Evan Prodromou

https://socialwebfoundation.org/author/evanprodromou/

Research Director at the Social Web Foundation.

Current editor of the ActivityPub and Activity Streams 2.0 specifications at the Social Web Community Group of the W3C.

Author of "ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web" by O'Reilly Media.

Blog: https://socialwebfoundation.org/
Profile: https://socialwebfoundation.org/author/evanprodromou/
Homepage: http://evanprodromou.wordpress.com

Public Key

npub1c6t07wcgd5qqapmcmt57eg05v996sn6q76xgh6ecyt8dcam8zads98hwrh

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evanprodromou_at_socialwebfoundation.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvd9hl8vyx6qqwsaud460v586xzjagfaq0drytavuz9nkuwan3wkcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds2zewnh

Publishing to

relay.primal.net

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Author Public Key

npub1c6t07wcgd5qqapmcmt57eg05v996sn6q76xgh6ecyt8dcam8zads98hwrh

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Last Notes

2026-04-06 19:45:48 UTC

As part of the work on Fediverse sustainability announced earlier this year, the Social Web Foundation is running our first [Fediverse Sustainability Survey](https://socialweb.limesurvey.net/256253?lang=en&newtest=Y ) . We’re seeking operators, moderators and administrators of Fediverse sites, from the smallest to the largest, to fill out the anonymous survey and share information about how their instances work. If you help run an instance, please take the 10-15 minutes needed to fill out the survey. We need a *lot* of responses (hundreds!) to get statistically relevant data, so please feel free to share the link. We’re also on the lookout for operators of instances that are no longer running; there is a lot to learn about sustainability from servers that closed down, for whatever reason. We’ll publish findings here as part of our sustainability report, supplemented by interviews with selected respondents. Thanks!

2026-04-06 18:32:11 UTC

The [call for proposals is open](https://hackers.pub/@fedidevkr/2026/fediverse-social-web-track-at-coscup-2026-cfp ) for the COSCUP Fediverse track in Taipei, Taiwan. ActivityPub-related software, including server and client implementations, are great topics for the event.
COSCUP (“Conference for Open Source Coders, Users, and Promoters”) is the [FOSDEM](https://fosdem.org/ ) of East Asia. Run by the Open Source community in Taiwan, it brings together people excited about FOSS across the region.
For the first time, this year, members of the Korean ActivityPub developer community [FediDev KR](https://fedidev.kr/en/ ) are joining up with [FediLUG](https://fedilug.y-zu.org/ ) of Japan to program and run a Fediverse track at COSCUP. This has the potential to be a huge step forward for the Fediverse developer community. Although many major projects, like [Fedify](https://fedify.dev ) and [Misskey](https://misskey-hub.net/en/ ), are created and promoted in East Asia, distance and language barriers make it hard for East Asian devs to participate in European and North American in-person events.
The Fediverse track is open to proposals about ActivityPub implementations, clients for ActivityPub platforms, ancillary services, libraries and toolkits. But also, as at FOSDEM, talks about the human aspects of Fediverse technology, like moderation, policy and governance, are welcome and encouraged. This event looks like it will cover as much interesting conceptual space as its twin at FOSDEM.
Hong Minhee, [hongminhee@hollo.social](https://hollo.social/@hongminhee ), was one of the main speakers at FOSDEM’s Social Web devroom this year. Their talk about Fedify was important, but even more important was their effort to bridge the gap between Asia’s and Europe’s Fediverse development communities.
I (Evan) hope that COSCUP brings together many Asian developers, but I also hope that North American and European individuals and teams put in proposals as well. Knitting together these two important communities on the Fediverse requires effort from both sides. That’s why I’m applying to speak (about ActivityPub 1.1), and why I hope to see many familiar faces among the new ones in Taiwan.

2026-02-04 14:50:52 UTC

Thanks to the [Interledger Foundation](https://interledger.org/ ) for their generous Grant for the Web to the Social Web Foundation. With the help of ILF, we are launching a new program area focused on economic issues on the Social Web. In particular, we’ll be producing three reports: one on sustainability for social web instances; one for the Fediverse and the creator economy; and one for cooperatives on the Social Web. In addition, we’ll be engaging multimedia Fediverse apps for using the Web Monetization standard. You can read more about grant on our shared announcement: [Interledger Foundation awards $200,000 to Social Web Foundation to support decentralized social media](https://interledger.org/news/interledger-foundation-awards-200000-social-web-foundation-support-decentralized-social-media ).

2026-01-15 14:59:05 UTC

Today the [W3C](https://w3c.org/ ) standards organization [announced a new working group](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-socialweb/2026Jan/0000.html ) to advance the ActivityPub and Activity Streams standards. The Social Web Foundation, as a W3C member organization, will be participating in the group. The working group’s goal is to release a backwards-compatible iteration of each specification in Q3 of 2026.
Activity Streams was released in 2017, and ActivityPub was released in early 2018. Since that time, the experience of hundreds of implementers and millions of users has shown places that the specifications are confusing or unclear, or missing features. Some problems have been documented with [errata](https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub_errata ), but others require more work. The [Next Version](https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3A%22Next%20version%22 ) tag in the ActivityPub GitHub issue repository gives some good examples of topics to be considered. The new Social Web Working Group will provide revisions of these documents to make them easier to use for implementers.
ActivityPub is an actively used protocol with millions of users and billions of notes, images, video and audio files published. Standards work on ActivityPub will necessarily be evolutionary, not revolutionary, and will incorporate backwards compatibility. Developers can confidently keep working on ActivityPub today without worrying about breaking changes in the future.
The Social Web Working Group will work closely with the [Social Web Community Group](https://www.w3.org/groups/cg/socialcg/ ), the organization that has been stewarding ActivityPub and its extensions since 2018. The Community Group will remain the focal point for innovative developments extending ActivityPub into different areas like [geosocial](https://github.com/swicg/geosocial ) applications or threaded forums, while the Working Group will concentrate on the core documents.
One Community Group document that will be moving into the Working Group is [LOLA](https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola ), the live data portability spec that originated in the CG’s [Data Portability Task Force](https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-data-portability ). LOLA lets users move from one ActivityPub server to another while retaining all their social connections, their content, and their reactions. It’s a great improvement for data portability on the social web.
The Social Web Working Group will consist of representatives of W3C member organizations and [invited experts](https://www.w3.org/invited-experts/ ) from the standards and development community. The group will be chaired by [Darius Kazemi](https://tinysubversions.com ), longtime contributor to the ActivityPub developer community. Meetings and proceedings will be public, and developers can review the work happening in the [ActivityPub GitHub repository](https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues ).
Thanks to everyone who’s done the work getting this charter to completion; especially [Dmitri Zagidulin](https://social.coop/@dmitri ), the SocialCG chair who drove the charter editing and review process. Now, the work begins!

