The Social Web Foundation launched today. This non-profit is dedicated to making connections between social platforms with ActivityPub, and was co-founded by @evan @mallory and @tomcoates.
The foundation's focus is educating the public and policy makers about the social web, enhancing and extending the ActivityPub protocol, and building tools and plumbing to make the social web easier to use. “With this program, The Social Web Foundation can catalyze more growth on the Fediverse while improving user experience and safety,” says Prodromou. “Our goal is to unblock users, developers and communities so they can get the most out of their social web experience.”
We are proud to support the work of the foundation. Read more about the it here:
@evan @mallory @tomcoates Thank you for all your hard work!
@Flipboard @evan @mallory @tomcoates
The foundation's "mission" only makes me think of injecting adverrising and trackers. Hard to be excited
@AngelicAura @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates why? That's not what we're working on at all. What made you think the point is advertising and trackers?
@evan @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates
Well, if meta's involvement isn't a strong enough reason to be suspicious, the foundation's mission statement literally mentions making the whole thing "financially viable"
@AngelicAura @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates yes, we think that moderators and admins shouldn't have to go broke and quit and shut down their servers.
We'd like to help figure out ways to keep them going -- I prefer the coop model, like the CoSocial server I use, but that's not for everyone.
@evan @AngelicAura @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates Facebook & Automattic, both companies well known for doing exactly that, which have excitedly done exactly that when getting their hands on something before, are part of SWF. Even if that is not SWF's intentions, Facebook or Automattic are likely to abuse their position to make it happen. I've heard concerns about IFTAS too, but I don't know enough about them to tell, so I'll trust people that know more about them than me.
@jackemled @AngelicAura @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates IFTAS is awesome.
@Flipboard @evan @mallory @tomcoates neat project, but that website is atrocious. Half of the page content is images and it doesn't even link to their own "deliverables".
@Neblib @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates It took me a while to figure out what you meant here.
The projects are just starting because the organisation just launched. We'll show the deliverables on those pages when they're done.
@evan @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates I think my confusion was in the label "recent projects" (implying projects by founding members donated to the new foundation) not "currently working on" or similar. Since they are in progress, why not list next steps and current progress? e.g. for e2ee you could link to the SWCG AP-E2EE TF https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-e2ee, today's meeting https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/4eb80e63-556e-482e-9354-de7a3535a786/, discuss what you learned/started in the SoP24 process (assuming it ended 31 Aug per the website), etc.
@Neblib @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates thanks. That's a fair critique. I'll see what I can do to get the full status of the project onto those pages.
@evan @Flipboard @mallory @tomcoates thanks for taking the time to discuss that critique. I really think your foundation has a great mission, and I'm really excited by its launch.