test of one group. Yes, we tried federation and it works. I'll ask about their test instance. [EDIT: Their test instance is still up at https://campground.bonfire.cafe with a reminder to keep in mind federation is disabled there.]

@Lynn Foster 

Thanks. I wonder why they don't seem to link to it from their main site anymore.

I'd also really like to see its federated behavior : (

If we're spitballing fediverse platforms, I'd like to toss Friendica out there as a suggestion. Whereas Mastodon is a Twitter-mimic, Friendica is a Facebook-mimic, and Facebook was always more mainstream than Twitter, so it could be a way to broaden the appeal of the fediverse.

@Dynamic 

Friendica is a Facebook-mimic

That was the original aspiration, as with Diaspora, but it's not really a functional replacement for FB. It does have groups and calendars, which Mastodon doesn't, but I don't think those features are actually federated, even between Friendica instances. About the only federated features that make it different from Mastodon are post titles, the lack of character limits on posts, and explicit distinctions between one-way follows and mutual connections (which is just an interface thing, the Moshidon app does that too).

You mentioned performance concerns above, the Friendica servers I've had accounts on were sluggish and buggy. Also, I found the interface really confusing and hard to use, even as a person who's been testing software for about 4 decades.

It's literally the last fediverse software I'd recommend to anyone.

@Danyl Strype 

The big selling point of Friendica IMO is that it lets you set up actual privacy circles. Also, the conversations are threaded Facebook style rather than the more flat organizational structure of Mastodon.

@Dynamic Bonfire does circles too. I'm guessing this is how it manages federated groups. I get the impression threaded discussion is a display option, so people who like it can see a thread that way, while others use a chronological view. While looking up those links, I discovered that social.coop already has a Bonfire instance running at;

https://bonfire.social.coop/

Not sure how up-to-date it is though.

One more thing on performance, Friendica is a 15-year-old GLAMP stack, Bonfire is a modular system built in Elixir. There's no way Friendica will perform better in the long term.

@Danyl Strype actually, I don't think Bonfire circles equate to federated groups. They are more for managing your own groupings of people, who don't particularly know they are in your group, if I understand correctly from our limited testing. Bonfire is crowdfunding for a number of future features, and federated groups are the first one. https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/bonfire/community?refcode=UScVLqSJJkKpZWg_Lnsg7w#/section/project-story

EDIT: I'm wrong that people don't know they are in your circle. You can choose who can see the circle, public, local, mentions, follows.

@Lynn Foster 

> Bonfire is crowdfunding for a number of future features, and federated groups are the first one

My mistake, does that mean Bonfire doesn't have groups at all yet, or that they're just not federated yet?

@Danyl Strype See my edit above. But I still don't think circles are non-federated groups, perhaps depending on what one thinks a group is or should be in the fediverse. Feels like a more complex or nuanced discussion though, with more research and thought than I can put into it right now. With apologies.

@Lynn Foster indeed, federated groups is a huge discussion! Going on for some time in a number of places, and probably out-of-scope for this discussion. But I'd be up for digging into it over on the Open App Ecosystem group if anyone is keen to get the ball rolling : )

@Danyl Strype wow, that could be interesting! It's going to require a lot of digging though! :)

@Lynn Foster @danyl strype I opened a thread https://www.loomio.com/d/hB4NYXgD/groups-in-the-fediverse-

Sorry Strypey, can't seem to summon your notification link.

Additional info from Mayel of Bonfire re. including groups feature:

"In terms of current status, we have a beta implementation of groups already (as extensions included in community flavour, which isn't ready for use), but need to improve the UX (co-designing with communities) and figure out federation"

I feel like I need to add a disclaimer re. my opinions on Bonfire, just to be clear. I have zero systematic knowledge of comparisons among the various fediverse software we could consider in this discussion. My interest in Bonfire stems from long historical connection with the Bonfire devs, and a level of unity that we have, that I think also fits well with social.coop's values at some fundamental level (understanding that there are also many valid disagreements within social.coop). My interest also stems from Bonfire's commitment to Valueflows, which is my main focus in recent years. I hope I can divorce myself from my work enough to say that I think it is actually important that we have economic networking standards, along with social networking standards, and that we build software that supports both in conjunction. And that it all supports the many experiments on the ground for a more fair, sustainable, just, respectful world, etc. etc., sounds corny but you know what I mean. Yes, kind of personal, and my own criteria, that's why this is a disclaimer.