2025-09-10 19:24:07 UTC

One of our important projects for the Social Web Foundation is developing a [Fediverse Starter page](https://socialwebfoundation.org/fediverse-starter-page/ ), helping people get onto the social web. As part of this work, our team is conducting user interviews with current Fediverse users to get to know how they joined up and what their experience has been so far. If you’re interested in being interviewed and sharing your story, please reply to this post, or email contact@socialwebfoundation.org . Thanks for your help!

2025-08-19 00:51:30 UTC

I’m on the train back to Montreal from New York, where I attended [HOPE_16](https://hope.net/ ) over the weekend. I wanted to capture some thoughts while they were fresh, even though they might not be fully formed.
HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is a technology and information security conference sponsored by [2600 Magazine](https://www.2600.com ). The SWF had two points of presence at the event this year: I gave [an hour-long talk about the Fediverse](https://schedule.hope.net/hope16/talk/CWW9XA/ ) which was streamed live. We also hosted the [Fediverse Village](https://schedule.hope.net/hope16/talk/9PWVMF/ ), which turned out to be mostly a booth in the non-profits area of the vendors floor.
We had people streaming by all day long Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I had thought the Village was going to be more like a hang-out room, so I was caught off guard on prep, but I put out all the ActivityPub and Social Web Foundation stickers I had, covers for the ActivityPub book, and a stack of CoSocial.ca stickers to boot. But there was a definite stone soup aspect to the village area: people brought by schwag for Fediverse software like WriteFreely, instances like GardenState.social and Masto.nyc, and projects like DWeb.
I’d hoped to have more structured discussions, including a meetup for Fediverse governance and a hackathon. But it turned out to be a lot more loosey-goosey than I expected, and most of the weekend was spent talking to other Fediverse fans, and helping people who came up to the booth to ask about the Fediverse.
I think I expected because of the level of technical expertise that was shown at the event that we’d be speaking to only true believers. But there were many people there who hadn’t heard of the Fediverse, and who were excited to try it out. One thing that struck me that was an advantage for these people over commercial social networks was the option to get out from under the “real names” policies of many platforms. It’s hard to remember that the alternative to the Fediverse that most people are familiar with are services that require a real-looking legal name to be used, and force you to send a scan of a government ID if they’re at all suspicious.
The other thing that struck me was how many people came to the booth saying that they’d registered for a Mastodon account at some point, and were really excited to get it reactivated, but forgot which server it was on and didn’t want to register for another. I think that’s a real pain point for a lot of people — and one we should do better at solving.
I plan to come back to HOPE next year. I’d love to have more schwag for Fediverse software, services, and platforms. I’d like to have a way to get people signed up and onboarded for the Fediverse right at the table. And I’d like to have some more formal get-together events. There are spaces to meet at HOPE if you know how to set it up — I’m going to try to use them better next time.
Thanks to everyone who came to the Fediverse Village, my talk, or just talked to me around the HOPE event. I was energised by the people and the technology that was happening, and I look forward to engaging again.

2025-07-15 01:45:02 UTC

Hey, all! I’m seeking some help testing an application I whipped up for the [Geosocial task force of the W3C Social Web Community Group](https://github.com/swicg/geosocial ). It’s called https://checkin.swf.pub/ , and it’s a barebones checkin service, similar to Swarm, but implemented as a pure Web client. You can watch the application in action.
It logs into your account on an ActivityPub server using OAuth 2.0. It then reads your inbox, filtering the activities there to only show geosocial ones. You can use the geolocation services in the browser, and the [places.pub](https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/04/29/places-pub/ ) service for a place vocabulary, to find nearby places. You can then “check in” to one of the places, with a note, and control of the privacy of the activity.
[Geosocial activities](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#h-motivations-geo ) are part of the core [Activity Vocabulary](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/ ) that underlies ActivityPub. But, they’re not as widely implemented as other activities in the vocabulary. This app is trying to change that, by making them available on the network, and making it easy to create them.
To test the client, your service will need to support:<li><a href="https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/">Webfinger</a> (for login)</li><li><a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#client-to-server-interactions" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#client-to-server-interactions">ActivityPub API</a> (“client-to-server”, “C2S”)</li><li><a href="https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/d8c2/fep-d8c2.md" data-type="link" data-id="https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/d8c2/fep-d8c2.md">FEP-d8c2</a> (OAuth 2.0 profile for ActivityPub API)</li><li><a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#proxyUrl" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#proxyUrl">proxyUrl</a> (for fetching data from remote servers)</li>
To test federation, your service will need to support:<li>Receiving <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-arrive" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-arrive">Arrive</a>, <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-leave" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-leave">Leave</a>, and <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-travel" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-travel">Travel</a> activities</li><li>Showing those activities to users</li>
As of this writing, Mastodon does not work for either of these. If you want to test receiving federated messages, follow me on evan@onepage.pub . I’ve been using it a lot!
Code for the checkin application is here: https://github.com/social-web-foundation/checkin
This is my second ActivityPub API client ([ap](https://github.com/evanp/ap ), the command-line client, was my first), and my first one for the Web. I found this process really fun and invigorating. I was able to create a new kind of social networking application (well, new on the Fediverse…) purely from the client side. The app saves no data to the server; everything is done in the browser.
Please reach out on GitHub or comment here if you want to work on interoperability. I’m happy to help debug connections if needed.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/zCMu0OeZ/screen-recording-2025-07-14-at-9.30.21-pm.mov

