Fedibook Groups!
Fedibook groups just got a major rewrite.
Groups now work as a ActivityPub group actors — meaning members from Mastodon, Pixelfed, and other Fediverse platforms can join and participate, not just Fedibook users.
Invite a @mastodon.social friend to your group, they accept the follow request, and group posts start appearing in their home timeline. They can post back via DM. It just works.
On Fedibook, groups looks just like that face-thing.
#Fedibook #ActivityPub #Fediverse
The above was posted on Mastodon — if you came from there, here is some more background...
Here is how it works — and why I built it this way.
Groups as ActivityPub actors
Each Fedibook group has its own ActivityPub address, like @cycling-grp@fedibook.net. From the outside, it looks like a regular account you can search for and follow. Under the hood it is a Group Actor — the same mechanism used by Lemmy for communities and Guppe for group bots. When a group member posts, Fedibook delivers it to all remote members as a Boost (Announce activity). On Mastodon this shows up in your home timeline attributed to the original author, boosted by the group. In Fedibook it's just a message in the group.
Joining from Mastodon
You cannot just follow a Fedibook group freely — groups are invitation-only. A group admin sends you an invite from inside Fedibook, which arrives as a follow request from the group account in your Mastodon notifications. Accept it, and you are in. Group posts start appearing in your timeline immediately.
If you decline, the invitation is simply cancelled. No fuss.
You can also start the request from Mastodon. Search for the group ActivityPub address and follow. Once admin follows back you are in the group!
Why not join @fedibook-grp@fedibook.net - the place for talking about Fedibook as a user or site operator.
Posting to the group from Mastodon
Once you are a member, posting to the group is straightforward: compose a Direct Message on Mastodon addressed to the group's address, write your message, and send. Fedibook receives it, stores it as a group post, and fans it out to all members — both on Fedibook and on other platforms.
One important detail: only Direct Messages are accepted. Public or Unlisted posts mentioning the group are silently rejected. This is a deliberate privacy measure — a public post on Mastodon is visible to all your followers regardless of the group, which is not what most people expect when posting to a group.
If you want to respond to a message from the group in Mastodon you can just click reply.
What it looks like for remote members
Remote members appear in the group member list with a domain badge showing which platform they are on. They receive group posts as boosts in their home timeline. They can reply, and their replies are distributed back to the whole group.
When a remote member is removed by an admin, Fedibook sends an Undo Follow to their server so they immediately stop receiving group posts.
Try it
The new groups are live at the showcase instance fedibook.net. Create an account, start a group, and invite your Mastodon friends. Or invite your friends to create a Fedibook account to enjoy the nice new group interface.
The code is open source and available at codeberg.org/sindum/fedibook.