Groups as both a formal ActivityPub spec and general concept deeply invigorate me. I previously wrote about group-to-group following (FEP-d36d) as the missing glue layer to successfully transition /r/rust to the threadiverse.
Today I wanna talk about what a common implementation of Groups as defined in FEP-1b12 can do for the fediverse at large.
I think I like it but for the idiots like me, the plan is to have “groups” around the fediverse that equate to sublemmys, and Mastodon users can post with them or not, but if they do it essentially creates a sublemmy that Lemmy users can also interact with.
And on Mastodon the benefit would be that you could subscribe to topics instead of users?
I like the enthusiasm expressed in the blog post, and agree that groups coming to Mastodon might be a really good thing for the fediverse and open-source in general.
I’m a bit concerned about “the twitter effect”, where cynicism and toxicity are rewarded by the algorithm. This is perhaps less of a problem on the fediverse, since there’s no corporate interests fanning the flames, but I’ve definitely seen similar dynamics play out on Lemmy as well. Tribal dynamics and echo chambers create some really toxic behavioral patterns.
In any case, I hope r/rust devs can contribute to the fediverse, and Lemmy’s codebase and community to make it the kind of place we’ve all desperately needed for so long!
