Discussion
"... free software for talking with the people around you, by topic. Private by design, free of ads and trackers, and connected to the fediverse."
Created by @Thomas, whose prior work on federated software includes; Fedilab, TubeLab, UntrackMe, OpenMultiMaps.
#HatTip to @tallship whose post introduced me to FediHood.
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@artnacrea
> So far there's 10 of us in Aotearoa NZ
Adoption is growing. The last message I saw mentioned 7 kiwis. Better get myself signed up ...
@strypey nice find. Always keen on location based stuff. I found three people in #Wellington
I see from @Die4Ever that “you can search for and follow Lemmy communities in Fedihood now!” too https://lemmyverse.net/communities
"Direct messages are encrypted end to end with the Signal protocol, across instances too. The server carries encrypted data only, and key backups are protected by a passphrase it never sees."
@Thomas will this be compatible with the E2EE private messages based on MLS, which the devs Emissary and Bonfire have been working on implementing in their software?
https://wedistribute.org/2026/02/fediverse-e2ee-coming/
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Speaking of sending E2EE private messages across the fediverse by using MLS over ActivityPub, I was just looking for updates on whether the devs of @Emissary (@benpate) and @Bonfire have finished their implementations. What I found was a Feb 2026 blog post announcing that
@sovtechfund is also funding an implementation of the same E2EE system for Mastodon! They're hoping to deliver this sometime in 2027, see;
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/04/sovereign-tech-agency-funding/
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@evan mentioned a wee while back that the MLS over AP spec was designed to make it bridgeable, so people using AP services can exchange E2EE messages with to BlueSky accounts. I presume similar bridging could enable us to do the same with Matrix or XMPP accounts?
A transport-agnostic private messaging network would be a *massive* enabler of decentralised community-building. Unifying the network effects of half a dozen archipelagos of decentralised social services of various kinds.
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Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@strypey @Thomas @tallship So far there's 10 of us in Aotearoa NZ.
Also check out Thomas's @HolosSocial which supports the encrypted messages.