One of the big advantages of Fediverse is that many different services can interact with each other. That doesn’t mean that you can log in and use every server with the same identity, but you can follow and comment on most things you might see in a Fediverse stream in some way.

Also, every service in Fediverse might display stream items differently, depending on where you are. For example: Pixelfed will only show posts that contain images, and not just text. Or Mobilizon will only show events. Mastodon will shorten posts to a tweet/toot size and won’t show you all comment in nested form, whereas Friendica will show the full text, and also keep a nested conversation together.

By original intention, most Fediverse services are openly connected with all other services. This is great, as it offers a lot of options and freedom to move (for many reasons: e.g. you don’t like the local moderation policy, your admin stops providing the service, your local instance blocks/doesn’t block hate speech coming from a Nazi instance, …). But it also makes the Fediverse diverse, and maybe confusing.

For a tangoverse one option could be to not federate with the global world, but only with services that are tailored to tango-related content. This would dramatically scale down the tangoverse compared to Fediverse, but it would also reduce the amount of unwanted content, and create a walled garden that protects and shields the tangoverse from outside. This would also reduce the amount of resources needed to provide the services.

This walled off tangoverse could be expanded by anyone who wants to provide a service: anyone could host e.g. a Mastodon instance, and ask the existing tangoverse admins to federate with them.

Additionally, any website that supports ActivityPub (e.g. WordPress) can be followed by tangoverse instances. These websites would be the “Facebook Pages” of tangoverse, where teachers can offer their services, organizers can announce their events, or pages like tangomarathons.com can provide event announcements for a larger number of organizers. And anyone in tangoverse would be able to follow and receive news that way. Other services that support ActivityPub are, for example, the forum software Discourse, which could be used for larger discussion groups.

The social identity of users would be hosted on one of the larger instances (probably a Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams) based instance) for most users, but anyone could also add a smaller social instance and join the tangoverse via federation. This could be a local tango scene that wants to provide this as a service to its dancers, or a tango school for its students, or just someone for themselves or for their friends.

In this way, the tangoverse would be decentralized but connected. Anyone can add a new service, and enrich what is possible, according to their capabilities and needs. All would profit, and no single actor will need to be responsible for all, be burned out by the task at hand, or shoulder the load and costs for the whole community.

And there would be no ads, no algorithm, and no billionaire who brings the haters and trolls into the platform because they want to.

What would be a first starting point?

  1. Let’s start with a place for a social identity. Ideally this is a “social network” and not a micro-blogging service. Choices are Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams).
  2. In order to get some content in, we’ll try to get as many WordPress sites to activate the ActivityPub plugin.
    • I will do that for TMD and RNT, for sure.
    • Plus blogs, like this one.
    • Maybe Jonas will do it for 030Tango, too.
  3. For events beyond TMD and RNT, it will make sense to add an event platform. This could be Mobilizon, Gancio, or something else.
  4. Users could sign up at any time, and play with their own profile in the social space, as well as create the first groups.
  5. Professionals who don’t have a WordPress site could be attracted to a simple WordPress Multisite setup where they can promote what they do, and don’t need to admin too much. A base set of templates and plugins would be provided: ActivityPub (of course), Friends, and a simple event plugin.
  6. An event aggregator, which pulls everything that is federated into one interface that can be searched or filtered by geocode.

What about a mobile app?

This is the biggest change for everyone. There won’t be one Mobile app for all services. There are only very few apps for Friendica or Hubzilla — or better: to support the full feature set. But many of the Mastodon apps can be used to see the feed, write posts or like/comment. You won’t be able to do the advanced stuff, but the basic stuff will work. And you’ll have options to chose from, and still be compatible with the tangoverse.

What about instant messaging?

The design above doesn’t include an instant messaging service. At maximum, you can send direct messages or messages with limited visibility (“group chat”). However, everyone uses one or more instant message services anyhow. It would just be necessary to advertise which of these services you use on the social profile, and people could contact you “outside of the tangoverse”.

Of course, there are open source alternatives, but I actually don’t see that this is needed to make the social part of tangoverse work.

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