Support groups

[cphuntington97]

support groups using bangtags

[Gargron]

I made a decision not to implement groups. They offer little benefit over a cost of added complexity, and the bangtag syntax personally irks me too.

[joshp23]

This is the main reason that I'm not using Mastadon. Groups are a wonderful feature of GNU Social, and I would love to see them implemented on Mastadon.

However, while that certainly does keep me from enjoying Mastadon, the root of the matter is that...

1. This is an opinion (subjective) based exclusion of an established feature that many, myself included, find far more valuable than is implied above, and not at all visually irksome. "My personal, subjective opinion is better than yours because I hold it," is not a good reason to exclude an established feature set.
   • Also, it is entirely possible to avoid groups if you so choose when they are implemented.
2. Treating subjective opinions as objective truths (ie, "It is my opinion that this provides little value, it is therefore a fact that this is so,") is just bad directional thinking.

This, being an old and closed issue, likely doesn't get the attention that it deserves, but I know that I am not the only one that holds this view.

At any rate, It would be great to see groups in Mastadon, please reconsider.

[Gargron]

Reopening, but not high priority.

[schiessle]

Coming from GNU Social I also miss groups a lot. It is a easy way to exchange messages about a specific topic without the need to follow all the people (and also get all the unrelated messages).

But after thinking about it for a while I wonder why there is this arbitrary distinction between groups and hash tags? Maybe it would be better to simply add the possibility to follow hash tags, similar to Diaspora. It achieves the same but makes it probably easier to use and understand for new users.

[Cassolotl]

Maybe it would be better to simply add the possibility to follow hash tags, similar to Diaspora. It achieves the same but makes it probably easier to use and understand for new users.

I agree! And @schiessle, that's #1096, if that helps at all.

[joshp23]

I think that either option (following hashtags or creating groups) is a good idea. However, groups has a potential edge in viewership/participant restriction.

[fsnk]

I would very much like groups.

I think they would help users find other people who share their interests, especially since Mastodon by design limits discoverability by not allowing full text search, and other social media platforms have been training users off hashtagging. (Twitter no longer requires a post contain the actual hashtag in order to appear in the hashtag search results.)

[schiessle]

I heard rumors that groups might come in one of the next releases. 😉
It would be good to learn from the mistakes of status.net aka GNU Social which are in my opinion:

• on GNU Social there can't be a group "foo" and a user "foo". Would be great if the namespace would be decoupled so that it is possible to have users and groups with the same name.

• GNU Social has group aliases. So you can have for example a group for all FOSS enthusiasts and let them address the group as !FreeSoftware !OpenSource !FOSS or !FLOSS. I think this is great and useful in many areas. But on GNU Social this aliases are only available on the server which hosts the group, all other servers only know the main group name. If we have group aliases it would be great if they would federate as well.

[deutrino]

There is a fair amount of discussion on the merit of !groups on #1096 in case anybody missed the link to that issue upthread.

[Cassolotl]

I note that option to follow hashtags 1096 Ability to subscribe or follow tags #945 has a lot more thumbs-ups than this one, despite this issue being much older. I'm wondering if there is a plan to implement both? I know that !groups is on the roadmap for the near future, and I'm concerned that that's instead of the ability to follow hashtags?

Edit: It was pointed out that #1096 is a duplicate, but I think my point still holds! #1096 has 35 👍 and #945 has 13.

[deutrino]

Is #945 an implementation of #1096?

Also, there's the wrinkle of groups, as implemented in gnusocial, making sure the messages sent to the !group will federate to all subscribers. Following hashtags doesn't do that.

[glyn]

@Gargron Will the groups feature be discussed further before/during implementation? I'm interested in how CoCs will work, e.g. will a user of a group be subject to a group CoC as well as their instance CoC when posting to the group?

[seconddayout]

My home instance in the Fediverse is a Mastodon instance and I simply want to be able to search for, see, and subscribe to Lemmy "communities" (i.e., groups) (e.g., !announcements@lemmy.ml) from my home instance.

[mediaformat]

I simply want to be able to search for, see, and subscribe to Lemmy "communities" (i.e., groups) (e.g., !announcements@lemmy.ml) from my home instance.

This is already possible but you would use the same webfinger style as elsewhere: @announcements@lemmy.ml

[calebjones]

Just adding my voice here (echo-ing some of what's been said before). Private groups are the only reason I still have Facebook (and are the reason I hear from many that they cannot move to decentralized social media). I dropped Twitter but still have valuable private groups that I do not want to leave that are on FB.

Public groups could still be valuable but I get that you get the same kind of effect with tags. The key difference is groups would be moderated by group owners whereas post tags are moderated by instance. One way to think of it is it allows an instance's moderation to be distributed to more people to allow for more self-organization - similar to Reddit. This can be done now via group=instance paradigm, but "go create your own instance and be and instance admin" isn't really practical IMO.

