Bonfire Social, a new framework for building communities on the Open Social Web, launched Thursday at the Fediforum Online Conference. Bonfire Social is a Federated App, but it has the same underlying protocol as Mastodon (ActivityPub), but is designed to be more modular and customizable. This means that the bonfire community has more control over what your app features, how features and defaults are in place, and what your roadmap and priorities include.
There is clearly a destructive bend in the software. The software describes it as a place where “all living things thrive, communities thrive, and there is no personal interest and capitalist control.”
In other words, its mission is to build social software that allows people to make decisions, rather than large tech platform makers like Meta or Google.
The organization itself operates as a nonprofit funded by donations and grants, and does not require venture capital. That code is open source and works in collaboration with communities and researchers who use it to build and enhance the online digital space.
Bonfire Social is currently offered as a 1.0 release candidate ahead of its published release and is just one of the things Bonfire offers. Bonfire calls it “flavors.”
Image credits: Bonfire
Each flavour is a pre-configured bundle with bonfire extensions, features and defaults, like a start template. When the community chooses to run a specific “flavor”, it manages apps that appear appropriate, adds its own extensions, and determines its own roadmap for product changes. This will bring social software back to user control rather than being exposed to the whims of platform manufacturers with constantly changing feature sets and algorithms.
The organization has already developed other flavors, such as the Bonfire Community and Open Science. Bonfire software allows other communities to create their own versions.
Bonfire Social recognizes familiar features such as feeds and tools to follow users, share posts, create user profiles, and block flags and block block content.
Image credits: Bonfire
However, it also offers other tools and features that traditional social networks don't have, such as tools for customizing feeds, support for nested discussions, the ability to host multiple profiles per user, rich text posting, and access control capabilities.
Custom feeds are a key differentiation between bonfires and traditional social media apps.
The idea of following custom feeds is prevalent by new social networks such as social browsers such as Bluesky and Flipboard Surf, but the tools that actually create those feeds are maintained by third parties. Instead, Bonfire offers its own custom feed building tools with a simple interface that doesn't require users to understand coding.
To build a feed, users can filter and sort content, including what is called a “circle,” including type, date, engagement level, and source instance.
Image credits: Bonfire
Those who have experienced the Google+ era of social networks may be familiar with the concept of circles. On Google's social networks, users organized contacts into groups called Circles for optimized sharing. The concept exists in a bonfire, where circles represent a list of people. It can be something a group of friends, fan groups, local users, mutual aid groups organizers, or users can come up with. These circles are private by default, but can be shared with other circles.
Another unique feature of Bonfire Social is its boundaries. This gives you control over who can view and engage with content. For example, you can share your posts with many circles, but only members of a particular circle can comment.
Image credits: Bonfire
Bonfire also supports thread conversations (nested discussions) where replies can branch to their own subthreads. This will help communities where deeper discussions and collaborations are more valuable than what everyone is attracting attention.
Image credits: Bonfire
Additionally, Bonfire users can customize their apps using one of 16 built-in themes. Alternatively, you can design your own layout and choose your own colors and fonts.
Your Bonfire account can also host multiple profiles with their own followers, content and settings. This is useful for people who not only prefer both public and private profiles, but also those who need to share a particular profile with other profiles (such as business, publications, groups, or project teams).
Image credits: Bonfire
Other features available at launch include PWA support for mobile devices, community block lists, custom emoji support, full-text search (with opt-out), direct messaging, and private group discussions (nested threads). Extensions that add a variety of features can be enabled or disabled by both administrators and users. The administrator simply decides what the default is.
This means that users can turn on or off features they don't like. It also includes core features such as likes, boosts, and boosts (federated versions of retweets/reposts).
Bonfire is built on ActivityPub and is therefore combined with Mastodon, Peertube, Mobilizon, and more.
The software is intended to be self-installed, but work is underway to develop a hosting network. Demo instances are available for those who just want to kick the tires.