Yesterday, there was a post on @fediversenews@venera.social that went viral. Since a few people are wondering what @fediversenews@venera.social is, it's a Friendica group. It's a group that's been active since December 2022. Functionally, it works similarly to a Lemmy or Kbin community.

Or, in Fediverse parlance, @fediversenews@venera.social, is a group actor. Its purpose is for people on the Fediverse to congregate together to speak about a given topic. In @fediversenews@venera.social's case, that topic is about news pertaining to the Fediverse.

@fediversenews@venera.social is not the originating profile for messages. Rather, it hosts messages and then boosts them to subscribers of the group. If you are not subscribed to @fediversenews@venera.social, you will not receive boosts.

However, it's also important to know that because messages do not originate from @fediversenews@venera.social, it is still possible to receive messages from there even if you are not subscribed. For example, if you follow the original post's author or receive boosts from other accounts.

Unsubscribing to @fediversenews@venera.social does not prevent you from seeing posts sent there, it just prevents you from receiving boosts specifically sent from the group actor -- if you are already subscribed to @fediversenews@venera.social. Likewise, blocking @fediversenews@venera.social does not prevent you from seeing posts that are tagged with @fediversenews@venera.social. However, blocking does prevent @fediversenews@venera.social from hosting and boosting replies to the originating post.

If you want to block that topic from your timeline, I highly suggest applying a filter to "Bluesky" and "bridge".

It's important to remember that Mastodon does not yet support group actors. For this reason, not all features of @fediversenews@venera.social are rendered ideally on Mastodon.

For more information on Fediverse group actors, here's a helpful link:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-1b12-group-federation/2724