> Circles

That's the one thing that was typically missing from open social networks aiming to displace Facebook. I still remember when relationships were "official on Facebook," and I'm sure some of that psychology persists (however subtly) and is one reason that Facebook just wont die.

I'll definitely be setting up an instance for my family, maybe I can get them all to finally kick the habit.

Interesting. Please let me filter content by language.

Or please start up a primarily English instance.

did a cursory look, is this on activitypub or something else because that would be reinventing the wheel.

> Each Bonfire community has the power to federate with others communities but also with other fediverse platforms that support the ActivityPub protocol.

ok. now i need to have a look

I've been thinking about this problem space quite a bit, and I have 2 "stress-test" questions which I use to see how quickly it will devolve into facebook:

1) Can someone who is already famous, ex: some TV political pundit, join the network and quickly leverage the networks strengths to acquire a following. EVEN if that acquisition happens out-of-network. For example: let's say bonfire has 100 million users, it's a problem if someone famous can say "follow me on bonfire" and get 10 million followers in a week. While I understand this is a very high bar, any solutions to this problem (regardless of their implementation), will require people to know eachother personally in a non-scaleable way.

2) Can someone who is not famous, ex: a conspiracy theorist, gain a following by posting controversial/clickbait things. Ie there can be any algorithmic feedback loop of consumption (views/likes/follows) fueling viral growth.

IMHO, if the answer to either of those is yes, you are fighting a losing battle.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but why is it bad if many people voluntarily follow someone?

Good question - I’m not saying that it’s bad if people voluntarily follow someone, what I’m saying is slightly different.

It is bad if a network, like Facebook, has a large user base where it is attractive/valueable/helpful to someone who can know gain a larger following simply by joining (and getting people to voluntarily follow them). The network itself has value and people are able to exploit that value.

Look at this example in comparison to the alternative - that political pundit launching their own network. They can say “hey, go join my social network which I just created!”. I firmly believe they should be entitled todo that and people should be able to voluntarily signup/follow them on that new network. But that is a much much harder task to build/operate/scale then simply joining yet another social network and tapping into the user base.

> Ie there can be any algorithmic feedback loop of consumption (views/likes/follows) fueling viral growth.

Usually Fediverse type platforms just use reverse chronological order (or similar as options) with no "algorithm" for personalized content recommendations. Bonfire explicitly states such in their FAQ.

There is a sort of “post-corporate Memphis” design style and marketing language that I’ve been paying more attention to for some time now. It discomforts me.

Why does it discomfort you? You think it's a poor aesthetic, or you just recognize it's associated with a product, or something else?

The aesthetic is poor IMO in the sense that it is hackneyed. I’m not too familiar with CSS frameworks to immediately point out bootstrap from tailwind from another, but we should all agree that there are groups of websites that use a common layout and visual style which leverages typefaces like Inter, or San Francisco, or other “Sweatpants Grotesks” (think of Helvetica in a pair of tapered sweatpants with grey new balances and an unbuttoned Cardigan waiting for his Tesla to charge).

I do immediately recognize that a product is being offered in some fashion, but it’s more about how it’s being offered, as if it is something ostensibly, potentially life-changing. I think there a few HN members who know that there are plenty of products shown on HN that use emotionally jarring language that dances around the fact that the product is something that functionally is not as enigmatic as it’s advertised.

There is plenty of something else mixed in there also, but if you can’t tell I’m working off of a hunch right now. I would need to sit down and do a concentrated analysis to get everything that I feel across to you, if I ever had the chance to do so.

It is dystopian, lacking of soul, and created to be interchangeable and and indistinguishable.

I think you are experiencing the limits of HTML-derived typesetting. This seems (empirically) to be a happy medium between effort and glamour for a lot of designers.

As a personal sidenote: I quite like the woodcut aesthetic generally and the design shift combined with the evocative imagery does more for me than the typical Meta- or Google-style branding.

I'm curious what you are up to. Care to tell some more?

I suspect that there is a sort of “design language” that more or less unabashedly targets the psycho-social state that many millennials (and perhaps even more youthful Gen Z and Boomer crowds; granted my understanding of how “generations” work isn’t a great) feel about the world.

I shouldn’t have to to think about dopamine and capitalism when I’m looking for a social network; on the other hand I do, kind of, but being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.

Do you also feel that other types of art (movies, music, architecture, video games, etc) "shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience"? If not, can you unpack why you think software should be treated differently? I'm not trying to be combative, just to understand.

