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Draft Issue. Groups: What are they? How they work?

Discussion / Evaluation issue.

The topic of group support came up again on IRC. Backend-wise, the topic is rather clear. A bigger question is how groups are supposed to work for the user.

Backend issue for the thing that AP calls groups: pleroma#656

Current state of groups on the fediverse:

Gnu Social

Groups federate. You can join groups on other servers. Posting in a group happens via putting a ! (e.g.: !cofe) in front of the group name in a post, otherwise these posts are normal posts. A user has to join a group before they can post to it.

I don't remember if there were private groups or not, and if so, how that worked. Please somebody add that info.

Posting to multiple groups at the same time is possible.

Gab

Groups do not federate. Groups have an id, name, description and banner. UI is like this.

Screenshot_2019-07-29_Gab_Social_1_

Screenshot_2019-07-29_Gab_Social

Client side, the post api is extended with a group_id. If you use that, the post is internally associated with that group. As far as I can tell, this does not federate at all, although I read on fedi that they federate the id. I can't find it in the activity json, though (https://gab.com/users/pennyfortheguy/statuses/102525197179306906.json).

Posting to multiple groups at the same time is not possible.

Misskey

[NOT CHECKED, COULD BE WRONG. WILL ADD]

Groups don't federate.

Other, non fedi

I think most people associate something different than the GS groups with the name 'groups', more along the lines of gab groups (that is, a page you go to and then you post there). Another popular feature is the whatsapp style chat group. It might make sense to call all these different expectations of users by different names in the frontend, even if they are implemented similarly on the backend.

Ideas:

  • Gab style groups: Groups (I suspect this is the thing most non-GS users associate with groups)
  • GS style groups: Federated Hashtags (They behave more like hashtags you can follow)
  • Whatsapp style group: Chat Group. Similar to Gab style groups, but map a long conversation instead of a set of thematically similar posts.
Edited by lain