Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay

On the Fediverse, the microblogs (Mastodon, its forks, Misskey, its forks, etc.) lack a group functionality. Since tagged posts generally only federate to servers who already receive posts from the originating server, a lot can be missed. Groups offer a bypass. If I follow ActuallyAutistic, it doesn't matter whether anyone on my server follows your server or not. When you @ ActuallyAutistic, I'll see your post.

While they weren't the only group host, a.gup.pe was the main one that people were using to host groups. This had issues because the software that a.gup.pe ran on didn't play well with non-Mastodon microblogs. Sometimes it would work with non-microblog platforms on the Fediverse but it was kind of spotty.

a.gup.pe, the flagship instance for Guppe, went down recently because the policy for .pe domains allows others to buy the domains out from under the owners during a window leading up to the domain expiration.

This serves as a primer about Group functionality. It also covers serious issues with our current options.