That’s a good question and it helps me think my way through how Bonfire (at least it’s website) makes me feel.

I have long divorced myself from the consumption of film, games and music; so when it’s understood that without the presentation of an emotional experience the appeal of these three things would effectively be neutralized, I’m fine with that.

My observations are less targeted at software as an art form. I think it’s more about how it’s being marketed and what the effectiveness of a software’s marketing suggests about its targeted audience.

I would be more interested in Bonfire if they had a plain web page that just said for example, “Bonfire is a social networking service that can communicate with the ActivityPub protocol and does X, Y, Z and we are working on W. We named it Bonfire because bonfires are like quaint parties but with a raging flame in the middle of it.”

To summarize, maybe I prefer certain software that advertises itself plainly by its merits than…I guess more “psycho-social” sort of attributes?

Interesting, I guess I can understand that approach for non-media-like software (not a great coining, but I mean things like operating system kernels, DBMS, batch accounting jobs, etc.).

That said, I don't see the point of divorcing media-like software (by which I mean at least video games and social media, like Bonfire, and possibly other types of software) from its emotional content. Just as the entire point of a movie or a record is basically only its emotional content, the entire point of using social media software is the emotional content of the interactions with others, right? And, if the emotion is the point of the software, why is it out of bounds to advertise it with that slant? Movie trailers and novel jackets are entirely emotional in their language. Are those somehow bad or immoral?

Or are you simply saying that emotional marketing of software isn't to your personal taste?

You’re pretty good at this. To chalk it up to personal taste almost undermines the deeper issues I want to bring up in regard to social media software, like how we’re doing so beautifully right now.

Perhaps it’s out of bounds because it’s unrealistic. A social network is neither film nor novel. Maybe the issue is that we are talking about how software appeals emotionally to real people where they will engage in real communications with real consequences with the emotional appeal of movie trailers, video games and novels.

Ironically the tone that the advertisement of Bonfire for example reminds me of is reminiscent of those fake ads from games like Fallout 3 or Bioshock. They’re almost employing the exact sort of rhetoric that people who try to make a world a better place before shoving everyone down tubes beneath the ocean and sticking needles in their arm use.

Is it fair when a social network like Gab or Truth Social behaves the same way?

Or is software with contrived emotional slants only acceptable when it appeals to your own personal views?

I guess I agree that social media apps are in principle very different from works of legacy media like movies or novels. Maybe this means we need to regulate the kinds of advertising they can do (as with cigarette ad regulation), but I kind of doubt that the specific tone of the Bonfire landing page is going to have a big impact on its adoption, which will presumably be socially-driven ("I want to see my friends' posts, and want them to see mine") like all similar apps have been.

> Just as the entire point of a movie or a record is basically only its emotional content, the entire point of using social media software is the emotional content of the interactions with others, right?

Movies and social interactions carry emotions. Social media can (should?) carry social interactions, but why should social media itself be the source of emotions? Can it not be neutral in emotions and 'just' carry social interactions with emotions?

Certainly this might be a design goal of some social media apps, but IMO it definitionally cannot ever really be achieved. The software will put (some hard, some soft) limits on the kinds of things that will be posted, and the kinds of posts that will be seen. These choices will affect the emotional tenor of the experience of using it in a very directly McLuhan-y way.

The closest thing we have to a neutral "common carrier" in social media -- if we stretch the definition of social media -- is probably email, but even the choices made there over its decades-long rollout have emotional consequences. Furthermore, the emotional content of checking my inbox on my phone in the waiting room at the tire shop is different than blasting through it with mutt on my Ubuntu desktop, and is different again when I log into my webmail quick on my parents' elderly Dell desktop.

IMO if we try to pretend that there is a clear separation between the medium and the message, then in using these apps we open ourselves up to an even deeper level of emotional manipulation than using them with that truth in mind.

> The software will put (some hard, some soft) limits on the kinds of things that will be posted, and the kinds of posts that will be seen. These choices will affect the emotional tenor of the experience of using it in a very directly McLuhan-y way.

True. Being neutral is a nice goal, but unachievable. Every choice has a color, some dull, some bright, but colored nonetheless.

> I suspect that there is a sort of “design language” that more or less unabashedly targets the psycho-social state that many millennials (and perhaps even more youthful Gen Z and Boomer crowds;

Antidepressants advertised using solarpunk cartoons of diverse people growing organic produce in a city park with wind turbines in the background. Everybody dressed in pastel colors, while the plants are neon green.

