this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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354
Introducing Habitat - A Social Platform for Local Communities (feddit.uk)
submitted 20 hours ago by carlnewton@feddit.uk to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
55 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been working on Habitat for the past two years. It all stemmed from this idea that I posted in April 2024.

Habitat is a free open-source, self hosted social platform for local communities. It is aimed at fostering local community discussions and discovery of areas of interest. This is why it is built primarily around location. A Habitat instance centers on a specific area, and the local community can make generic posts about that area, or they can make posts about specific locations in that area. More about what I've been building and the future plans here.

Features

  • Habitat specification of location and size - enabling posts related to the local area
  • Home feed - Displays the most recent posts
  • Nearby feed - Displays posts sorted by proximity to the user
  • Create posts - Upload photos, set locations, comments
  • Categories - Location rules
  • Amazon S3 image storage option
  • Personalisation - Overrides Habitat defaults per user: kms/miles, hidden categories
  • Moderation tools - User, post, comment moderation, block email addresses
  • Announcements - Scheduled announcements
  • Public moderation log - Keep moderator actions visible for 30 days

If you're interest in this at all, please give it a spin and let me know how you get on. I'll keep an eye here on Lemmy, but you can also post to the Habitat discussion board on GitHub.

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[–] Buffy@libretechni.ca 9 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

This is perfect for me since I was banned from the NextDoor app for letting my community know the creature was hunting. I can host this for myself and others, and the nonbelievers can walk amongst it.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 5 points 2 hours ago

:D This is great news for everyone except for the creature.

[–] dil@lemmy.zip 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

A local bulletin born basically would be nice if thats what this is, not using facebook

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 6 points 8 hours ago

It could certainly be used like that. For me personally, I like the idea of discussing local areas of beauty, monuments, history of the area etc

[–] MoreZombies@quokk.au 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Forgive me if any of these questions have obvious answers:

Would Habitat be suitable for hosting community events, or communities in general?

if you ran a hobby group, would your local Habitat be the place to share things? How much control is in the hands of the users vs the administrator?

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Could you help me understand what you mean by "hosting community events"? Your users can create posts about events, but it has no tools for video calls or anything like that. Users can create posts in the categories created by the administrator. They can leave comments on those posts. There are a bunch of moderation tools and ability for the administrator to have settings for posts based on the category they're in.

[–] nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 18 minutes ago (1 children)

I'm guessing they mean like facebook events? A distinct section of the platform that allows for some kind of invite system, a feed for just the event, and reminders.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 1 points 5 minutes ago

Ah I see. No, no specialised type of post for events, date based information, invite systems, or anything like that. I can see why that would be good though so I'll give it some thought.

[–] rodneylives@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Any relation to Lucasfilm/Fujitsu Habitat/Habitat II? https://renoproject.org/

It was an early virtual world, running originally on Commodore 64s, later on PCs and (in Japan) Sega Saturn, with a look and style heavily inspired by SCUMM games.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 10 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Is this NextDoor but for communists?

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 5 points 9 hours ago

People keep making the comparison. I don't know, I'm not sure what features next door has, but I know it isn't self hosted.

[–] swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Hopefully not just communists

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

It's open-source and self-hostable, so it's for any group

[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 88 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (5 children)

Even in my relatively liberal U.S. city, Next Door is overrun by Magats who are cheered on and protected by right-wing Magat moderators. It needs to die and this looks like a great replacement.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 34 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I've built in the ability to hide categories for this kind of reason. I was thinking, for instance, that people who enjoy a good moan can join the "Moaners Club" category, and the rest of us can hide that category from our feeds to get on with the categories we enjoy. Regarding problematic moderators, I have built a moderation log to keep them accountable, and of course, if they don't show themselves to have good intentions, those with good intentions could create their own instance -- I don't know why I'm going into this kind of detail -- you're on Lemmy after all, you know the score!

