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Implement GNU Social for decentralized communication

Description

Problems:

  • GitLab is the best, but GitHub has more user activity.
  • Regardless of activity or popularity, we should be trying to decentralize the web more than it currently is.

Users should not remain siloed in single websites controlled by companies. Communication is the basis for our advancement as a civilization, and the current implementation of that on websites is severely limiting. The internet is based on communication across networks all across the globe, so why are we purposely limiting communication within small groups?

Proposal

Currently, GitLab allows us to only @mention GitLab users. If GNU Social were implemented, we would be able to @mention people across networks. Self-hosted GitLab instances could @mention users in other self-hosted instances, as well as anyone on GitLab.com, and vice versa.

It doesn't have to stop there, either. GitHub, Bitbucket, or any other site that adopts this standard could allow collaboration between them.

Links / references

GNU Social Example of GNU Social at work: Mastodon social network Mastodon works exactly this way, and has gained almost 300,000 users in one week. Having a federated network evidently works pretty well!