I think I feel what you mean.

> being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.

I found/experienced this when I was writing my own texts/content for a project/startup of mine. There was something pulling on me to write in a more emotional tone and I had to actively cut it back and get more to the point, just call it what it is. A good example is the first sentence of this paragraph; the word before the slash is what I think and the word after the slash is what I initially wrote down. I didn't "found" anything, I had to "experience" it. It's not a "project", but a "startup". I guess I'm influenced by western culture in general and HN-like culture specifically.

Is this also what you mean? Am I close? I guess I feel what you mean, but it's hard to put it into words.

I understand what you’re saying and I could see how what your describing can be taken as a derivative effect from what I’ve been describing. I myself lack the proper words to explain it all. It’s just a very visceral reaction.

I’m beginning to feel like the way that the Western world expresses itself is at its hyperbolic peak and it’s exposing a lot of our insecurities.

When I have these visceral reactions to things alike, I found out Venkatesh Rao is already busy figuring them out and trying to put it in words. Usually successfully, if you ask me.

"Corporate Memphis"¹ refers to a style of art. I don't quite see how the woodcut-style images used on this site would be considered a descendant of that.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

My interpretation of “Post-corporate Memphis” basically involves everything about corporate Memphis minus the imagery. It’s more about how the style is conveyed without the use of that sort of art work.

Ah, clear now. I think it's in the wording then, and some emoji's here and there.

All the animals-doing-human-stuff art made me think of how popular alt-social-networks are with the furry community.

> for the post-capitalist world

There needs to be a word that means "I almost thought what you were proposing sounded reasonable, until you said that last thing, and now I've lost all confidence."

it's a dogwhistle for likeminded folx

Capitalism is not just "the existence of money and markets". You can still have money and markets without capitalism.

Capitalism is when businesses do things I don't like, and the more they do those things the more capitalist it is.

> You can still have money and markets without capitalism

Money yes markets ish. A pillar of capitalism is the private ownership of capital, without private ownership many markets no longer exist (talking the economic definition of 'market').

"Some markets become obsolete when you remove capitalism" is not the same as "markets are only a thing under capitalism".

The real estate market would probably look much different and may even dissolve entirely if you forbid private ownership of real estate capital. I don't think this is a groundbreaking insight, I'm just clarifying for those who are careless about their use of words.

Yes but there's also people who think capitalism = things they don't like and don't bother to think about what the alternative truly looks like.

Straw men are not coming for your privately-owned home any time soon, friend.

Capitalism can also mean that politics shouldn't intervene when monopolies dominate markets. Then markets may also disappear in capitalism.

That's not what capitalism means. That's corporatism, if anything, assuming (as a sensible default) that corporations are the ones holding monopolies.

This is technically true in the abstract, but the people who use phrases like "post-capitalist" usually have a slightly different meaning in mind than what you described.

Don't know if there is such a word but there's definitely an HN guideline about not-writing shallow reaction comments about such triggers.

> Bonfire apps are open source and modular, meaning they’re made of building blocks you can use to create your own custom apps or extensions.

I might be wrong, but this feels kind of like a fusion of Mastodon + Nextcloud. Meaning that you have a social/federation-first framework that allows you easily build apps on top of the framework that extend the ecosystem (similar to the way that Nextcloud apps can be easily written and deployed on a Nextcloud server and can integrate with various server features and interoperate with other apps).

It seems like this could be really cool! It could help fix one of the current challenges I see in the fediverse which involves a splintering of accounts that you post from. For example, I often see organizations with accounts for both Mastodon and PeerTube. It seems like Bonfire would possibly allow for for a single account that can be used both on a "social" app and on a "video" app....

you can most definitely use your mastodon account to log in to a peertube instance and post from there, no one is stopping you from doing that NOW...... if you have a mastodon/pleroma go and try it on a peertube instance.

don't know why people create multiple accounts, peeertube has had sign in from fediverse for a long time now

> don't know why people create multiple accounts

The biggest marketing failure in the fediverse is that people still think that an instance determines your reach. They think of instances as subreddits, not as email servers.

Do you have a thorough description of how it all works you can link? (Mastodon, or the fediverse in general.)

I'd like to understand it, but haven't really felt like I grasped it after reading short descriptions.

I don't have it yet, but if you write down a list of questions I can perhaps publish them on https://communick.com/docs/mastodon

so you have a mastodon or pleroma account, right? that should be enough for you to put your foot in the fediverse.

