How the Website League works: an analogy
An explainer on what the Website League is, how it works, and what makes it different.
Folks have been asking questions on Cohost and in our Discord server, about how our system works, and how it's different from Mastodon; this is a primer.
What's the simplest and most concise way to describe it?
The Website League is a bunch of smallish websites that talk to each other. You can go on the one you've chosen and post, and see posts by the people you follow. You will be able to follow people on other websites that are members of the League, and they can follow you, no matter where you are; every League website is connected to every other League website. The people making these websites will work together to, first, make sure everyone has a good time, and second, keep things running smoothly.
What is "federation?"
Both Mastodon and the Website League are "federated social networks." A federated social network is one large social media system made up of many smaller websites ("instances") that talk to each other. This differs from places like Cohost, where everyone uses the same centrally operated website.
The main federated social network in existence right now, and the one most people think of, is the Fediverse. Some people call it Mastodon, because that's the main kind of software it uses. Anyone can make a website that's part of the Fediverse and connect it; all the websites talk to each other by default.
The Website League works via allowlists: everyone operating a website has to intentionally make it talk to all the others in the League. Websites that haven't become part of the League can't participate, in general.
What's the analogy?
Imagine a city with different neighborhoods: you can talk to your friends on the same street, or take the bus to see someone across town. In this analogy, each neighborhood is an instance. People in an instance can interact with people in other instances that theirs federates with (imagine a road or mass transit connecting neighborhoods); you just have to know where they live.
In federated social media, you view and follow people with something like an email address: "@user@neighborhood.com," for example. This tells the software that you want to talk to someone with the name "user" whose account lives in the instance "neighborhood.com"
(By contrast, Cohost and most other social media sites are like living in an enormous apartment building; you don't need an address, because everyone's name is on the directory by the elevator.)
How does the Fediverse function?
The Fediverse is made of many different kinds of websites, running many different kinds of software, Mastodon being foremost among them. Most of them talk to each other, and most of that software is designed to talk to the Fediverse as a whole. Fediverse software runs in denylist mode: everything talks to everything else, but instance operators can choose to block other instances.
This enormous system has no central control; there is a significant amount of conflict between neighborhoods. In this analogy, in the Fediverse, people are building roads to and from all sorts of different neighborhoods, digging up roads because the next neighborhood over is sending people over to smash up your windows or beat people up, digging up roads because of personal grudges, and so on.
This description of the worst of the Fediverse's problems makes the Fediverse sound like hell, which it generally isn't. It functions, and much of it is quiet and pleasant; you can get to most neighborhoods from most other neighborhoods most of the time. When things get bad, though, they get very bad. If you happen to live in a neighborhood that gets its roads cut, or if your best friend lives down a road that got cut, the city starts to seem less and less appealing.
All of this is on public CCTV: most places have a "federated feed," a stream of what every single person within reach of your neighborhood is seeing, with their name and address on the screen. You can choose not to show up on the cameras, but most people prefer to be seen. Sometimes this leads to people watching TV and looking for people they don't like, to go and yell at them in person. This has led to a lot of roads being dug up.
The shifting nature of the landscape, lack of any sort of unified cooperative system, and the fact that neighborhoods can get in fights with other neighborhoods can make it very difficult for users to navigate, or for people who become embroiled in the worst conflicts, traumatizing.
What's the Website League, then?
The Website League is an "island network," where our software runs in allowlist mode. Websites will only talk to other websites they have placed in their allowlists. That list of websites will be cooperatively managed; a website that is a member of the League will be able to talk to all other websites in the League. It's either in, or it's out.
The League is an experiment in doing something different. We are building a town that works cooperatively from the start: our neighborhoods are all connected to each other, like a city built on a grid. We are starting with an agreement on what we want our city to look like, how people in it should be able to get around, and how to keep people safe. Nobody digs up roads, because this harms everyone in the city; to solve problems, we have a centralized, democratic, consensus- and consent-based system of governance.
This is why we've been calling ourselves a confederation: it's a term used to describe a system of governance composed of independent communities cooperating, as described by the concept of democratic confederalism, a libertarian socialist theory intended to provide a framework in which "minorities, religious communities, cultural groups, gender-specific groups and other societal groups" can organize themselves autonomously. It's also non-statist and, for our purposes, a way to ensure all of our instances have a seat at the governance table and a say in what their city looks like. Every instance and its staff will have a right (if they want to exercise it) to be represented in our system of governance.
People who want to construct a neighborhood will have to agree to keep their residents safe (in the same way everyone else is), agree to do their part to keep the city running well, and receive assent from the others helping run the city, so we can all build transit lines to the new place.
The fact that we are cooperating in running the city means we can try new things together. The Fediverse has to largely work together, but we have advantages they cannot; we could potentially centralize things that might be difficult for instance admins, like media hosting, or coordinate efforts to improve our federation protocols.
One final difference in this analogy: a city is a much more durable structure than an apartment building. None of us are being paid for this, but there are a lot of us, and the federated system means that hosting costs for each website are low. No one of us is able to perform the amount of labor that a full-time employee could, but we hope that our cooperation makes up for it.
How does this work for me?
The overall technical user experience is similar to Mastodon, but more cohesive; most information and guides written about Mastodon will apply to the League. The biggest differences are for people who want to run their own websites.
For a user, the experience is like this: first, you'll choose a neighborhood you'd like to live in. (We will have a list of instances, with information about each; some folks are planning to make instances for just themselves, some for them and their friends, and some for larger groups of people.) There's no CCTV system. (Federation feeds are disabled.) Some neighborhoods will have parks their residents can hang out at. ("Local feeds," a stream of all the posts on an single instance, are up to the people operating that instance.)
To talk to your friends, you'll need their name and address. The primary address for our central announcement system is "@league@websiteleague.org." You will post, and people following you will see it.
The fact that different neighborhoods can have different kinds of software means that your experience can differ depending on where you choose to settle. The software we're focusing our efforts on first, GoToSocial, works roughly like Twitter or Mastodon; it is not quite the same as Cohost, but you will have very high character limits for longform writing, will be able to upload high-quality media, and you will be able to use Markdown formatting. (We have skilled software developers onboard and are hopeful about the idea of supporting a limited subset of HTML and CSS (sandboxed in posts) in the future.)
Eventually, you may be able to join an instance that is designed for photography and works like Instagram, requiring a photo with each post. Some people might choose to run instances for themselves that work like a traditional blog site, but with posts that can be shared and commented on by people in the Website League. There are many, many possibilities.
If you choose to join a photography-focused instance, your interface might look like Instagram, and require you to post a photo. Some people may run their own instances as a blog, but with posts that can be shared and commented on by others in the League.
# What's the overall vision?
The Website League is a *union of websites," working toward a common goal: we all want this to be a nice place to post, one that's enjoyable by all and welcoming to everyone. Each website can be its own community; you can make a place for you and your friends, and be able to talk to other people down the road and see what they're up to; you can find a place with a good vibe, settle down, and find a home there. You can take the bus to the art gallery down the road to show people what you've done in a setting built to highlight your work.
If this sounds good to you, we hope you'll join us in building something new. If you want to join us, check out our Discord or sign up for our newsletter). Once Cohost goes read-only, we'll use those to contact people with news of open nodes; some might open before then, but we cannot yet guarantee how many people will be admitted to each. Most likely we'll be sending out a Google form with a way to select instances you'd prefer over others.