Launch of Social Web Foundation
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Leaders of the open social networking movement have formed the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to making connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.
The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”, is a network of independent social platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network.
ActivityPub was standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2018. It has attracted over 100 software implementations, tens of thousands of supporting web sites, and tens of millions of users.
Advocates of this increased platform choice say it will bring more individual control, more innovation, and a healthier social media experience. But there is work to do: journalism, activism, and the public square remain in a state of uncertain dissonance and privacy, safety and agency remain important concerns for anyone participating in a social network.
Leadership
The founding team of SWF merges knowledge of the Fediverse with a user-centric mindset.
- Evan Prodromou, current editor of the ActivityPub specification and author of the book “ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web” from O’Reilly Media, is Research Director.
- Mallory Knodel, previously CTO of the Center for Democracy and Technology and human rights and internet standards researcher, will act as Executive Director.
- Tom Coates, product designer and entrepreneur, will serve as the organization’s Product Director.
Mallory Knodel (@[email protected]) says, “To fight inequality, participate in democracy, build an equitable society and economy, we can’t rely on a few corporate-owned, profit-driven spaces. The Social Web Foundation is our best chance to establish the conditions in which the new social media operates with zero harm.”
Program
The foundation’s program will concentrate on:
- educating general and targeted audiences about the social web
- informing policy-makers about issues on the social web
- enhancing and extending the ActivityPub protocol
- building tools and plumbing to make the social web easier and more engaging to use
“With this program, The Social Web Foundation can catalyze more growth on the Fediverse while improving user experience and safety,” says founder Prodromou (@[email protected]). “Our goal is to unblock users, developers and communities so they can get the most out of their social web experience.”
Industry support
The founders are supported by advisors from the social networking world including Chris Messina, Kaliya (Identity Woman) Young and Johannes Ernst, as well as companies and Open Source projects that have implemented ActivityPub:
- Mastodon
- Automattic
- Meta
- Ghost
- Pixelfed
- Medium
- IFTAS
- Write.as
- Fastly
- Vivaldi
- The BLVD
“Mastodon is committed to the Fediverse and proud to back the Social Web Foundation’s efforts to build a stronger, more open, and dynamic social web for all,” says Eugen Rochko, Founder and CEO, Mastodon (@[email protected]).
“Our vision for Threads has always been to make it the place for public conversation, and interoperability is an important part of that. That’s why we integrated Threads with the Fediverse through ActivityPub,” says Rob Sherman, VP and Deputy Chief of Privacy Officer at Meta (@[email protected]). “We believe that the Fediverse helps create a more diverse ecosystem that empowers users to connect, share, and learn from each other in new and innovative ways.”
“Automattic is excited about the launch of the Social Web Foundation and its mission,” says Matthias Pfefferle, Open Web Lead at Automattic, makers of WordPress.com (@[email protected]) “We’re eager to collaborate with the Foundation to expand platform diversity and enhance the support for various content types—especially long-form content—within the Fediverse, fostering greater interoperability across the ecosystem.”
“We’ve been inspired by the products being developed across the Fediverse and the people we’ve had the pleasure to work with,” said Mike McCue, Flipboard CEO (@[email protected]). “And now, with the Social Web Foundation established, there will be a dedicated organization to foster even greater awareness, collaboration and innovation. We’re excited to be a part of this next wave of the web, using open standards to advance how we connect with each other every day.”
The Foundation will collaborate with other non-profit organizations in the space. “IFTAS wholeheartedly welcomes the launch of the Social Web Foundation and its commitment to a healthy Fediverse,” says Jaz-Michael King, executive director (@[email protected]). “We anticipate great opportunities for collaboration in our efforts to enhance trust and safety, and we look forward to working with the Foundation to strengthen the Fediverse for the benefit of all its communities.”
“The Fediverse reminds us of the early days of the Web. We are competing against silos and corporate interests, using a W3C-based open standard and a distributed solution,” says Jon Von Tetzchner, CEO of Vivaldi (@[email protected]). “It’s great that social networking companies are supporting the Fediverse, and Vivaldi is pleased to support the Social Web Foundation so that we can once again have a town square free of algorithms and corporate control.”
“We’re really excited about the launch of the Social Web Foundation,” says Bart Decrem, founder, The BLVD (sub.club, Mammoth) (@[email protected]) “This will help accelerate the growth of the Fediverse, which is so important for the future of the open web!”
“It’s time to bring back the open web we were promised, rather than the closed networks we got. We’re very excited to support the Social Web Foundation and collaborate on building a more transparent and constructive future for the internet,” says John O’Nolan, CEO of Ghost Foundation (@[email protected])
“As a long-time ActivityPub implementer, Write.as is thrilled to support the launch of the Social Web Foundation,” says Matt Baer, Founder and CEO (@[email protected]). “With our shared mission of fostering a diverse and thriving social web, we look forward to collaborating with the Foundation, its partners, and community to realize the full potential of publishing on the Fediverse.”