2025-06-13 20:29:28 UTC

Good news in privacy for ActivityPub. The first early draft of the [MLS over ActivityPub](https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-e2ee/mls ) specification went out this week. It’s been part of my work on our [E2EE for ActivityPub](https://socialwebfoundation.org/program-protocol-e2ee/ ) project at the Social Web Foundation.
[Messaging Layer Security](https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks ) (MLS) is an IETF standard for end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging. It lets people on laptops and phones communicate with each other in a secure way that no one in between can see.
MLS is designed to use pluggable lower-level protocols. This specification defines an envelope format for distributing MLS messages through the network, and an Activity Streams 2.0 profile for the packets of application data stored inside the messages.
This specification is ready for review from both ActivityPub developers and security analysts. It’s time to start making proof-of-concept implementations and testing interoperability.
The best place to make comments or report problems is on [the ActivityPub E2EE GitHub repo issues list](https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-e2ee/issues ). I’m looking forward to these next steps!

2025-05-28 21:48:58 UTC

I want to share some information about a repository we just published. [ap-components](https://github.com/social-web-foundation/ap-components ) is a set of [Web Components](https://webcomponents.org/ ) for building interfaces for the [ActivityPub API](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#specification-profiles ). I built it as I was making a [sample application](https://github.com/social-web-foundation/acct-handler ) for handling the [acct: URI scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acct_URI_scheme ). I found myself making more and more components for the UI, and realised that they would probably be useful for other applications, too.
The library is available on npm at [@socialwebfoundation/ap-components](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@socialwebfoundation/ap-components ). It currently covers some of the simplest ActivityPub data, but I hope to expand it to give visibility to other types of objects and activities. Please feel free to try it out and [let us know](https://github.com/social-web-foundation/ap-components/issues ) if it’s helpful for your work.

2025-04-29 16:56:55 UTC

I’m making an initial version of [places.pub](https://places.pub/ ) available today. places.pub is a collection of Place objects suitable for use in geosocial applications on the ActivityPub network.
Part of my work in the [Social Web Community Group](https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/ ) at the [W3C](https://www.w3c.org/ ) has been participation in the [GeoSocial Task Force](https://github.com/swicg/geosocial ). This is a sub-group of the SocialCG that focuses on implementing [user stories](https://github.com/swicg/geosocial/issues?q=label%3A%22user%20story%22%20 ) in ActivityPub related to the intersection of geographical systems and social networking, for example, [tagging an image with the place it represents](https://github.com/swicg/geosocial/issues/7 ), or [checking in to a location](https://github.com/swicg/geosocial/issues/1 ).
One important need for geosocial software is that all [objects in ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#obj ), including [Place](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-place ) objects, need to have a permanent URL as their id property, which shares the description of that object in [Activity Streams 2.0](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/ ) format. However, there isn’t a good dataset of geographical objects — countries, states or provinces or regions, cities, buildings, businesses, parks, streets — available in AS2 on the Web right now. That is slowing down experimentation in the Geosocial Task Force.##
Using the serviceSo, I worked on making [places.pub](https://places.pub/ ) for geosocial hackers to experiment with. It’s a service that exposes [places](https://places.pub/#places ) from the amazing OpenStreetMap collection of data as AS2 objects on the Web. So, given an OpenStreetMap object like the [Rogers Centre Ottawa](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/264535169 ), it provides an [AS2 version](https://places.pub/way/264535169 ) suitable for use in geosocial activities in ActivityPub. It also has a rudimentary [search](https://places.pub/#search ) mechanism, although I think most users will want to use the [Nominatim service for searching the OpenStreetMap database](https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/ui/search.html ), and then map the IDs onto places.pub.
Once you know the places.pub ID for a place, you can use it for geotagging objects, people, activities, or using special geosocial activity types like check in, check out, and travel. There is a good list of [examples](https://places.pub/#examples ) on the places.pub home page, but obviously this is not an exhaustive list!##
How it is builtThis wasn’t my first time trying to build places.pub; I’d done two earlier versions with different architectures and the same interface. The first time out, about 7 years ago, I created a [full NodeJS server](https://gitlab.com/evanp/places-pub ) that used a full mirror of the OpenStreetMap database, so I didn’t need to hit the OSM API to fetch data. It worked pretty well, but it was *really* expensive — hundreds of dollars per month to keep a database server of that size running and synched.
I tried a second version a few months ago, which did batch generation of AS2 Place objects from the [OpenStreetMap exports](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Export ), and then uploaded them to the [S3 service](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/ ) at Amazon Web Services. This was a whole lot cheaper, but it took a long time to download, convert, and re-upload the data.
This third implementation, with [source code available on GitHub](https://github.com/social-web-foundation/places.pub ), is a little bit easier than both. Instead of sloshing the huge OSM dataset back and forth, I used the version of the data stored in the [Google Cloud Public Datasets](https://cloud.google.com/datasets?hl=en ) system on BigQuery. This let me ignore the effort of moving data, and just focus on giving it a good ActivityPub-compatible interface using a [Google Cloud Run](https://cloud.google.com/run?hl=en ) function. It seems to work pretty nicely.##
Next stepsI’d love to see some experimentation with using places.pub for geosocial activity in the social web. I’m going to work on some implementations in my own ActivityPub software. If you find problems with the software, please add an [issue](https://github.com/social-web-foundation/places.pub/issues ) on GitHub or let me know on the Fediverse at @npub1c6t…hwrh.

