What exactly would change?

Here is what we’d like to change. Check also github issue for more details.

from communities locked in silos platforms with self-selected boards not representing communities values any more to freedom to be on a platform of their choice, with variety of platforms existing, variety of governance, variety of communities to be part of all participating in wider network of hosts and travelers
- easy account migration between instances (nomadic identity)
- discoverability of accounts (ex. usernames with platform prefixes)
from a few platforms without clear identity, competing with each other for users to the bigger diversity of platforms with their own specific identity developed. Shared access to wide base of hosts and travelers would relieve the burden on platforms to fulfill all needs, and they would not fear of missing out since other needs would be covered by other platforms. One could then imagine platforms in other languages than English or dedicated to certain life choices (think of ecology or veganism)
- easy deployment of new instance
- self-hosting and managed-hosting options for communities
from users jumping between multiple accounts, one for each platform to single account and one search to query all platforms and find the closest hosts among all of them
- single sign-on (cross platform identity)
- visibility of existence of users across platforms (aggregated per location, no individual hosts)
- linked accounts / guest account based on profile from the primary platform to reach out to users of the other platform
- visibility of users across platforms (protocol what to include: location in 5km radius, username, …)
- communication across platforms (aka matrix, ActivityPub)
- a map with hosts from other federated communities
from users from underrepresented groups (non-english speakers, women, lgbtq, …) hesitating to participate because of fear of unsafe interactions to the community, where everyone feels welcome, can find their place and group where they belong to, feel safe and can fully express themselves. Full diversity of members from all sort of backgrounds and groups equally represented in the community.
from devs-maintainers competing with time to keep up to date with ever changing technologies, tired with maintaining outdated platforms, to new platforms emerging every now and then with fresh ideas, energy and tech stacks. This can be achieved by making it easy for new platforms to start based on already existing ones and evolve them freely.
from platforms keeping hosts forever despite them being inactive and unresponsive to only committed hosts participating in the network on their own rules and preferences.
from users exchanging direct messages to indirect hosting requests

I travel and publish: Who can host me?
Everyone in the network can see it and someone answers: come over to my home, we’ll be waiting this evening for you.
- the request includes everything needed to determine for who it is relevant: (a) expected location and radius (b) current location, direction and speed (c) …