Last Week in Fediverse – ep 85
It’s been an eventful week in the fediverse, with the Swiss government ending their Mastodon pilot, the launch of the Social Web Foundation, Interaction Policies with GoToSocial and more!
Swiss Government’s Mastodon instance will shut down
The Swiss Government will shut down their Mastodon server at the end of the month. The Mastodon server was launched in September 2023, as a pilot that lasted one year. During the original announcement last year, the Swiss government focused on Mastodon’s benefits regarding data protection and autonomy. Now that the pilot has run for the year, the government has decided not to continue. The main reason they give is the low engagement, stating that the 6 government accounts had around 3500 followers combined, and that the contributions also had low engagement rates. The government also notes that the falling number of active Mastodon users worldwide as a contributing factor. When the Mastodon pilot launched in September 2023, Mastodon had around 1.7M monthly active users, a number that has dropped a year later to around 1.1M.
The Social Web Foundation has launched
The Social Web Foundation (SWF) is a new foundation managed by Evan Prodromou, with the goal of growing the fediverse into a healthy, financially viable and multi-polar place. The foundation launches with the support of quite a few organisations. Some are fediverse-native organisations such as Mastodon, but Meta, Automattic and Medium are also part of the organisations that support the SWF. The Ford Foundation also supports the SWF with a large grant, and in total the organisation has close to 1 million USD in funding.
The SWF lists four projects that they’ll be working on for now:
- adding end-to-end encryption to ActivityPub, a project that Evan Prodromou and Tom Coates (another member of the SWF) recently got a grant for.
- Creating and maintaining a fediverse starter page. There are quite a variety of fediverse starter pages around already, but not all well maintained.
- A Technical analysis and report on compatibility between ActivityPub and GDPR.
- Working on long-form text in the fediverse.
The SWF is explicit in how they define two terms that have had a long and varied history: they state that the ‘fediverse’ is equivalent with the ‘Social Web’, and that the fediverse only consists of platforms that use ActivityPub. Both of these statements are controversial, to put it mildly, and I recommend this article for an extensive overview of the variety of ways that the term ‘fediverse’ is used by different groups of people, all with different ideas of what this network actually is, and what is a part of it. The explicit exclusion and rejection of Bluesky and the AT Protocol as not the correct protocol is especially noteworthy.
Another part of the SWF’s announcement that stands out is the inclusion of Meta as one of the supporting organisations. Meta’s arrival in the fediverse with Threads has been highly controversial since it was announced over a year ago, and one of the continuing worries that many people express is that of an ‘Extend-Embrace-Extinguish’ strategy by Meta. As the SWF will become a W3C member, and will likely continue to be active in the W3C groups, Meta being a supporter of the SWF will likely not diminish these worries.
As the SWF is an organisation with a goal of evangelising and growing the fediverse, it is worth pointing out that the reaction from a significant group within the fediverse developer community is decidedly mixed, with the presence of Meta, and arguments about the exclusive claim on the terms Social Web and fediverse being the main reasons. And as the goal of the SWF is to evangelise and grow the fediverse, can it afford to lose potential growth that comes from the support and outreach of the current fediverse developers?
Software updates
There are quite some interesting fediverse software updates this week that are worth pointing out:
GoToSocial’s v0.17 release brings the software to a beta state, with a large number of new features added. The main standout feature is Interaction Policies, with GoToSocial explaining: “Interaction policies let you determine who can reply to, like, or boost your statuses. You can accept or reject interactions as you wish; accepted replies will be added to your replies collection, and unwanted replies will be dropped.”
Interaction Policies are a highly important safety feature, especially the ability to turn off replies, as game engine Godot found out this week. It is a part where Mastodon lags behind other projects, on the basis that it is very difficult in ActivityPub to fully prevent the ability for other people to reply to a post. GoToSocial takes a more practical route by telling other software what their interaction policy is for that specific post, and if a reply does not meet the policy, it is simply dropped.
- Peertube 6.3 release brings the ability to separate video streams from audio streams. This allows people now to use PeerTube as an audio streaming platform as well as a video streaming platform.
- The latest update for NodeBB signals that the ActivityPub integration for the forum software is now ready for beta testing.
- Ghost’s latest update now has fully working bi-directional federation, and they state that a private beta is now weeks away.
In Other News
IFTAS has started with a staged rollout of their Content Classification Service. With the opt-in service, a server can let IFTAS check all incoming image hashes for CSAM, with IFTAS handling the required (for US-based servers) reporting to NCMEC. IFTAS reports that over 50 servers already have signed up to participate with the service. CSAM remains a significant problem on decentralised social networks, something that is difficult to deal with for (volunteer) admins. IFTAS’ service makes this significantly easier while helping admins to execute their legal responsibilities. Emelia Smith also demoed the CCS during last week’s FediForum.
The Links
- All the speed demo videos of last week’s FediForum are now available on PeerTube.
- Evan Prodromou’s book about ActivityPub, ‘ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web‘ has officially launched.Lemmy Development Update.
- PieFed’s Development update for September 2024.
- A tool to make sure you see all replies on a fediverse posts (and an explanation on how it differs from FediFetcher).
- A work-in-progress Rust library for ActivityPub.
- The German Data Protection Office updated their Data Protection Guidelines for running a Mastodon server.
- The Revolution Will Be Federated – WeDistribute.
- This week’s updates for fediverse software.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!
https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-85/
Launch of Social Web Foundation
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, 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 (@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.
The Revolution Will Be Federated
In this final, crucial campaign stretch: Mainstream platforms are oversaturated, while millions on the “fediverse” are perfectly situated for progressive organizing – and largely overlooked. The 2024Heidi Li Feldman (We Distribute)