Bonfire Launches New Software Empowering Users to Build Social Communities Free from Platform Control
Bonfire Social, a novel framework designed for building communities on the open social web, was unveiled at the recent FediForum online conference. Unlike traditional social platforms, Bonfire Social operates as a federated app, leveraging the ActivityPub protocol—the same technology that powers Mastodon—to offer a more modular and customizable experience.
This innovative approach grants communities unprecedented control over their online environments. Bonfire empowers users to dictate the app’s functionality, select preferred features and defaults, and chart their own roadmap, independent of Big Tech’s influence.
Bonfire’s mission is to foster a digital ecosystem where “all living beings thrive and communities flourish, free from private interest and capitalistic control.” The organization operates as a nonprofit, sustained by donations and grants, eschewing venture capital to maintain its independence. Its open-source code encourages collaborative development with communities and researchers, aiming to enhance online digital spaces.
Bonfire Social is currently available as a 1.0 Release Candidate. It represents just one ‘flavor’ of Bonfire’s offerings, acting as a preconfigured bundle of extensions, features, and defaults. These flavors serve as starting templates, allowing communities to govern their apps, incorporate custom extensions, and define product roadmaps—placing social software back in the hands of its users.
Currently, Bonfire is developing other flavors like ‘Bonfire Community’ and ‘Open Science’. The platform also allows any community to create their version.
Bonfire Social offers a familiar user experience with features such as feeds, user profiles, and content moderation tools. However, it enhances these basics with unique features like customizable feeds, nested discussions, multiple profiles per user, rich-text posts, and sophisticated access control.
Custom feeds on Bonfire can be tailored using filters for content type, date, engagement, source, and ‘circles’. Bonfire’s ‘Circles’ let users organize contacts into groups for optimized sharing, reminiscent of Google+ Circles. These circles are private by default but can be shared with others.
Another notable feature is ‘Boundaries,’ which provides granular control over who can view or interact with content. Bonfire also fosters in-depth discussions with threaded conversations, enabling replies to branch into sub-threads.
Users can personalize their Bonfire experience with 16 built-in themes or create custom layouts. Multiple profiles per account allow users to manage public and private personas or share profiles within teams or organizations.
Additional features include PWA support, community blocklists, custom emoji, full-text search, direct messages, and private group discussions. Extensions offer further customization, allowing admins and users to enable or disable features, including core functionalities like likes or boosts.
Built on ActivityPub, Bonfire federates with platforms like Mastodon, PeerTube, and Mobilizon, promoting interoperability across the decentralized web.
While designed for self-installation, Bonfire is developing a hosting network. A demo instance is available for users to explore the platform’s capabilities.