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 18 points 18 hours ago

......you want us to get together and moan with each other? Buddy! I didn't know this was that kind of app!

[–] Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world 20 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Agreed. Tried NextDoor years ago and found it was primarily a venue for busybodies, nosy neighbors and HOAs to complain and nag people about nonsense. I love the idea of an app like this, but hate the people who use it the most.

[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 25 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It goes deeper with Nextdoor. During Covid someone living next to a local evangelical church posted pictures of a packed event where no one was wearing a mask. Some of those pictures included the backs of a few kid's heads.

The "Good Christian" church members complained that he was a pedophile and Nextdoor deleted his account! This could not be done by moderators and required Nextdoor executive approval.

Nextdoor is a Maggot haven from top to bottom.

[–] null@lemmy.org 7 points 15 hours ago

It's a similar story for the multiple Facebook communities for where I live. They handed a lot of bans during covid era while pushing anti-vax rhetoric.

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Pretty sure a decent amount of them are bots. I'm in the same boat, I try to just ignore them. Next-door is nice for getting rid of stuff you don't need, otherwise I would uninstall it.

[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 6 points 17 hours ago

Pretty sure a decent amount of them are bots.

Could be, but those bots must be programmed to simulate actual Maggots. They don't know how to spell, capitalize or use punctuation, much less write more than a single barely comprehensible sentence.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Out in my neck of the woods, NextDoor wouldn't be effective. Lots of acreage between people. We don't take kindly to snoopers and busybodies. We keep an eye on each other, but not in a nosy neighbor kind of way. Now, where my lady friend lives, it's eat up with NextDoor. She showed me her feed once, I was like 'You know, I strongly believe America could solve about 50% of their problems with this one simple trick: Mind Your Own Business!'.

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[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 7 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Does it support Activity Pub?

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Not activity pub specifically, but federation has always been in the plan.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 4 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

How is it federation but not Activitypub specifically? I thought that was the only protocol that currently allows for federation. Are there others? Or other ways?

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 59 minutes ago

I thought that was the only protocol that currently allows for federation. Are there others? Or other ways?

The Matrix and XMPP both support federation, though those are mainly for chat platforms

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

To be clear, there is no functionality that federates Habitat instances yet. This work is still to be done. ActivityPub is a protocol for decentralised networks. Though I will not be using ActivityPub, I will build functionality that will allow for a decentralised network of Habitat instances communicating data to each other. This will be federated by definition, but it will not communicate with Lemmy/Mastodon or anything else that uses ActivityPub.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, I see. Why have you made that choice? I'd understand to keep the subjects towards more community oriented interests, but then, i'm not sure why federation of other community habitats would have any advantages over being separate.

For example, I imagine East Sussex and Alsace-Lorraine wouldn't have a great degree of things to share between disparate instances like that.

Anyway, i've not had a chance to look at your instance yet, so maybe i'll understand it better when I duck over there for a sticky beak. All sounds very exciting though! Well done!

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine this - you're signed up to your local instance in -- Perth is it? You go for a walk and find a beautiful old building, and want to know more about it. You open up your local Perth instance of Habitat, which you know about because you live in Perth and managed to find that instance, and click the Nearby feed, and the closest discussion to your location is about this very building. This functionality exists in Habitat right now.

Now imagine that you're on holiday to Oxford in the UK -- I can't imagine why you'd choose our clouds over your sun, but it might be something to do with the old buildings here. You see an interesting old building, and want to know more about it, and open up your Perth Habitat instance, click the nearby feed. Your Perth instance will identify the closest Habitat instance to your location -- it just so happens to have found one called Habitat:Oxford. Your Perth Habitat instance will show you results from the Oxford Habitat instance by proximity. This is why I want to federate instances, so that you don't even have to worry about which instances have the posts relevant to your location, it's all handled by the network.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

Ah! Oh cool, but this would take geolocation. I predict that being a hard sell for lemmings.