I think this is a feature that would move Mastodon from merely a Twitter clone (which it does well enough) to a true alternative to sites like Facebook or Reddit.

I guess it's a question of what the Mastodon community sees its mission as: Twitter/public feed alternative - or - Social Media that facilitates self-organization of people on it (without requiring them to create their own instance).

[tobbaz]

Just adding my voice here (echo-ing some of what's been said before). Private groups are the only reason I still have Facebook (and are the reason I hear from many that they cannot move to decentralized social media). I dropped Twitter but still have valuable private groups that I do not want to leave that are on FB.

Public groups could still be valuable but I get that you get the same kind of effect with tags. The key difference is groups would be moderated by group owners whereas post tags are moderated by instance. One way to think of it is it allows an instance's moderation to be distributed to more people to allow for more self-organization - similar to Reddit. This can be done now via group=instance paradigm, but "go create your own instance and be and instance admin" isn't really practical IMO.

I think this is a feature that would move Mastodon from merely a Twitter clone (which it does well enough) to a true alternative to sites like Facebook or Reddit.

I guess it's a question of what the Mastodon community sees its mission as: Twitter/public feed alternative - or - Social Media that facilitates self-organization of people on it (without requiring them to create their own instance).

I totally agree with this! Facebook groups is a great feature, especially private groups.
If that would be implemented on mastodon we could see a great migration away from FB as well as twitter.

So please please give us groups.

[raphaeljolivet]

@JamesTheAwesomeDude : What happened to your bounty on this feature ?

[TymeForChange]

Couldn't this group functionality be implemented through Lists? Lists already allow for replies to list only (disclaimer: haven't yet used). Add "Post to List only" as publish option. The main drawback being that you must follow a user in order to add them to a List. (Piggyback on request to open Lists to non-followed users, perhaps?)

[trwnh]

@TymeForChange no; lists are subsets of your follows, not your followers. also, work for adding groups as a separate context from timelines is in #19059

[TymeForChange]

@TymeForChange no; lists are subsets of your follows, not your followers. also, work for adding groups as a separate context from timelines is in #19059

Well, you cannot add someone to a List unless they are following you. So, in practical terms, Lists are a subset of your Followers.

[trwnh]

incorrect; you cannot add someone to a list unless you follow them

[hbroer]

Do groups exist meanwhile or are planed?

The reason is that we want region specific "subnetworks". We maybe can do this now only by unlink our network from the "universe" and create for each "group" an own instance which is then on the allow list of the other instances. But on one side we don't want to isolate the community completly, but on the other side we also want to prevent our users to get flooded by unrelated trash of other communities. Especially we don't want to get the flood of fake news and anti democratic conspiracy shit. If a user subs to a doofus that's ok, but it should not spread around our instances.

Maybe groups are not neccessary, but still would be a very good start for linking the people together which need to solve specific problems. At least we need some tool to keep the community clean of absolutely unrelated internet trash.

If I get the information correkt I found there is only one solution at the moment: Setup a instance for each region, link them together to a private network, introduce special tags for special problems and promote them on some way (maybe this even need a fork to change the UI, I could not find any tips for customisation)

[TymeForChange]

incorrect; you cannot add someone to a list unless you follow them

Ah. Well, then it's this issue: #20541

[Ainali]

Are groups live? I just spotted this tag after I clicked on a name.

[skysarwer]

Are groups live? I just spotted this tag after I clicked on a name.

I think they are just recognizing actors that are labelled Group from the AP spec. Examples are accounts from https://gup.pe and https://chirp.social What is the handle of that group?

[Ainali]

Examples are accounts from https://gup.pe and https://chirp.social What is the handle of that group?

They are indeed at *.gup.pe.

[bernd-wechner]

They offer little benefit over a cost of added complexity

For what it's worth, I (like others) landed here precisely because I disagree. Perhaps Mastodon only wants to be a twitter style shout out to the world style microblogging platform? If so a shame, not least given the popularity wave it's experiencing. Because not until it considers itself a social media platform and offers private and public interest groups as a way of containing conversations will it ever draw much migration from Facebook.

I would love to migrate some groups from there to Mastodon. But I see nothing that maps well to the notion of Facebook Groups .... C'est la vie I guess, I'm just sayin' ... and dreaming of a fediverse that can draw Facebook users.

Alas, until Facebook is obliged to support interperability at some level can I see a mass migration from it. So many are stuck the way telephone users were before the big national Telcos were broken down. All their friends are on Facebook, all the utility they get out of social media is on Facebook and so to migrate away and go it alone is a big ask, and the only way I can see it happening at all is either if Facebook is obliged (legislated to) support interoperability (like ActivityPub) or at bare minimum a decent alternative that can lure casual users away (offering groups, events, pages ...) so select groups can be convinced to make the hop together.

[remram44]

Perhaps Mastodon only wants to be a twitter style shout out to the world

As a data point, Twitter has "communities" now.

