This is specifically for neighbourhood-level news. Think those Facebook groups people report lost dogs and cats and plan events.

Chicago has a relatively rich nonprofit news scene that includes robust neighborhood-level news coverage.

They hope to build a participatory community resource that informs everything from where to volunteer, to plans for the weekend, to how neighbors can meet one another.

I’m not sure Lemmy has all the features they want out of their platform. They could host it, but it sounds like they want to verify membership, charge fees, have calendar integration, etc. Lemmy is decentralised, it sounds like they want to build something centralised.

It has many of the hallmarks you picture when you think of a social platform: a feed, posts, reaction buttons. The feed is ordered reverse chronologically, not algorithmically, and can be filtered by topics like arts & culture or pets. There’s a separate, second feed that features posts the community steward has flagged to bring to members’ attention. Posts might be introductions, or events, or requests or offers of help, or steward-posted discussion prompts or guides. There’s also a calendar feature, where users can submit or look for events.

No idea how they plan to monetise this. Also of course they have an A.I. clanker moderating all the posts, but at least they have an escape hatch.

Posts are automatically moderated by an AI-powered tool that checks them against community guidelines, though posters can also flag posts for review by the human steward.

If the system thinks a user’s message may not meet community standards, like it’s inflammatory or obscene, they can’t post it right away. However, users always have the ability to go around the automation and have a local human steward review their message. This is important because the AI might not be correct, and it gives appropriate agency to users and stewards.