2025-03-25 13:42:48 UTC

I’ll be leading a session on the [Browser experience of ActivityPub social networking](https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/3c15ca06-8876-442e-a385-8eab2b64a55c/ ) as part of [W3C Breakouts Day 2025](https://www.w3.org/2025/03/breakouts-day-2025/ ). This is a virtual event, open to all members of the Web community; connection information in the link.
ActivityPub encourages interconnection between independent, heterogeneous social networking platforms. One of the most confusing parts of the ActivityPub network for many users is interacting with people and content on remote servers. How can you like, share or reply to an image or article on one server with your account from another server? How can you follow or block a person whose profile page you are looking at?
I briefly outlined one solution to this problem on [Cross-server Interactions in ActivityPub](https://evanp.me/2024/04/22/cross-server-interactions-in-activitypub/ ) on my personal blog last year. In that article, I cover how remote servers can act as clients for your home server, sending your activities directly to your ActivityPub API endpoint.
In the breakout session, I’ll be going over another solution: letting the browser be an API client on its own. The [Social Web Incubator Community Group](https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/ ) (SocialCG) has a [task force for ActivityPub HTML discovery](https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-html-discovery/ ), with a [draft report on ActivityPub discovery](https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-html-discovery/ ) . This report shows how we can surface API information about a person or content in the HTML pages displayed in the Web browser. In the session, I’ll discuss how that API information could be used in a browser extension to make API calls for liking, sharing, replying to the content on the page, or following a person.
I’m especially interested in developing a proof-of-concept browser extension for Vivaldi (my daily-drive browser) to show how this can work.
If you’re interested in deeper integration of social networking features into the Web browser, please make sure to come to the talk!

2025-03-18 19:03:27 UTC

The Social Web Foundation took part in the [Fediverse House](https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/02/24/social-web-foundation-at-fediverse-house/ ) at [South by Southwest](https://sxsw.com/ ) on March 9-10 2025. We hosted the networking meetup on day 1, as well as a developer meetup immediately afterwards. We were lucky enough to have [Manton Reece](https://www.manton.org ) present [micro.blog](https://micro.blog/ ) and Charles Krempeaux (@reiver) present [spacehost.one](http://spacehost.one ) and [robin.live](https://robin.live/ ).
I (Evan) also spoke on stage with [Peter Cottle of Threads](https://threads.net/@pcottle ), [Mike Masnick of Techdirt](https://www.techdirt.com/user/mmasnick/ ), and [David Imel](https://www.davidimel.com ). We had a great conversation about the way the Fediverse is developing in 2025, how the different connected networks are interoperating, and what to look forward to in the coming year.
One compelling part of the Fediverse House experience was the outreach to different communities that can benefit from using social web technologies: marketers, creators, and publishers. I think addressing broader sets of needs can be helpful for spreading the technology. The talks were recorded and will be released online over the coming months.
Thanks to everyone who attended or spoke at Fediverse House; especially to [Cory Doctorow](http://mamot.fr/@pluralistic ), who gave a great talk about enshittification and the social web. And a special thanks to the team at Flipboard, including [Mike McCue](https://flipboard.com/@mike ), [Marcie McCue](https://flipboard.social/@marci ), and [Mia Quagliarello](https://flipboard.social/@miaq ) for making the whole event happen and for inviting SWF to participate. We look forward to even more Fediverse events at SXSW 2026!

2025-01-31 10:04:26 UTC

A quick update for people at #FOSDEM who are interested in the Fediverse. There are three main public events: the [Social Web Devroom](https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/social-web/ ) is a main track in room ua2118 from 3pm to 7pm Sat Feb 1. The [Social Web BOF](https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6617-social-web-bof/ ) (“birds of a feather”) is on Sunday Feb 2 from 12pm to 1pm in . Finally, [Social Web After Hours](https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/01/04/social-web-after-hours-at-fosdem-2025/ ) is on Sunday Feb 2 from 7pm to 9pm at [HSBXL](https://hsbxl.be/ ). And use the #SocialWebFOSDEM hashtag to track the community on the Fediverse!

2025-01-17 15:31:17 UTC

I loved this video that the [Daily Show](https://www.cc.com/fan-hub/the-daily-show )‘s [Desi Lydic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi_Lydic ) posted on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/thedailyshow/reel/DE3T6ehyT18/ ), [Tiktok](https://www.tiktok.com/@thedailyshow/video/7460282774692482350 ), and [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv-X1E71RGo ). Give it a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv-X1E71RGo
Lydic talks about the dizzying changes that are happening in social media these days. Internet users over the last decade have gotten used to a small number of huge social platforms. But [political changes](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/x-sees-largest-user-exodus-musk-takeover-rcna179793 ), [content policy](https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/01/12/content-policy-on-the-social-web/ ) issues, and [legal platform shutdowns](https://www.usermag.co/p/tiktok-is-done-for ) have upended that formerly stable structure. People can no longer count on their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours all being on the same social networking system, much less news outlets, politicians, and celebrities. So they’re racing around, trying new applications (including, as Lydic notes, the awesome [Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.social/ )), and seeking a place to be social again.
Why should anyone have to do this? After all, you and I didn’t change our political outlook or our content policies or our legal ownership structure. We have governments and companies changing all around us that interfere with how we can interact with the people that matter most to us. Regardless of how you feel about these changes, why do everyday users have to be the ones to scramble to adapt?
The [Fediverse](https://socialwebfoundation.org/what-is-the-fediverse/ ) is based on the simple belief that your social connections and your published content are *yours*. They belong to you. *You* should get to decide where to set up your home on the social web, based on *your* own priorities — technical, political, financial, romantic, whatever. And once you have that place on the social web, you can connect to *anybody else*, on *any Fediverse platform*, as easily as if they were on your own.
So when your friends are all trying a new Fediverse-enabled app from the app store, you can follow them from your own Fediverse home, see what they’re posting, like, comment, and share. You don’t have to scramble to install yet another application, go through the complicated signup flow, set up your profile, and alert everyone you know about yet another identity you have. You can stay put, keep all your current connections, but still stay connected to your restless friends and bleeding-edge influencers.
And if you get tired of the place you’ve set up your Fediverse home, you can move completely — taking all your social connections (and, soon, all your content) to the new platform you’ve chosen. You won’t have to make a series of announcements, like Lydic does, about all the different places your Internet presence is scattered. It’s handled automatically by the Fediverse platforms. Your followers, family and friends might not even notice the difference.
Social media is fun; we get it. And there’s nothing wrong with trying new apps. Being a pioneer on the cool new platform is invigorating. But if it’s *not* fun, and you’re feeling the whiplash of multiple platforms rising and falling weekly, please consider setting up your long-term homebase on [a Fediverse-enabled platform](https://socialwebfoundation.org/what-is-the-fediverse/ ). You might be surprised how many platforms are already Fediverse-enabled, and more are coming online every day.