Learn more
The Social Web Foundation can be found on the web at https://socialwebfoundation.org/ and on the social web at [email protected]. Email [email protected].
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@evanprodromou
@pluralistic
The moment they speak of "leaders" they've already lost me, unfortunately. In a democracy I want "representatives" or something similar, not "leaders". Democracy means that the people lead, not that the people follow.I hope it's just a slip of language om their part.
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@evanprodromou @ohmallory
The DM thing here (https://socialwebfoundation.org/program-protocol-e2ee/) sounds like a bad idea. We already have a standard protocol for that; email... upgrade e2ee standard for that first. Plus, don't most Social Web servers already send emails to users for things like password resets and notifications? Why complicate things with double messaging systems? Public and private should be completely separate: https://bookofadamz.com/the-fediverse-should-avoid-bundling-private-messages-completely-and-implement-this-instead/ -
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Very very excited about this congrats!
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@quillmatiq @evanprodromou @ohmallory Thank you!
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@Adam @evanprodromou @ohmallory
as someone who doesn't enjoy:
a) admins snooping on messages
b) admins being forced (or pressured) to turn over messagesit'd be more private and pseudonymous than email.
it's better to have a well built feature in an easily adopted system
the people who I'd share my email with are NOT the people who I'd DM on Mastodon.
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@risottobias @evanprodromou @ohmallory
a & b) admins snooping on or turning over messages is exactly why your private messages shouldn't be on a public ActivityPub server at all. It should be a completely separate system that you can self-host for privacy (like we can with email). I really like the idea of just a contact form on the profile that uses the existing email notification system to send a private message. -
Risottoreplied to Adam Lein last edited by [email protected]
@Adam @evanprodromou @ohmallory
that would mean people know an email to spam you (if you reply, or you learn theirs, that they might not be willing to share)
and frequently for users that email is also their login/recovery identifier.
where their social... frequently isn't (surprise!)
there /might/ be a reason for why the two are different and /successful/ that way.
Chesterton's fence is the idea that you don't take something away before understanding why it was there in the first place.
this is a case where that applies.
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@risottobias No it wouldn't. They would know your fediverse address, and type the message into a form which then gets privately sent to you.
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@Adam that's one-way and pretty useless.
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@risottobias But it can go one way the other way too! Thus making it 2 ways. Your [email protected] address is public already anyway. How is sending messages to that via ActivityPub any different from sending via SMTP? SMTP already has the advantages of a huge spam-blocking ecosystem, multiple encryption capabilities, & vast client/server software options. Inventing a new protocol that does the same thing isn't going to garner that kind of ecosystem overnight.
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Risottoreplied to Adam Lein last edited by [email protected]
@Adam uh... email is NOT E2EE.
and social media isn't going anywhere.
you seem to not understand the difference between user interfaces.
people /could/ use email to send videos or images or tweets, but they use things like youtube, instagram, or X for a reason - the interface is different.
if you want a one way blog comment submission form, cool. that's low tech and doesn't have the features people want (neither does email)
they became successful even though you could /technically/ do them over SMTP (and delta.chat does)
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@risottobias The user interface can be changed to anything you want when it comes to open protocols like ActivityPub and Email. What features do people want that can't be done with email? I've seen typing indicators, read receipts, E2EE, video conferencing, 1-click reactions, etc. all implemented with email. The reason Youtube, Instagram, X do things with proprietary protocols is for user control and abuse. That's what we do not want, right?
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@Adam I think you just won't understand.
things like delta.chat /do/ try to do that via email.
the rest of us try to do it on something purpose built that's not as misconfigurable.
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@risottobias I'm trying to understand... How is "send message from 1 person to another" a different purpose than "send message from 1 person to another"? How is "type in your username and password" more misconfigurable than "type in your username and password"?
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@Adam look at the inbox, feeds, search, reply, threading, and more.
reddit has a different threading mechanism.
they're different and successful at being so.
zulip, discord, and slack have named threaded discussions (that random users can't create new channels without permissions)
email is an unorganized, unpermissioned mess, with no access controls
things like forums and AP also have /public access/ to previous things (e.g. like a mailing list, but with, again, better threading and UIs)
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@Adam you are right in that they're all kinda the same,
but it's the nuances that make them great or make email awful
also, it's the mental context.
slack is for work,
discord is for games,
mastodon is for toots,
blog contact is for journalism,
email is for bills,
youtube is for documentaries, -
@evanprodromou please consider shared services to lower total cost of ownership and increase quality of service
My pet peeve is https://shlee.fedipress.au/2024/call-to-action-fediverse-media-server/
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Evan Prodromoureplied to :PUA: Shlee fucked around and last edited by
Thanks! I’ve seen this idea around a bit. I think there are some interesting P2P media technologies like IPFS that could be helpful, too. But I’ll add this to our potential projects list.
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:PUA: Shlee fucked around andreplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
@evanprodromou I think this needs safe stable design so ipfs feels like a distraction. Maybe for backup/HA failover