[bernd-wechner]

As a data point, Twitter has "communities" now.

Good to know. Just another voice in favour of closer circles, both open and closed (groups, communities, circles, hangouts heck different sites playing with different names for talking to a subset of the world of all users).

Mastodon has one such differentiation, the Local and Federated views. But Local has a pretty huge overhead (is tied to hosting a whole server) with its own URL etc. It would be nice if for example on https://mastodon.au/ we could have interest groups (open or closed) that make migrating such groups from Facebook into the Fediverse much easier and easier to sell to group members.

That said, I don't see Communities anywhere on Twitter right now? Is it well hidden or am I not looking in the right place? I admit I'm not a Twitter fan/user per se, just use it occasionally.

[geonom]

Private groups would also allow for our NGO (Psychologists for Future) to use it for internal as well as external communication at the same time, which would be so helpful and alleviate a lot of technical pressure for us as non-technical people!

Plus, that way it would bring even more users to the platform due to the usecase of internal communications being possible. UX-wise I would still have some questions, as of course that also would bring new challenges. But that is also a matter being discussed elsewhere, I guess?

I'll happily lend my psychologist brain if that can be helpful - leisure time programmer, so I am not totally ignorant of limitations and powers of datastructures :)

I don't want to pressure though, because it is hard developing open source software and I really appreciate what is possible with mastodon already, thanks a lot, @Gargron and all involved!

[hbroer]

After some research I came to the point that groups will unlikely be part of Mastodon. They concentrate on their vision of a Twitter clone.

A solution to this would be only to search for another project which has that feature or to create a new project. I do currently something in between. I wish I would have more time and experience with ActivityPub. My focus now is on another project which has a server first approch and is API compatible to mastodon. I will try to make this a headless service with its own auth endpoints to bypass OAuth for the same-origin scope and also add a RPC service to it in a way that something like sending emails and ActivityPub messages can be used by other services without the need of reimplementation. The Idea is that additional logic, like groups, group chats, games, video and text blogs, podcasts, what ever, can be added as loosly coupled (micro-) services. Similar for the PWA frontend. For the basic functionality anybody can connect with a Mastodon client. The PWA is a seperate project and can also be extended, forked, new implemented...

Currently most projects focus on standalone monoliths and they are not interested in extendability and easy ways for integration in existing projects or projects which want to make heavy use of additional features. That's ok for that project goals, but not for the people which don't want only a clone of something and rather create something better or hybrids of different approches.

[raphaeljolivet]

Hi,

I just wrote a piece on the support of groups in Mastodon & the Fediverse.
I hope this can be helpful :

https://raphael-jolivet.name/en/blog/groups-in-mastodon-and-the-fediverse

[Tjoppen]

@raphaeljolivet You forgot GNU Social which has had !groups since forever. Subscribing to #tags is not nearly as powerful in terms of stitching the fediverse together. The star network structure of !groups means two otherwise unconnected instances can be linked via a !group on a third instance. #tags by comparison only propagate to instances your instance federates with directly. You also can't administer a #tag like you can a !group. Finally "banggroup" is just too great a term to pass up

[Eric1212]

Hi,

I just wrote a piece on the support of groups in Mastodon & the Fediverse. I hope this can be helpful :

https://raphael-jolivet.name/en/blog/groups-in-mastodon-and-the-fediverse

That a great article... I'm very surprise of that branch ( #19059 ), as you said, it's pretty mature. If not happening in 2022, i suppose it's will come to 2023 at that pace. Very happy to see it !

The last huge step would be to force all social network to join ActivityPub. I know France had mades somes attemps intoo this topic. But mostly, it's would be by law, provide interoperability or get domain name banned from ISP.

[hbroer]

#19059 is great work and will be a huge feature for Mastodon IF that can be completed and IF it will get released.

Sadly it does not fit our requirements for groups. They need to be private (not federating) but public to all community members. Nobody outside of the community should be allowed to post, comment, etc. The alternative to this would be a participation request for federated users. A very important requirement is also to define custom forms. For example people should be forced to fill out some data before asking for advice. As a 65k+ group admin on FB I know the problems if that isn't given: The people get advice which don't fit their needs or the first 10 replies asking for more informations before giving advice.

That's why I still think that it would be much better to make Mastodon more flexible, customizable and extendable instead of adding big features into the core. But that's just my opinion, others like monoliths for some reasons. Happy downvoting. ^^

[erlend-sh]

I see ‘MAS-15 Groups’ as in progress on the roadmap now, so I’ll take the liberty of sharing two blog posts of mine that provide a rudimentary ‘state of groups’ report from a threadiverse perspective:

https://blog.erlend.sh/transitioning-r-rust-to-the-threadiverse
https://blog.erlend.sh/group-convergence

The most important takeaway here is the emergence of FEP-d36d for group-to-group following as a force for consolidation. I hope it will be seriously considered as a follow-up as soon as Groups has landed.