2025-01-13 12:01:08 UTC

##
Welcome to the New Non-profit on the FediverseMastodon today [announced a new non-profit](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/ ) to manage the next steps for the project. From our perspective, this is a great sign of maturation in the social web software space. Best of luck to Eugen and team as they take this next step. We look forward to working with Mastodon towards a bigger, better Fediverse.

2025-01-13 00:30:06 UTC

On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, [announced a new content policy for Meta](https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/DEhgYx4JbEG ) on Threads. We are disappointed in these changes, which put vulnerable people on and off Meta platforms in harm’s way for harassment. Ideas matter, and history shows that online misinformation and harassment can lead to violence in the real world. There are good analyses of the details of the policy changes at [EFF](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/metas-new-content-policy-will-harm-vulnerable-users-if-it-really-valued-free ), [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338471/meta-hate-speech-hateful-conduct-policy-moderation ), and [Platformer](https://www.platformer.news/meta-fact-checking-free-speech-surrender/ ).
Meta is one of many ActivityPub implementers and a supporter of the Social Web Foundation. We strongly encourage Meta’s executive and content teams to come back in line with best practices of a zero harm social media ecosystem. Reconsidering this policy change would preserve the crucial distinction between political differences of opinion and dehumanizing harassment. The SWF is available to discuss Meta’s content moderation policies and processes to make them more humane and responsible.##
Distributed ModerationWhat do these changes mean for the Fediverse? Through ActivityPub, Meta’s Threads network is connected to the social web, also called the Fediverse. This is a diverse network of independent social services using different codebases and different kinds of content. The network of 300M users of Threads can follow and be followed by people in tens of thousands of other communities. These services are operated by a variety of entities: corporations, universities, enterprise IT, cooperatives, non-profit organizations, and self-organized volunteers.
Theoretically, this distributed structure allows people to make choices about which platforms they want to use – based not only on technical features, but also on community composition and moderation policies. Users don’t need to give up on social connections they already have with friends and family; they can stay connected across services using ActivityPub. Different communities and services can have different content policies, but people in different communities can still stay connected.
Ideally, having an account on a Fediverse service gives people the best of both worlds: they can stay connected to users and content they like, and filter out content and users that they don’t. When unwanted content from one community lands in the feeds of people in other communities, the receiving users or their moderators can react under their own local policy: removing individual text or image posts; blocking individual users; or blocking the entire sending community.
Practically, though, there are limitations to this flexibility. Filtering on the receiving side requires orders of magnitude more effort. If a single sending service delivers bad content to users on one hundred or one thousand receiving services, each moderator on the receiving end has to clean up the mess locally. Moderators get understandably frustrated with this kind of displacement of responsibility. A common response is to block servers that send bad content entirely.
In the case of Threads, though, there are complicating factors. Threads is much, much bigger than the typical Fediverse community, and it has many high-profile users in politics, media and technology. It’s also an easy onboarding service to the Fediverse for people who are used to Facebook or Instagram, meaning many of our friends, colleagues and family use it. Blocking the Threads service means blocking access for *all* users on the receiving service from *all* these important accounts.
Unfortunately, there’s not an easy answer for Fediverse moderators. We encourage trust and safety teams across the social web to use their best judgement and the tools available to keep users safe, connected, and informed, and also to minimize moderators’ stress and burnout. [IFTAS Connect](https://connect.iftas.org/faq/ ) is a great community resource for connecting with other moderators to discuss these tradeoffs.##
Improving Social Web ResilienceWe see the challenge of a large service that has poor local content policy as a chance to strengthen the social and technical infrastructure of the Fediverse. None of these options will resolve current problems immediately, but we hope starting the research now will make the Fediverse more resilient in the future.<li>Finer-grained filtering tools. As mentioned above, moderators on the Fediverse can automatically filter content by author or by originating service. Some platforms also let moderators filter by keywords – for example, blocking out racist or homophobic slurs. More difficult forms of filtering, such as detecting unacceptable images, or the subtle meaning of text, requires more sophisticated algorithmic filtering not supported by many Fediverse platforms. Balancing the ease of use of this kind of filter with the desire from many communities to have final control by human moderators is a good area for future research.</li><li>Collaborative moderation tools. Email filtering systems re-use signals received from other users, so that if a message is marked as spam by one user, or a few users, other users will never see the message. This can balance the desire for human moderation with a significantly lowered total effort for moderators. Shared server blocklists are somewhat common on the Fediverse, but deeper per-user and per-post collaborative filtering is not. Balancing, once again, the specific priorities of a given community with the advantage of collaborative filtering would also require further research.</li><li>Fact-checking and community notes. One major part of the Meta announcement was a cancellation of the fact-checking program for posts on Meta, and its replacement with a community notes feature, which defers fact-checking to volunteers. Neither of these features (professional and volunteer fact-checking) are supported directly in ActivityPub. We think there’s a place for a variety of fact-checking services on the Fediverse, providing annotations on Fediverse content without requiring permissions from the author, the sending service, or even the receiving service. Building the protocol features and reference implementations, as well as encouraging the participation of fact-checking services, is a good next step in this area.</li><li>Jurisdictional boundaries. Zuckerberg mentions in his update that Meta will be collaborating with the US government to resist demands for content policy changes by other governments. Regardless of the valence of these content policy demands, this question highlights an important feature of the Fediverse, namely, that federated services can operate within specific jurisdictions and conform with their regulations. Content that is conveyed across legal boundaries between services can be more clearly filtered or blocked to comply with local rules. We encourage national and regional governments to further investigate this structure for social networking and global connectivity.</li><li>Data portability. Choosing a social media platform to use is an important freedom in the social web. The Fediverse supports <a href="https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/">limited data portability</a>, such that users can move their followers and followed accounts to a new server almost seamlessly. However, this move leaves all posted content, like text and images, on the old server, as well as metadata such as likes and shares. The new <a href="https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola" data-type="link" data-id="https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola">LOLA</a> protocol would allow a full move between servers. We want to see more work on implementing LOLA in Fediverse platforms.</li>
Ultimately, the safety and well-being of people around the world should not be in the hands of any single company. Moderation policies are a competitive advantage in an open social network. We continue to encourage the use of ActivityPub, and the distributed control that it brings.

