Forum software NodeBB joins the fediverse
Before there was social media, there were internet forums. Millions of forum sites continue to operate, which is why it’s notable that one top forum software provider, NodeBB, is now joining the fediverse, also known as the open social web.
The fediverse today includes apps like decentralized X rival Mastodon, Instagram alternative Pixelfed, an open YouTube competitor PeerTube, and others. These “federated” services are powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which allows for decentralized social networking.
As users began to shift away from centralized social media apps owned by billionaires like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and X’s Elon Musk, the ActivityPub protocol has been adopted by a wider range of software applications and services. This includes the ActivityPub integrations enabled by WordPress (and WordPress.com), Flipboard, Medium, and even Meta itself with its Instagram Threads app. Substack competitor Ghost is working to federate as well.
As NodeBB co-founder Julian Lam explains in a post, the idea first came about in mid-2023 when he had the idea to connect NodeBB forums to each other. Initially, this was going to be a centralized service, he says. But while researching this concept further, Lam came across Mastodon and ActivityPub and realized that the project could be decentralized instead.
