Elgg joined the Fediverse.
Which happened on March 7, 2025 with the release of a plugin. Almost no one noticed. But it’s kind of monumental.
Because Elgg isn’t new. It’s not some trendy project that showed up last week and slapped on federation as a proof of concept.
No, Elgg has been around since 2004. That’s older than Facebook, older than Twitter, older than Reddit. And unlike those platforms, Elgg was always open source.
It was originally designed for e-learning. But it quickly became something more—a full-blown social network engine that you could host yourself.
Profiles, groups, blogs, activity feeds, photo galleries, file uploads, granular permissions—you name it. It had everything Facebook had in its earlier years. And in some ways, more.
Now, with the ActivityPub plugin released for version 6.1, Elgg is federated. Which means Elgg instances can follow and be followed. They can share posts to Mastodon, Akkoma, Friendica, you name it. They can receive comments from Lemmy or PeerTube or Firefish. The plugin supports inboxes, outboxes, WebFinger, even group federation. You can block domains too. It’s not a toy. It’s real.
And yeah, almost nobody’s talking about it. Which is wild, because this is the kind of thing that should be huge. Elgg isn’t some flash-in-the-pan experiment. It’s a mature codebase with a long history, and now it can talk to the rest of the Fediverse. That’s not just important—it’s rare for something this mature to federate.
Most federated platforms lean minimalist. They’re great at one thing—microblogging, video, link aggregation. But Elgg gives you the kitchen sink. It feels like a complete social network. Honestly, if you miss how Facebook used to be, this is probably the closest you’re going to get.
So yeah. Elgg joined the Fediverse. And if people really want alternatives to Big Social, maybe it’s time to give this old horse a look.
https://elgg.org/plugins/3330966
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