Convener: narF (@narF@mstdn.ca)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Ryan Barrett (@snarfed.org@snarfed.org)

• @risottobias@tech.lgbt and @bivouacwiki@tech.lgbt (wiki/voting/groups)

• Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden@mas.to)

• James Marshall (@jamesmarshall@sfba.social)

• Jordan Frank (jwf@cybervillains.com) (Meta)

Notes

Specification already in progress here:

• https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/2100/fep-2100.md

Problem is FB makes it too easy

• low friction private interest based groups (e.g. a gym group or whatever)

Definition of a “private” group

• private group, membership list private

• invite only

• Easy to create a group (no need to have technical knowledge and setup a server)

• No need to create a new account to join a group

• First iteration doesn’t need end-to-end encryption (like “direct messages” on Mastodon that can be read by admins. We can add encryption later)

• ephemeral / unnamed groups in telegram vs public groups with named handles

• matrix rooms vs facebook private posting

• threat model of private groups vs these matrix rooms that are invite only

  • e.g. right now we can focus on the matrix named room stuff

  • getting to E2EE / Sup based groups would be something for later

• invites via the pixelfed/mastodon oauth method to easily create new accounts on new software, or invite someone from a previous software

• tangent:

  • low friction oauth signins from Facebook / Twitter / Bluesky

  • the onboarding process for threads from facebook is a good revelation for like, friends list importing / inviting like a google/facebook export

Existing partial solutions:

• Friendica UX could use improvement

• Firefish (previously Calckey) has groups but they’re different from ephemeral groups. They look like a group chat.

• Mobilizon has groups but functionality is very limited. One positive thing: They have the concept of personas. A user can have muliple personas, ex: one with their real name and one with a nickname, to separate their activity (ex: I don’t want my parents to see that I’m in a LGBT group)

Just because there exists prior art could mean many things:

• we like this and want to extend it

• we want something different than this

• and we can point to the specific differences we’re after

Links that were dropped in the chat:

• https://pixelfed.blog/p/2023/feature/introducing-sign-in-with-mastodon-streamlining-sign-up-and-login-on-pixelfed

• https://evanp.me/2023/05/19/end-to-end-encrypted-messages-over-activitypub/