We've had questions about both Mastodon and Bluesky integrations, especially around how they could connect to the forum.
The main reason this forum exists is that we want to avoid becoming dependent on third-party platforms (which we in vBulletin already are). Because of that, it would be counterproductive to move our core activity to a service where we rely on someone else's software, hosting, infrastructure and legal environment.
Mastodon is currently rooted in Germany, although the project has been working on a broader European non-profit structure. BlueSky is based in the United States. Both platforms support decentralization in different ways, but we still prefer to keep our own stable base in Europe, and preferably in Sweden when possible. But that does not mean integrations are off the table. It may still make sense to connect the forum to other services when they solve a specific problem, as long as the forum itself does not become dependent on them.
For example, we could eventually look at optional connections to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive if we need extra file storage that we cannot provide here. That is a separate topic, and something we can come back to later.
The main reason this forum exists is that we want to avoid becoming dependent on third-party platforms (which we in vBulletin already are). Because of that, it would be counterproductive to move our core activity to a service where we rely on someone else's software, hosting, infrastructure and legal environment.
Mastodon is currently rooted in Germany, although the project has been working on a broader European non-profit structure. BlueSky is based in the United States. Both platforms support decentralization in different ways, but we still prefer to keep our own stable base in Europe, and preferably in Sweden when possible. But that does not mean integrations are off the table. It may still make sense to connect the forum to other services when they solve a specific problem, as long as the forum itself does not become dependent on them.
For example, we could eventually look at optional connections to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive if we need extra file storage that we cannot provide here. That is a separate topic, and something we can come back to later.