Mastodon 3.0
What is going on here?<p>Mastodon does not come with features that enable the idea of "groups"?<p>I just found issue 139 [0], but "mastodon groups" is an extraordinary bad combination of search terms.<p>The author seems to dismiss the idea that "groups" are an obvious requirement (IMHO) for any "social" software. Instead he seems to be assuming that one instance of the software might serve one "group" - with no easy way to scale "instance" to many servers.<p>Pleroma seems to plan for a groups feature [2][3], also using a framework that might be much easier for scaling, but seems to be struggling with implementation.<p>I see GNU social seems to have groups [1], but in the linked issues people write about bugs with that.<p>I am not sure this is really how it is, so please correct me if I am wrong.<p>Would anybody with more knowledge please like to explain why such a basic feature is missing from "social" software alternatives?<p>I want to understand what the problem is here, I feel like this is the first feature that should be considered from day one. It seems to me trying to handle such a basic feature as an afterthought has a high potential for disaster score (PFD>80): will require a deep re-design and rewrite, trigger several different implementations, standards and endless discussions, in the end will destroy everything.<p>I understand that groups and p2p / federation is complicated - but is this not a solved problem?<p>If not, is it a good idea to put this on top of the agenda for "offer alternative for big social brother"?<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/139" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/139</a>
[1] <a href="https://gnusocial.net/doc/groups" rel="nofollow">https://gnusocial.net/doc/groups</a>
[2] <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/issues/656" rel="nofollow">https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/issues/656</a>
[3] <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma-fe/issues/625" rel="nofollow">https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma-fe/issues/625</a><p>No, tags can not replace groups.