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Private community here on the fediverse?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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Lemmy 1.0 will have 'private communities', which are communities whose posts can only be viewed by approved subscribers. I wouldn't trust this though, you can't guarantee other instances running other software will keep the posts private, so I'd only trust this if you host the instance and allow list vetted instances, which just opens you up to the problems mentioned in the other thread.
Your best bet is an e2ee messaging app with group support. People will recommend Matrix, but the moderation tools kind of suck and it can be very resource demanding to host (from what I've heard, I don't host Matrix). Signal is what most privacy people will recommend but I don't know how accessible it is in Iran given it's centralised nature. The XMPP people will inevitably speak up and they're probably even right, but I've never used XMPP so can't speak on it.
I don't know anything about the safety and security, I just wanted to point out that Piefed has had private communities for about 4 months now. One can be set up where the only way you can get in is being invited by a member, a mod, or the owner of the community.
Piefed's private communities are local only, ie no federation. The Lemmy 1.0 ones do federate.
I think that not federating would be better for a private community, but maybe that's just me. If it federates, then it's not really private.
Private communities in Lemmy only federate with approved users and their instances. So if you dont trust lemmy.xyz, simply dont approve any followers from that instance, then it will never receive any private content.
Sure, but I'm just pointing out that these are different features that happen to be named the same thing. I'd also point out that something that doesn't federate can't really be called part of the fediverse, which is what OP was asking about.