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Meeting 2026 04 16

Participants. Michell Zappa, Roy Bekhuis

Artifact. Original vision docs, preserved in git history at commit c701bee.

Kickoff thesis

Amsterdam buurten already have dense social infrastructure — WhatsApp groups, bewonersinitiatieven, buurtverenigingen, stadsdeelcommissies, buurthuizen. What they lack is a persistent, civic-first digital layer that is theirs. Nextdoor colonised this space in the US and entered NL; it is corporate, engagement-maximising, surveillance-prone, and structurally hostile to municipal integration. The alternative: an open-source, fediverse-native neighborhood network, hyperlocal by default, designed from the ground up to be fused with gemeente function rather than adjacent to it.

What "local" meant in this draft

  • The atomic unit is the buurt as defined by the gemeente's own administrative polygon — not an arbitrary radius, not a tech-chosen hexagon.
  • Default view scopes to the straat and surrounding blocks: roughly 200 neighbors, not 20,000.
  • Federation lets buurten connect upward (stadsdeel, city, national) when the topic warrants it.

Differentiation from Nextdoor

  • Ownership: Dutch coöperatie stewardship vs. US-listed corporation.
  • Revenue: grants + municipal contracts vs. ads / data.
  • Feed: chronological, proximity-scoped vs. engagement-ranked.
  • Identity: BAG-verified addresses with real names.
  • Moderation: neighbors under publicly-written norms, buurt council appeals.
  • Data: GDPR-native by design, data minimisation.
  • Municipal integration: first-class — meldingen, buurtbudget, omgevingsvergunningen.
  • Federation: ActivityPub, portable identity vs. closed silo.
  • Code: AGPL, reusable across Dutch gemeentes.

Why fediverse (in order of importance)

  1. Public-sector procurement fit. PublicSpaces principles and the Dutch digital-sovereignty agenda favour federated, open infrastructure over US silos.
  2. Portability of identity and content. A resident moving between buurten should not lose their civic history.
  3. Commons reusability. If the platform speaks ActivityPub and Common Ground APIs, the reference implementation is portable to every Dutch gemeente — reframing the project from "Amsterdam pilot" to "resident-layer Common Ground reference."

Carry-forward into the current framing

The buurt-scoping was widened to a location × theme grid after Meeting-2026-05-22. The society-owned, civic-first, anti-Nextdoor stance and the open / federated / GDPR-native commitments are intact in the current Vision.

See History for the broader timeline.