But as I type that i realise/remember your post here is primarily an introduction for potential instance operators, not so much a user base. So the geolocation as an 'issue' is likely far less important (not forgetting a user can just turn it off anyway).

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

sounds like that's planned but maybe not in yet

[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 11 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Hi @carlnewton@feddit.uk , I really love this idea and really appreciate you taking on this big task.

I can see it replacing the stand-alone web site I run now for a local group, but I have a couple of questions before I go install the app and try it out.

  1. Do you have a list of existing instances somewhere? I looked around in your github and blog site, and could not find that.
  2. How do you keep the content that gets posted to stick to the local topic? I.e., if I set up a site for my small city, what's to stop someone from spamming posts about the big city nearby? Or a big city plumber from advertising their services?
  3. How do admins deal with spam / negative content getting posted? Once a site takes off, this is a real problem, I hope you're thinking about how to solve.

Again, thanks.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 3 points 9 hours ago

Hello!

  1. Existing instances: www.irthlingborough.net - despite the fact that I've been working on this for two years, you are amongst the first people to ever see a proper release. Before now, it would've been a challenging task for anyone else to install an instance. So I believe the only instance is that of my home town.
  2. Users can only post locations within the proximity of their own habitat. The marker can only be placed inside of a circle determined by the admin. Additionally, you can create a registration challenge that relies on local knowledge for someone to sign up.
  3. I've built in moderation tools to make banning, freezing accounts, promoting moderators, blocking email addresses etc. The idea is that communities will be small and manageable by small teams as a result.
[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 5 points 12 hours ago

Is there a way community members can vote on things?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

This seems like something that would really benefit from better language support. I saw the translations folder in the repo, but you should probably get it linked up to a Weblate instance or similar and have people start contribute different languages asap.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 3 points 9 hours ago

I'm glad you found the translations folder. Support for different languages was always in the plan, I just wanted to see if anyone actually plans on installing and using it before I keep going with that. You'll see it's in progress on the GitHub project board.

[–] eodur@piefed.social 23 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I love the sound of this. Kind of a decentralized Next door but better? I've been really wanting a place for some local communities to organize that isn't Facebook. Perhaps I'll spin up an instance and see if I can get some interest.

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[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 11 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I lack the use case for this service but, it looks good on paper. Nice!

If I understand the project right, this would be a great opening for non-profit communities to make a page for the town and add the services, instead of the typical static pages

[–] dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone 12 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I absolutely love this idea. Does it support ActivityPub? And I would love to see users can set labels on themselves like what expertise they can offer etc.

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Now that's an interesting idea!

This release is step one in the plan. Federation is step two! More information on this here: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/

I love what activitypub has done for the internet, but I don't think it will be right for this project, but yes to federation -- if there are instances to federate with of course!

[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It seems to me that activity pub could still be useful for a couple of reasons. If you live in the suburbs of a city, then bring able to also access an instance for your suburb and your city might be useful.

And if you live in multiple locales, or if want to stay connected to your old home town etc

[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Please do have a read of this: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-network/#connecting-instances

I feel quite confident that a gossip protocol approach is the right way to go, but seamless connectivity to other instances is absolutely planned!

[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 19 hours ago

That was my bad. I was espousing federation, not AP specifically, and I see that federation is built in to the idea

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 4 points 18 hours ago

I like the idea. I don't want to use facebook or similar, but that's where stuff like "BuyNothing" is most active.

Unfortunately, I don't know much about self hosting (beyond what I've picked up working in software development) so I don't see myself running one of these myself. I'd probably use it if it came to my neck of the woods (NYC)

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

I don't have a use case OP, but the project looks great. Seems like it would be an obvious NextDoor replacement.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 1 points 13 hours ago

Looks cool! I'd love to see local buynothing groups have a Fediverse alternative.

Out of curiosity, is there any standard or common format around location data for Fediverse platforms?

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