❄️What Makes Hylo Different?

Hylo is different from other community platforms, and not just because we’re free, open-source, and not-for-profit.

Hylo is created for peer-to-peer, networked collaboration.

The transition to a world that works for all will require unprecedented collaboration—and powerful tools designed specifically to support that work. For-profit, venture capital-backed platforms are not up to the task, as they:

• Are profit driven—not relationship driven. The big social platforms are designed to extract your attention and data, turning you into the product for sale.

• Are built for individual companies and brands—not for peer-to-peer collaboration. These platforms have no ability to create conversations that unite multiple groups in a shared context.

• Are increasingly adversarial. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are constantly tweaking their algorithms to keep us hooked with ever more outrageous content, while censoring activists working for positive change. It's not just distracting, it's unhealthy and overstimulating. Trying to organize for impact on platforms like that is counterproductive and just doesn't feel good.

Learn more about the values underpinning Hylo here.

Hylo is designed to help purpose-driven communities thrive.

Hylo is designed to empower communities to build a world that works for everyone. It differs from other group collaboration tools in several big ways:

1. Hylo enables collaboration across nested networks.

Hylo advances cooperation across groups, networks, movements, and landscapes. This happens through Hylo’s unique nested network architecture that allows composable group relationships. Each individual group on Hylo is an integrated whole and—at the same time—part of a larger whole. Community creators have the ability to create unlimited nested subgroups, as well as link their group to other networks they’re a part of. This ability to overcome silos and collaborate across networks is critical, as no one group can create a flourishing future single-handedly.

Nested ("Holonic") network architecture: composable group relationships, making each group a whole part of a larger whole and enabling collaboration across groups, networks, and even movements.

2. Hylo facilitates cross-group conversations.

A post on Hylo can be sent to multiple groups, creating one shared conversation space across many networks. With cross-group collaboration, you'll access more resources and make things happen faster.

3. Hylo offers tools for participatory governance.

We're nurturing a culture where all people can take on responsibility for the things that call to our care. Hylo offers unique tools for group members to engage in collective self-governance of their groups: proposals, collective moderation, and participatory funding.

4. Hylo is designed to support place-based organizing.

While Hylo works for all kinds of groups, we have a special focus on local organizing. Our unique geographic map feature helps people understand their shared landscape and makes it easy to connect with other groups and opportunities nearby. Hylo also makes it easy to share events, projects, resources, discussions, requests, and offers based on location, and tagged with relevant topics.

Hylo's geographic map helps people understand their shared landscape and makes it easy for people to find other people, projects, and opportunities based on their own location.

5. Hylo is free, open-source, and community-led

Hylo is stewarded by Terran Collective, a community of care and practice that builds systems and tools for a regenerative future. We steward Hylo as a tech commons, forever open source and free to use. Hylo runs as a non-profit and is resourced through donations, grants, and paid partnerships with values-aligned organizations. We will never sell, rent, or share your data. Our software design and development process is transparent and open to participation in our Building Hylo community. We share our upcoming development plans, invite input, and host community calls to co-design with our key stakeholders: you! Hylo members can also submit feature requests and vote on their most-wanted improvements here.

Our roadmap includes a plan to decentralize Hylo’s backend and data to make it more secure and resilient.

Terran Collective partners with Holo, the makers of Holochain, to steward Hylo.

We hope this is helpful! Please reach out to [e-mail] if you’d like more help assessing if Hylo is right for you. This page is adapted with permission from “Learn More About Hylo”, an article written by Tjin Tjoelker for the Regeneration Ecosystem community.