2024-12-10 13:03:47 UTC

I have good news and bad news. Our [Call for Participation](https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/11/01/fosdem-2025-social-web-devroom-call-for-participation/ ) for the Social Web track at FOSDEM 2025 was extremely successful; we had almost 40 submissions of great talks about Free and Open Source software for the Fediverse.
The bad news is that we’ve got only a 4 hours of time at FOSDEM, and we’ve been unable to allocate more time for the track.
So, right now, I’m **looking for space in Brussels** for additional space for an offsite event — “Social Web After Hours”, let’s call it — to run on Friday night Jan 31 or Sunday night Feb 2.
If you’re aware of a meeting space in Brussels, close to the centre or to the FOSDEM venue, that would accommodate an audience of 50-100 people and has screens for presentations, available for maybe 2 hours, please let me know. It would be great to have some Social Web discussions on the [FOSDEM fringe](https://fosdem.org/2025/fringe/ ).

2024-12-06 20:27:55 UTC

I want to draw attention to an administrative process at the [W3C Social Web Community Group](https://www.w3.org/groups/cg/socialcg/ ) (SocialCG), the standards group that manages [ActivityPub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub ) and [Activity Streams 2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_Streams_(format) ) and a number of other open social networking standards. The group is considering a new charter to define how decisions are made and how the members work together. This might seem like a minor process, but it’s actually part of a bigger deal for the Fediverse. To see why, you need to understand the structure of the W3C.
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the standards organization that specifies the Web platform, like HTML (kind of), CSS, and RDF. It also is the organization that standardized ActivityPub and AS2 in 2019. The [W3C process](https://www.w3.org/policies/process/ ) requires a special kind of group, called a Working Group, to create official recommendations on the part of the organization. Working Groups can have members nominated by the [W3C member organizations](https://www.w3.org/membership/list/ ), as well as some [Invited Experts](https://www.w3.org/invited-experts/ ).
The W3C has another structure, called a [Community Group](https://www.w3.org/community/ ), that’s much looser. Anyone can join a community group, as long as they sign the [Contributor License Agreement](https://www.w3.org/community/about/process/cla-deed/ ), which grants a copyright and patent license to the work they do with the group. Community Groups don’t produce formal recommendations in the W3C; they can produce [Community Group Reports](https://www.w3.org/community/about/process/#deliverables ), which can be documents, software, or really anything.
So, the [Social Web Working Group](https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg ) created and edited ActivityPub and AS2 back in the mid-2010s. The group had a charter that extended into 2018; it was extended to early 2019 so the work on ActivityPub could be finished. The working group was then disbanded. A new Community Group, the SocialCG, had been started in 2017. It took over the process of supporting new extensions to AP and AS2, as well as maintaining the errata for the two main documents. Importantly, it can’t make major changes to the documents themselves — that requires a working group.
The experience of developers and users over the last decade in using ActivityPub has pointed out some real needs for updates to the documents. The W3C staff have asked the SocialCG to draft a charter for a new working group that could make backwards-compatible changes to these documents — adding clarifications, and possibly including new features. This would be great for the specifications, great for the Social Web, and great for the Internet at large.
The problem is that there isn’t a clear relationship between the boundaries of the new working group and the boundaries of the community group. What input would members of the community group have in the editing of the updated ActivityPub documents? Especially given that W3C members tend to be more commercial and institutional than the mostly Open Source developers who work in the SocialCG, there is a concern that a new Social Web Working Group would prioritize the needs of corporate developers with lots of resources, at the expense of Open Source devs making code for small communities.
The answer we’ve landed on is to implement a [stage process](https://swicg.github.io/potential-charters/stage-process ), in which new ideas are initiated and documented as Community Group Reports before the Working Group takes them up for possible inclusion the main recommendation documents — or becoming new recommendations on their own. This process has worked well in other Community Groups at W3C, and the W3C staff is really supportive of it.
One problem with this process for the SocialCG is that we never adopted rules for how we make decisions when we started the group. We agreed casually to use the same consensus-based mechanisms we’d used in the Social Web Working Group, but never put together an official charter for the group. This casual structure has worked well for a long time, but in order to set up this more formal staging process, we need to have a more formal decision-making process.
The good news is that the norm in the W3C, as in most Internet standards organization, is to use consensus-based decision-making. So, the [new SocialCG proposed charter](https://swicg.github.io/potential-charters/CGCharter-1727386911.html ) has a lot of casual consensus, too, as well as pretty open participation on a very peer-oriented basis. It’s about the minimum structure you need to have a long-running organization.
So, let me recap: we want updated, backwards-compatible versions of ActivityPub and Activity Streams 2.0 with more clarity and maybe even new features. In order to get those, we need a Working Group. In order to get *that*, we need to establish a stage process. And in order to adopt the stage process, we need to have a new CG charter. So: CG charter leads to stage process leads to WG leads to new specs leads to new features.
The Community Group intends to consider approving the new CG charter at its January 2025 meeting. So, people interested in ActivityPub, standardization, and group dynamics in general are invited to [review the documents](https://github.com/swicg/potential-charters ) and submit [GitHub issues](https://github.com/swicg/potential-charters/issues ) or comment on existing issues. If you’re not already a member of the SocialCG, you can [join](https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/join ) in a just a few minutes. It’s also reasonable for non-members to comment or make suggestions.
This work is complicated, but it’s also fascinating, and it is an exciting part of putting ActivityPub on a solid footing for the future.