Now, you can interact with any mastodon account, just like you can send an email to anyone anywhere.

Now, here is the fun part. if there is a peertube video you want to comment on. Instead of creating a new account, you can just "sign in from fediverse" and your comment will be posted on a peertube video. Also, lets say you have a peertube channel you want to follow. normally you would have to create an account (like a youtube account) and have all the videos followed in your mastodon feed itself.

Same for following someone from pixelfed and commenting on their photo. How about if you want to listen to a funkwhale like for example this random person https://open.audio/@[email protected]/

if you follow with your mastodon or pleroma or bonfire or misskey account, their new upload will show in our timeline...

For those looking to go even further than federated, to fully P2P social networks, the scuttlebutt protocol is the way to go.

The two best clients for it that are still actively developed are Planetery and Manyverse.

https://www.scuttlebutt.nz

https://www.planetary.social

https://www.manyver.se

I want to love scuttlebutt but multi-device is critical to me.

Yeah that’s a big pain point that i’m hoping to see figured out soon. It can’t reach mass appeal until that’s handled seamlessly.

Did they fix discovery? I love the concept, but my issue was that I had to connect to people to find people, and the only network I could reach easily was largely people I really didn't want to talk to. I think "Rooms" were supposed to fix it, but they didn't exist yet when I tried it.

> Working together to build safer, more open and fun federated tools and communities for the post-capitalist world

WTF is this sentence? And post-capitalist?

> And post-capitalist?

Would you prefer "Post-ad-driven-, post-for-profit-, post-data-mining social media world" be preferable? I think we can agree that profit-maximalism has thoroughly fucked-up social media. Bonfire aims to buck that trend.

Demo: https://playground.bonfire.cafe/

"post-capitalist" pass, comrade.

> take back control

Seeing this phrase used over and over after Brexit is so funny.

"and communities for the post-capitalist world"

Rule #37 of Doing Business: Don't use language that is vague and open to wildly different interpretations in your public advertising as to why people should use your product. Save that for the Terms of Service.

I'm not sure that post-capitalists are Doing Business in the first place. I'd say if you want to build a leftist community then you're better off setting that expectation upfront. If problematic people never join then you don't have to cancel them later.

It looks like Google+ v2.0. I hope they learn from mistakes.

What would those be? I thought the primary mistake Google made was in building Google+ after everyone was already on Facebook (and trying to force people into it)

There were multiple mistakes other than that, but for example initially you needed an invite to Google+ and they artificially limited the number of invites. This worked great for them with gmail, creating an inflation of demand and a fomo effect but with Google+ it just meant if you were on Google+ noone you knew (who didn't actually work for Google) was on there and if you weren't on Google+ you couldn't get on unless you knew someone who worked for Google or was one step removed.

They built a business model that relies on network effects and then deliberately killed the network effect during the adoption phase.

Good point. I totally forgot about that dynamic. I now recall that by the time I got an invite I was already kind of sour on them. Not that I was actually excited to join, I just didn't like them inducing in me a feeling of being not one of the cool kids.

Yeah. Exactly the same for me. It was a serious misstep because by all accounts some of the functionality (circles in particular) would have been a significant step forward for social media in general. By the time they realised their mistake and started pushing it (heavily) the ship had sailed.

'safe' and 'open' are doing some heavy lifting, here. What would the definitions of those words be, in this context?

I suspect these types of federated tools will absolutely surge in popularity if Musk completes his purchase of Twitter.

Why? The problem with Twitter is that they currently suspend accounts, remove posts because of "misinformation" and at the instigation of countries wishing to silence critics (see India). And yes, they also have a huge bot problem.

If Elon Musk takes over and removes this Twitter censorship and deals with the bot issue, more people will stay on with Twitter rather than opt for alternate platforms.

The problem with Twitter, for a certain and specific segment of its users, is that it bans too many users and removes too many posts.

The other problem with Twitter, for a different but specific segment of its users, is that it doesn't ban enough users and remove enough posts.

If Musk changes Twitters content moderation policy, Users from column A will be happier, and users from column B will be less happy.

I believe there are a lot more people in Column B than A.

Coincidentally Discord was almost named Bonfire until they changed it (https://gist.github.com/advaith1/540543d6a2b7fd66abdb0eb02c0...). The two are quite distinct though: most obvious being able to host your own instance and the code being open source. No other connection that I can see, though.

One other connection is using Elixir in our stack, but it's a coincidence.

I'd be curious to see what could be build on top of the value flows flavor of this.