Discussion
RE: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/116697592010712039
And it's official.
"communities are coming to Bluesky this year"
Also, earlier in session she brought up the Reddit comparison mentioned in https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/04/bluesky-twitter-rival-reddit-social-media.html.
"Bluesky’s Chief Operating Officer Rose Wang told CNBC that the site saw its future not in rivalling X, but in taking inspiration from the online community forum Reddit."
Honestly, this makes a lot of sense. One unified live feed where the current horrors of the day are mixing with pictures of people's pets really isn't good for our mental health.
I guess CWs help here, a bit, but they often lead to fighting over everyone's expectations of how they should be applied.
Posting in dedicated communities and switching between them gives people more agency, I think.
@stefan I have three accounts for different aspects and each focus on following different hashtags. I also follow people but am happy to unfollow and block to curate my feed.
I don't see upsetting content here. I see more on the mainstream TV where I have no control. For example, gruesome details of a violent attack in Belfast on Monday evening while eating dinner, on UK national TV that I really did not want to hear at any time.
@stefan AFAIK this is also reflected in social media research. I keep reading that “giant round table for everyone” social platforms are shrinking when you look at the global scale, while ones facilitating community forums, group chats, and any sort of closed, tighter-knit communication are growing.
Enabling loosely interconnected communities is arguably a strength of ActivityPub, and I've been wishing for fedi platforms to lean into this more. Not that I'm the only one saying that.
And yes, we sort of have groups here in the fediverse?
https://about.fedigroups.social
Definitely would love to see better support!
@stefan AFAIK it's a core feature of Friendica and Hubzilla? But yeah, more and more I see people saying groups are what keeps them on FB and Whatsapp.
@stefan that’s kinda a hack as I see it. I thought at one point mastodon had a Groups feature on the roadmap but I don’t see it there anymore
@cubeofcheese Ah, yes, vaguely recall that.
Well, at least https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/36631 has not been closed yet.
@stefan I never looked under lemmys hood, but it does utilize 'Group' https://bbs.institute/docs/en/federation/overview.html .. (some lemmy instances do have the old reddit theme at an "old." subdomain. It's my reddit retirement plan really)
@wupatz Interesting. And it makes sense!
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
Interesting to see some of the negative responses to the announcement. Similar to when Blacksky started working on Blacksky-only posts (although that was, of course, in big part racism).
Some just can't stand it when people want to create a space for themselves that they're not invited to.