2024-11-17 18:44:55 UTC

- reply

If you have a favourite Open Source server, app, Web client, library, toolkit, or whatever, please let them know about the event! And let *me* know — I can follow up with their team.

2024-11-17 17:04:02 UTC

##
Reminder: Social Web Devroom Deadline is Dec 1A reminder for Open Source developers working on the Fediverse: proposals for talks at the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2025 are due by December 1.
If you get them in well before the deadline, you can get helpful feedback and give your proposal a better chance of being accepted.
More information on how to submit a proposal at [FOSDEM 2025 Social Web Devroom Call for Participation](https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/11/01/fosdem-2025-social-web-devroom-call-for-participation/ ).

2024-11-15 23:31:43 UTC

##
SWF’s Evan Prodromou on the For a Better Web PodcastI, Evan, was interviewed on [Vivaldi’s](https://vivaldi.com/ ) For a Better Web podcast. I talked to host Bruce Lawson about ActivityPub, the Social Web Foundation, and how open standards win.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/better-web/evan-prodromou-social-web-foundation-for-a-better-web/

2024-11-07 19:58:03 UTC

One of the Social Web Foundation’s programs for this year is to work on making [long-form text](https://socialwebfoundation.org/long-form-text-on-the-fediverse/ ) more useful and available on the Social Web. By this, we mean multi-paragraph texts of “web page” length, like a blog post, a magazine article, a newsletter, a forum post, or a wiki page. This length of text can *usually* fit comfortably into a single ActivityPub object — let’s say tens or maybe low hundreds of kilobytes of content. Longer texts like books are probably too big for this use.
There are a lot of producers of long-form text on the Web, and many have enabled ActivityPub for their software. There is some discussion of longer texts in the [Activity Vocabulary](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/ ) — the definition of most of the data types used in ActivityPub — but it’s not all in one place, and there’s not practical guidance on restrictions.
To help publishers and consumers of long-form text objects, I pulled together the relevant properties and types into a [Fediverse Enhancement Proposal](https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep ) (FEP), which is a community-led standardization process. The document, [FEP-b2b8: Long-form Text](https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/b2b8/fep-b2b8.md ), is currently available as a draft for review.
If you’re a publisher of long-form text, or you are developing user interfaces that may encounter this kind of data, please take some time to review. This is still a draft-level document, but I’d love to see it shaped and improved by incorporating the experience and knowledge of many practitioners and implementers.

2024-11-02 00:32:12 UTC

The [Social Web Foundation](https://socialwebfoundation.org/ ) is pleased to announce the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2025, and invite participants to submit proposals for talks for the event.
[FOSDEM](https://fosdem.org/2025/ ) is an exciting free and open source software event in Brussels, Belgium that brings together thousands of enthusiasts from around the world. The event spans the weekend of February 1-2, 2025 and features discussion tracks (“devrooms”) for scores of different technology topics.
The Social Web Devroom will take place in the afternoon of Saturday, February 1.##
FormatThere will be two available talk formats:<li>25 minutes – for bigger projects, followed by 5 minutes of questions.</li><li>8 minutes – lightning talks on smaller or newer projects, in groups of 3, followed by 6 minutes of combined questions for the group.</li>##
TopicsThe Social Web Devroom is open to talks all about the Social Web AKA the Fediverse, including:<li>Implementations of the ActivityPub protocol or ActivityPub API</li><li>Clients for ActivityPub-enabled software like Mastodon</li><li>Supporting services for the Fediverse, like search or onboarding</li><li>ActivityPub-related libraries, toolkits, and frameworks</li><li>Tools, bots, platforms, and related topics</li>##
Important dates<li>Submission open: 1 Nov 2024</li><li>Submission deadline: 1 Dec 2024</li><li>Acceptance notifications: 10 Dec 2024</li><li>Final schedule announcement: 15 Dec 2024</li><li>Devroom: 1 Feb 2025</li>##
SubmissionsSubmit talk proposals to https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2025/cfp . Select “Social Web” from the “Track” dropdown, and include the length of your talk (8/25) in the submission notes.##
Code of ConductAll attendees and speakers must be familiar with and agree to the FOSDEM Code of Conduct https://fosdem.org/2025/practical/conduct/.##
ContactQuestions about topics, formats, or the Social Web in general should go to [contact@socialwebfoundation.org](mailto:contact@socialwebfoundation.org ).

