Welcome to the Social Web Foundation
-
Today, we are proud to support the launch of the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit built to grow the Fediverse and make it accessible to more people.
We first joined the Fediverse in 2018, as one of only two long-form publishing platforms implementing the ActivityPub protocol (the other being Plume). Even then, we knew the promise this new protocol held for the open web. We had already joined Mastodon and even started our own instance, Writing Exchange. So by the time we implemented it ourselves, we already knew this was finally a modern protocol that could turn the internet itself, with its billions of independent sites, into a social network.
Soon after, we took Write.as open source, and called it WriteFreely. It’s since been used around the world by hundreds of thousands of people and organizations outside of our single, centralized service on Write.as. And we’ve continued to support and evolve on the Fediverse ever since.
Today, we’re proud to be one of many launch partners with the newly-formed Social Web Foundation. Started by Evan Prodromou (@[email protected]), Mallory Knodel (@[email protected]), and Tom Coates (@[email protected]), its mission is to educate people on the fediverse, enhance the ActivityPub protocol, make it easier to use, and inform policy-makers about issues on the social web.
As a long-time developer on the Fediverse, our goals perfectly align with the Foundation’s — and its work will be invaluable toward fully realizing the dream of a truly open and vibrant social web.
Among some of its first projects, the Social Web Foundation will convene implementers like Write.as, Ghost, WordPress, and others to work out issues with long-form content and the
Articletype in the Fediverse. With this work, we hope to see more consistent presentation of long-form content, and solid cross-platform compatibility as platforms like Ghost join the fediverse.We hope our financial support and continuing collaboration with the Social Web Foundation will help the Fediverse grow into the social web we’ve always dreamed of — one where everyone can control who they interact with and how, and do it free from the whims of the centralized social media platforms of yesteryear.
You can follow the Social Web Foundation in the Fediverse at @[email protected] or @[email protected].
-
@[email protected] @[email protected] can you provide some guidance on whether the SWF is meant to replace or complement the ForumWG as we have similar missions?
-
@julian @blog @angus I find that a hard question. First, two organizations can have the same mission and work together. They don't have to replace each other.
Second, I thought the point of the Forums group at the SocialCG was particularly about defining usage of core ActivityPub and extensions for forums, social news, and other threaded discussions.
The goal of the SWF is to grow the Fediverse and make it safer and more enjoyable for everyone here.
-
Evan Prodromoureplied to Evan Prodromou on last edited by
-
@[email protected] I think so! I later revised my post to add "or complement".
One of the early goals of the ForumWG was to tackle the as:Article issue. It's still an issue on my mind but made quite difficult due to the bottleneck that is the Mastodon dev team. There's will, just no way for now. Hopefully SWF can grease the wheels here.
You're right, we have additional considerations not currently under the SWF purview.
-
@julian cool. So, I will try to keep you in the loop on any work we do on long-form text. Anything we do will eventually go to the CG or maybe a FEP.
