Bonfire is difficult to pin down with a single definition, and that's a feature, not a bug. The project's very structure is about enabling a tapestry of social spaces, all built with shared building blocks but diverging in flavour, practice, and purpose. In this post we embrace the project's plurality and explore the many ways people around the web describe and understand Bonfire.
1. Familiar yet different: not (just) another Mastodon #
Many pin Bonfire as “Mastodon-adjacent”, but see both a family resemblance and a revolution brewing:
"Bonfire Social seems to be a Mastodon alternative?"^14
"Mastodon sets out to create a single optimized interface for a short form social network. Bonfire sets out to let you create different interfaces that match what your unique community needs..."^1
Or, as another puts it:
"Bonfire, the swiss knife fused with a dremel of the fediverse"^15
2. Bonfire as a toolkit or framework for building community platforms #
A recurring theme is that Bonfire is fundamentally not just a social platform, but an extensible toolkit or framework:
"Bonfire is a framework to put together different configurable communities or social networks based on ActivityPub. ... Bonfire sets out to let you create different interfaces that match what your unique community needs through extensions."^1
"It's modular. Devs can create plug-ins to add features. For example, you can run different 'apps,' including social (Mastodon-like), community (Forum-like)... hoping devs can pick and choose feature sets they want to build unique platforms. Like fediverse legos."^2
"Both a platform like mastodon, and a toolkit for internet community software..."^3
Or as one commenter quips:
"Beneath the surface, there’s a bigger story ... rather than simply being a social platform, it’s also a development framework."^4
3. Flavours and extensions: customisation and plurality by design #
What makes Bonfire unique is the flavour and extension model, which means each instance could feel totally different:
"In Bonfire, Extensions are first-class citizens... ranging from the federation library to data access controls to mutual aid tools ... pick and choose which ones to use, then bundle them together into a single app experience. Bonfire calls these experiences Flavors..."^4
"Each flavor is a preconfigured bundle ... When a community opts to run a particular 'flavor,' it gets to govern the app as it sees fit, adding its own extensions and determining its own roadmap for product changes. This puts the social software back under users’ control..."^5
One commenter likens Bonfire to "a social networking-focused Nextcloud,"^6 while another compares it to "getting all your friends together for a big barn-raising, and then each of you gets to customize and decorate your own interior unit. The foundation is prepared for you and all the timber and roofing supplies are available."^7
Or succinctly:
"Fediverse platform built for customization and extension as a one sentence explanation."^8
4. Commons and cooperative ethos, not just software #
Bonfire’s modularity isn’t just technical, but philosophical:
"Bonfire is building a modular toolkit for communities with the decentralised, commons patterns at heart..."^9
"kind of a framework to build fediverse apps… putting a lot is emphasis on community and cooperative aspects."^21
"The team describes Bonfire as open, community-first infrastructure, and their design is explicitly for communities rather than individual people." Bonfire is "a 'third path' between blockchain’s emphasis on individual sovereignty and Big Tech’s centralisation, one that centers collective care and community autonomy."^10
Bonfire’s own flavor offerings, like the Open Science Network, are co-designed with stakeholders:
"Each feature is being co-designed with organisations bringing domain expertise, from Princeton HCI’s research on collective governance to Co-op Cloud’s work on community hosting infrastructure."^10
5. Granular boundaries & empowerment of communities and individuals #
Many point out this signature capability: fine-tuned privacy and boundaries.
"...with a unique feature of boundaries, your posts can be shared to specific people within your 'circles'."^2
"On peut gérer avec précision qui peut voir/intéragir avec les messages avec un système de cercles."^11
Other features noted include:
- Custom feeds
- Multiple independent profiles per user
- Portability & content migration tools
- "Group-based visibility and feeds with Circles and extremely granular controls for who can see, reply to, and otherwise interact with posts using Boundaries."^12
6. Diverse use cases & flavours in practice #
Far from being “just another Mastodon,” Bonfire’s architecture enables specialized communities and use cases:
"An example of what you can do with the blocks: Bonfire’s Open Science community project ... was co-designed with working scholars to build something that served them, specifically. ... It’s designed to integrate scholarly data..."^12
It’s also being tried out for:
"experimenting with #Bonfire as a platform for Buddhist monasteries."^13
And for those seeking sanctuary from Facebook groups:
"Would it be an alternative place to put facebook groups? There are fb groups doing important things like Buy Nothing Project, food sharing etc.... I'm really looking forward to community-built and community-hosted alternatives."^7
7. Bonfire's potential and the challenge of defining it #
If there's a through-line, it's excitement and a sense that Bonfire eludes easy description:
"I've been very hyped for Bonfire for quite some time..."^11
"This is...starting to feel like an endgame platform for me."^16
"Bonfire is really cool. And this kind of stuff is absolutely the future of the Fediverse..."^20
"I really need to make some time to play with @bonfire . I love the idea of it but the practicalities are confusing the f out of me..."^17
"I do wish they could get a little better at communicating what exactly their project is though, it took a hot minute, reading, and also asking folks on lemmy to try and figure out kinda-sorta-vaguely what they’re building..."^3
"I wish them the best, but I think they really need to work on their sales pitch. It's hard to tell what it is."^18
8. Yet-to-be-defined: blank space for new flavours #
What is Bonfire? An evolving answer. There are “empty slots” for flavours, use cases, approaches, and communities not yet imagined or built:
"Open Science Network is a 'network', kind of like Mastodon. It is built with Bonfire... You can also create other custom 'networks' using Bonfire? ... All of them speak ActivityPub, so you can follow individual accounts from Mastodon?... Perhaps a different tack... What if you could create your own Mastodon server, but instead brand it with your organization's identity? What if it had additional easily customizable features like [fill in] to tailor your social media network to the needs of your organization?... That's Bonfire."^19
Ask not what Bonfire is, ask what it could be, in your hands.
Want to join us in building the future of Bonfire? Support and share the crowdfunding campaign to join install parties, workshops, co-design sessions, and more!