2024-09-29 21:24:50 UTC

I want to highlight some of the blog posts and social updates of support for the Social Web Foundation since our launch on 24 Sep 2024.
It was great to get so much support and encouragement from everyone involved in making this launch happen. This is just the first step on a ten thousand kilometre journey, but we’re lucky to have such an encouraging and supportive team and community behind us.##
Founders<li><a href="https://write.as/evanp/announcing-the-social-web-foundation" data-type="link" data-id="https://write.as/evanp/announcing-the-social-web-foundation">Announcing the Social Web Foundation</a> from Evan Prodromou</li><li><a href="http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/09/on-the-social-web-foundation/" data-type="link" data-id="http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/09/on-the-social-web-foundation/">On the Social Web Foundation</a> from Tom Coates</li><li><a href="https://internet.exchangepoint.tech/social-web-foundation/" data-type="link" data-id="https://internet.exchangepoint.tech/social-web-foundation/">The Social Web Foundation</a> from Mallory Knodel</li>##
Supporters<li>“<a href="https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/113193762074264772" data-type="link" data-id="https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/113193762074264772">Happy to be a launch partner</a>” from Eugen Rochko, Mastodon</li><li><a href="https://flipboard.social/@Flipboard/113193984424972354">The Social Web Foundation launched today. </a> from Flipboard</li><li><a href="https://www.threads.net/@robsherman/post/DAUY-24PPmN?xmt=AQGz0nsI37VAmHhl6lqRuZmQnnYHGcwfLaeUVMvQXl8-Kw" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.threads.net/@robsherman/post/DAUY-24PPmN?xmt=AQGz0nsI37VAmHhl6lqRuZmQnnYHGcwfLaeUVMvQXl8-Kw">“Thrilled that the Social Web Foundation is now live”</a> from Rob Sherman, Meta</li><li>“<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ghost-foundation_were-very-excited-to-be-partnering-with-activity-7244394400259145728-R6XD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ghost-foundation_were-very-excited-to-be-partnering-with-activity-7244394400259145728-R6XD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop">We’re excited to be partnering with the Social Web Foundation</a>” from Ghost</li><li>“<a href="https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113193923893151659" data-type="link" data-id="https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113193923893151659">We’re incredibly proud</a>” from Pixelfed</li><li><a href="https://about.iftas.org/2024/09/24/welcoming-the-social-web-foundation/">Welcoming the Social Web Foundation</a> from IFTAS</li><li>“<a href="https://write.as/blog/welcome-to-the-social-web-foundation" data-type="link" data-id="https://write.as/blog/welcome-to-the-social-web-foundation">Welcome to the Social Web Foundation</a>” from Matt Baer, Write.as</li><li>“<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hannahaubry_launch-of-social-web-foundation-activity-7245121202527121409-5RQ-?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hannahaubry_launch-of-social-web-foundation-activity-7245121202527121409-5RQ-?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop">I’m thrilled about the launch of the Social Web Foundation</a>“, Hannah Aubrey, Fastly</li><li><a href="https://vivaldi.com/blog/social-web-foundation-launches-supported-by-vivaldi/" data-type="link" data-id="https://vivaldi.com/blog/social-web-foundation-launches-supported-by-vivaldi/">Social Web Foundation launches, supported by Vivaldi</a> by Vivaldi</li>##
Advisors<li><a href="https://werd.io/2024/unlocking-the-fediverse-the-social-web-foundation-is-shaping-the">Unlocking the Fediverse: The Social Web Foundation is Shaping the Next Era of the Web</a> by Ben Werdmuller</li><li>“<a href="https://j12t.social/@j12t/113193376536865660" data-type="link" data-id="https://j12t.social/@j12t/113193376536865660">The new ‘Social Web Foundation’ is launching today</a>” by Johannes Ernst</li><li>“<a href="https://www.threads.net/@chris/post/DAUDI56zQcl" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.threads.net/@chris/post/DAUDI56zQcl">Looking forward to supporting the Social Web Foundation</a>” by Chris Messina</li><li>“<a href="https://techpolicy.social/@mchris/113193129741926452" data-type="link" data-id="https://techpolicy.social/@mchris/113193129741926452">The Social Web Foundation has launched</a>” by Chris Riley</li>##
Press<li>“<a href="https://wedistribute.org/2024/09/social-web-foundation-launch/">Evan Prodromou Launches the Social Web Foundation</a>” – WeDistribute</li><li>“<a href="https://thenewstack.io/social-web-foundation-launched-how-in-is-w3c-on-fediverse/" data-type="link" data-id="https://thenewstack.io/social-web-foundation-launched-how-in-is-w3c-on-fediverse/">Social Web Foundation Launched</a>” – The New Stack</li><li>“<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/24/as-the-open-social-web-movement-grows-a-new-nonprofit-launches-to-expand-the-fediverse/" data-type="link" data-id="https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/24/as-the-open-social-web-movement-grows-a-new-nonprofit-launches-to-expand-the-fediverse/">As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the fediverse</a>” – TechCrunch</li>##
Friends and allies<li>“<a href="https://www.threads.net/@efforg/post/DAT_wVcp5UJ?xmt=AQGzuE2AndBhk8fGhbfIwC5cO4vVT1bjajAc9na2RH1nZg" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.threads.net/@efforg/post/DAT_wVcp5UJ?xmt=AQGzuE2AndBhk8fGhbfIwC5cO4vVT1bjajAc9na2RH1nZg">Corporate social media locks you into their platforms</a>” – EFF</li><li>“<a href="https://w3c.social/@w3c/113193482727735523" data-type="link" data-id="https://w3c.social/@w3c/113193482727735523">We are happy to share that today the Social Web Foundation launched</a>” – W3C</li>

2024-09-24 19:56:44 UTC

- reply

We are social web first; you can follow @npub1tuh…89y4 for updates. But part of our work is reaching people that aren’t on the Fediverse yet.

2024-09-24 13:00:00 UTC

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.<li>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.</li><li>Mallory Knodel, previously CTO of the Center for Democracy and Technology and human rights and internet standards researcher, will act as Executive Director.</li><li>Tom Coates, product designer and entrepreneur, will serve as the organization’s Product Director.</li>
Mallory Knodel (@[ohmallory@socialwebfoundation.org](https://socialwebfoundation.org/@ohmallory )) 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:<li>educating general and targeted audiences about the social web</li><li>informing policy-makers about issues on the social web</li><li>enhancing and extending the ActivityPub protocol</li><li>building tools and plumbing to make the social web easier and more engaging to use</li>
“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](https://socialwebfoundation.org/@evanprodromou )). “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:<li>Mastodon</li><li>Flipboard</li><li>Automattic</li><li>Meta</li><li>Ghost</li><li>Pixelfed</li><li>Medium</li><li>IFTAS</li><li>Write.as</li><li>Fastly</li><li>Vivaldi</li><li>The BLVD</li>
“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](https://mastodon.social/@Gargron )).
“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](https://threads.net/@robsherman )). “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](https://notiz.blog/author/matthias-pfefferle/ )) “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](https://flipboard.com/@mike )). “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](https://mastodon.iftas.org/@jaz )). “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](https://social.vivaldi.net/@jon )). “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](https://moth.social/@bart )) “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](https://activitypub.ghost.org/archive/ ))
“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](https://write.as/matt/ )). “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](mailto:swf@socialwebfoundation.org ). Email [contact@socialwebfoundation.org](mailto:contact@socialwebfoundation.org ).