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 (@mallory@techpolicy.social) 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 (@evanprodromou@socialwebfoundation.org). “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 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 (@Gargron@mastodon.social).
“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 (@robsherman@threads.net). “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 (@pfefferle@notiz.blog) “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 (@mike@flipboard.com). “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 (@jaz@mastodon.iftas.org). “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 (@jon@vivaldi.net). “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) (@bart@moth.social) “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 (@index@activitypub.ghost.org)
“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 (@matt@write.as). “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 swf@socialwebfoundation.org. Email contact@socialwebfoundation.org.
34 responses to “Launch of Social Web Foundation”
@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 on their part.
@pglpm @evanprodromou @pluralistic Yes there is more strange wording in that text. E.g. we have there a quote by the CEO of Vivaldi "We are competing against silos" and a moment earlier a man of one of these silos (meta) declares (in another quote) that ‘"interoperability is an important part of … our vision of threads". XD…And you know or maybe not – the planned meta "interoperability" (whatsapp <> matrix) will require to sign agreement by each matrix server want to exchange messages.
@miklo @evanprodromou @pluralistic I agree. It's tricky to keep decentralization when you start giving weight to centralizing bodies.Saw the evolving Meta question. Personally I'm not interested in interacting with Meta, but it's good that a person has the freedom to choose between servers which interact with Meta and servers which don't.
@evanprodromou @ohmallory my only concern here is that I want a social web as open as the original internet. only moderate for bothering people, not misinfo or bad ideas. liberal not left leaning.https://liberal.city/@wjmaggos/113192671986070651
@wjmaggos @evanprodromou @ohmallory If you don't want to see left content, don't follow people who write or share left content. As there's no federated timeline here, it should be easy.But also left political statements are free speech.
@sjstoelting @evanprodromou @ohmallory
sorry if I was unclear. I want everyone able to see all content. my worry is that right leaning content (and far left stuff too if it's angry) is biased against. if people are not tagged or hashtags spammed, let people access it. even horrible shit and lies. maximize network openness. as you say, people won't see it if they don't search it out.
but moderate the hell out of people forcing junk on others. and defederate servers that don't police for this.
@wjmaggos @evanprodromou @ohmallory If you don't want to see left content, don't follow people who write or share left content. As there's no federated timeline here, it should be easy.But also left political statements are free speech.
@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/
@Adam @evanprodromou @ohmallory as someone who doesn't enjoy:a) admins snooping on messagesb) 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 systemthe people who I'd share my email with are NOT the people who I'd DM on Mastodon.
@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.
@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.
@Adam by that logic, why should we have text messengers at all, if we already have email? There are different protocols and tools for different purposes and personal styles, even if those purposes overlap. All should use e2ee.
The problem is that people here already have expectations of privacy when they send DMs, just like in other tools that provide messaging. And they should! Encryption is well-established technology and should be baked into any new protocol. Email is something of an anomaly in that it's not encrypted. I would love to see e2ee in email too, and there have been multiple efforts to add it, but that's no reason to delay adding e2ee to other protocols and tools.
I think the lack of e2ee in AP is a major weakness and is multiple privacy disasters waiting to happen. I am thrilled that the AP folks have decided to add e2ee to messaging, including group messaging. I have advocated for it for a while.
@evanprodromou @ohmallory
@jamesmarshall @evanprodromou @ohmallory "why should we have text messengers at all, if we already have email?" – Exactly! The only reason I can think of is so that corporations who create a proprietary new messaging protocol can enslave and abuse a large portion of the population. It's the "enshittification" business model which doesn't work when the protocol is open.
@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 The #NGO path is a mess, but maybe a needed mess.How to get dancing elephants and paper planes into a “foundation” model* Do something different – dancing elephants and paper planes.* Do something normal – control freekery and power politics games.* Do nothing – maybe it all just carries on or more likely decay and irrelevances.#Activertypub is the first option, and this is why we love it and are having this conversation.Some links on this https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/what-would-a-fediverse-governance-body-look-like/1497/7Ps. can you post some links to the #openprocess that resulted in this thanks, am interested in documenting how these things happen.
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Congratulations! I look forward to following
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Congratulations! I look forward to following
Thank you!
@evanprodromou @ohmallory@socialwebfoundat ion.org Foundation of the movement leaders
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Congrats for co-founding this organization and your position.
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Very very excited about this 👏🏼 congrats!
@quillmatiq @evanprodromou @ohmallory Thank you!
We are social web first; you can follow @swf for updates. But part of our work is reaching people that aren’t on the Fediverse yet.
@evanprodromou i think you got ur content warning wrong. also, fyi, you don't need to add links to users profile when you tag them in a post, adding links is usually pretty annoying because then it opens in a remote instance on most software
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Can we get a link to the #openprocess that brought this together please #4opens #openweb #fediverse just to get an idea how "native" it will be. This #NGO path might be needed as the grassroots path is currently not working.
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Turn the page, we start another chapter
@evanprodromou @ohmallory is there no RSS/ATOM feed for the blog?
I think you can get it at http://socialwebfoundation.org/feed but I agree that we should include it in the UI and the
so it’s more discoverable. Consider me on it!We are social web first; you can follow @swf for updates. But part of our work is reaching people that aren’t on the Fediverse yet.
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Congrats, Evan!This is a great step forward
@evanprodromou @ohmallory
@evanprodromou @ohmallory Are the bylaws available?#FediMeta
@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/
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.