I started looking into suitable open-source ActivityPub-powered applications that can serve as digital platforms for IRL communities such as cities, neighbourhoods and municipalities.
In my own local community, a substantial bit of online discourse and engagement happens on Facebook, so we do have a benchmark ;-)
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While @helpers Friendica (https://friendi.ca) seems to replicate Facebook's social graph experience with a bit of a vintage UI vibe, @Bonfire (https://bonfirenetworks.org) feels like an interesting option due to its modularity and explicit goal to enable communities "to engage meaningfully, coordinate as peers, make collective decisions, and cooperate effectively".
I'd love to hear from people with experiences around local communities on #Bonfire or similar online platform technologies.
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And by the way, following our little thread with @rolle and @zotheca about character limits on Mastodon last week (https://mastodon.online/@josschuurmans/115916858958749178), #Bonfire tackles the tension between micro- and long-form blogging like so:
Long-form content in Bonfire: Part 1 | bonfire.cafe
https://bonfire.cafe/post/01JYRX7HCGME693BGCZF6AGGK1
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"(...) we've taken the leap and developed our first prototype for publishing and reading articles on Bonfire, based on the FEP-b2b8 draft specification. (...)
Adding articles marks a small but significant step towards realising the vision of the open social web: a digital space where you can receive, read and interact with diverse content types from a single place, rather than juggling multiple platforms, accounts, and notification streams. (...)"
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