If you haven't heard, sadly, #ChirpSocial, one of the popular #ActivityPub “groups” platform, is shutting down “probably” on February 29th.
In an email they sent to admins, the owner and developer can no longer support https://chirp.social financially as they failed to find a new job after they were laid off by #Google last year.
This reminds us the importance of having a built-in groups feature, and one where the groups feature actually federates.
Back in 2008, when the #Fediverse was born, we did have a built-in federated groups in #Laconica / #StatusNet (today known as #GNUsocial). We used bang (!) instead of at (@). A built-in groups feature is more stable as established instances can host them.
Today, we have #Friendica and #Hubzilla (as well as #Streams-based instances) to fill in that, as groups is a built-in feature in those software products. It's just a matter of finding an instance that's open to hosting groups for any topic for the ActivityPub protocol.
That said, any Friendica, Hubzilla, Streams-based instances you suggest for groups?
People of the #fediverse, especially those creating various services, there are alternatives to HCAPTCHA when you ask people to create accounts or login. Despite HCAPTCHA's propaganda, HCAPTCHA is not truly accessible to #blind people. It requires us to give up our privacy if we choose the cookie option. The text alternative doesn't work most times. I just tried to sign up for a /kbin server at https://redit.buzz and wasted 30 mins on HCAPTCHA.
@ppatel You can sign up with #KBin using either #Google or #Facebook, but ya have to scroll past said captcha box to find said options.
With that being said, I also signed up on Lemmy via the #FediaIO instance. To be perfectly fair though, that interface they both use is quite confusing if on #Mac with #VoiceOver at least…