I sincerely ask what low switching effort exists? There’s plenty of people that have experienced issues with creating new accounts and attempting to direct their followers to their new accounts. It’s not a smooth process and interoperability is also not a smooth process. We also, need to be accurate. There is a possibility to keep your social graph intact. Being as users do not own their social graph nor their own identity and information this is a statement that drives me insane. Compared to Facebook yes, the situation is significantly better but I wouldn’t call it low effort.
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I completely agree and I would not call it low effort now either.
Note that all I said was that this was the promise of the fediverse. I don’t think the fediverse has truly delivered on this promise yet though.
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That’s totally fair. Apologies if my response came on strong. I am passionate about things being clear and easily digestible for the average person.
The Fediverse has a lot of “advertisements” that it fails to deliver upon
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No need to apologise, I did not read any bad tone or ill will in your reply.
And yea, we want the fediverse to be a lot better than it currently is and sometimes we advertise the ideal version in our minds rather than the actual existing version.
We need to keep these promises in mind when we consider how to evolve, extend or surpass the current protocol, as we should strive to support these promises as best we can.
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Right. Today’s Fediverse is a prototype, we need to learn from it. And it’s not just a protocol issue; there are multiple proposals of nomadic identity and data portability over ActivityPub. But the dynamics of the system mean that the organizations with the most resources has an incentive to invest in them. It works great for Mastodon gGmbH to set the default for new signups to .social and then not make it easy for people to move!
That said, it’s also a protocol problem. I saw a quote from Evan saying that one of the positive impacts of Bluesky has been that their highlighting the ActivityPub Fediverse’s lack of data portability got the SWICG to start focusing on the issue. Wait a second, people ave been complaining about this for years, why did it take Bluesky to get the SWICG to finally start prioritizing it?
On the one hand, water under the bridge – it’s great that they are (and while I haven’t been tracking the progress I was really impressed by Lisa Dussault’s outstanding threat modeling work that kicked it off). On the other hand, good learning. What needs to be done to complement all the work on nomadit identity FEPs and SWICG’s work? How can the SWICG standards group be more proactive going forward? In areas where they’re not, how can other groups in the ActivityPub ecosystem can fill the gap? etc etc etc
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Hopefully LOLA will make this much smoother once it’s ratified and implemented. (it’s still a draft by @lisa )
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Often it takes someone willing to lead and do the work to get anything done within SWICG, because everyone has their own priorities. That’s the same with any standards work, especially ones with a “doercracy” (I believe that was the term used in the SWICG meeting on Friday).
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Right. And, who can make the time to do the work? People who are funded to do it, people who get professional benefit from the work, or people who can find the time outside of their jobs and other commitments and choose to invest that time in the SWICG (or the broader ActivityPub community) given its whiteness etc.
I’m not saying do-ocracies are inherently bad; Noisebridge’s do-ocracy page highlights that it can be a decentralized, anarchist approach, and describes how they make it work. But I am saying that the ActivityPub Fediverse’s multi-year failure to make progress on data portability is an example of do-ocracy very much not working in this context.
Will that change going forward? Time will tell. Like I said in How to make progress on the almost complete absence of Black people in SocialHub and SWICG discussions? the SWICG needs funded participation for long-time volunteers as well as broadening participation … the same’s true for non-SWICG efforts like SWF’s “Fediverse Starter Page” project. Without funding, it’s asking for free labor from already-marginalized people … who are less likely to have the time and have lots of other projects that they could help out. So the same patterns are likely to continue.
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I 100% agree @jdp23 — I’ve been very lucky to be able to garner enough support to cover my contributions at like minimum wage or well below market rates, but recognise that I’m absolutely an exception.
The normal case is people can’t contribute due to funding, time, or technical constraints, or a combination of all three. That is absolutely something that I think SWF should allocate funding towards.
I’d also call on SWF and similar organisations to allocate some percentage of their budget towards improving trust & safety on the fediverse (say 5-10%), since without trust & safety you do not have a fediverse.
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Correct. My work on the fediverse so far has all been done for the love. Partly because it’s been on the community development side rather than the technical development side; software research, helpdesking for newbies, exploring Use Experience design ideas, inviting and encouraging potential implementers, introducing people working on related stuff, and so on. Getting funding for this kind of work is even harder than getting funding for technical work.
I would really like to see the SWF address this as part of their funding-related activities. Is that within your scope as you see it @eprodrom ?
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For those who haven’t seen it, @benwerd has a very thoughtful post on The two Fediverses, looking at the contrast between what he calls the “growth fediverse” and the “movement fediverse”. His take is that the lines between these two paths are blurry, and there are both potential synergies and undeniable differences. Since (in his view) “both share a commitment to user safety, inclusivity, and decentralization” but differ in how best to achieve them …
I think the discussion between the movement Fediverse and the growth Fediverse has the potential to push the open social web further than might otherwise have been possible.
I’m not saying that I completely agree with his analysis but I certainly agree with that conclusion! And he has several good suggestions in terms of @trwnh’s most excellent point about that the key takeawy from this thread is “what are you goint to do about it?” For example:
The goal is a multipolar federated social web. I think a large part of the solution is not to say this, but to show it: conduct meetings and make decisions with as much transparency as possible, so as to prove that Meta (and any other partner) is not dominant.
Indeed. And lack of transparency has been a problem with Meta’s interactions with the Fediverse ever since those initial very unfortunate NDA meetings, and the equally-unfortunate invitation-only listening sessions last December that included many fediverse influencers who support Meta but do not appear to have included any active critics. Oh well, what’s done is done …
More positively, here’s a chance for SWF to have an positive impact. @eprodrom as far as I know almost very little’s been published about SWF’s financial support. In TechCrunch, Sarah Perez a mentioned “large” grant from the Ford Foundation, gave the impression that Meta’s also contributing, and said that the total budget is “closing in” on $1 million; and I’ve heard conflicting speculation on whether or not the work on end-to-end encryption is funded by the Ethereum Project grant you and Tom got over the summer. So SWF can get things off to a good start on this front by being transparent about current funding.
And more generally:
It’s worth considering what organizing more concretely for the movement Fediverse looks like, and how it might intersect and act as a check on the growth Fediverse.
Indeed. One important thing I’d add here (and something Ben discusses in that post) is that this organizing needs to involve an intersectionally diverse group of people, including quite a few perspectives that have historically been very very very marginalized in the “decentralized social networks movement”, and take place in enviroments that prioritize inclusivity. Easier said than done, of course, but it’s very important to keep in mind.
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Totally agreed about the importance of trust & safety to the fediverse … I’d like to see a much higher number, but in any case this is another good example where transparency up front could help. And not just with trust & safety, it would be great for SWF to share their initial thinking about what percentage of their budget they see as going to what, in the short term as they get started and longer term if things work out the way they hope.
And relatedly, SWF can also help other organizations and indiividuals focused on trust and safety – by passing some funding on to them (Evan said something about getting funding to Mastodon, so it seems like they expect to be able to pass funding on) as well as helping them with SWF’s corporate and foundation funders.
… and small server operators? This is a gold nugget right here. This is pretty much the test suite for fediverse governance. Maybe even its Prime Directive?
Can you elaborate on that?
If they help to funnel more funding to smaller projects, and to maintenance as well as invention, and to developer work outside of coding too, all of that could be helpful.
Aral Balkan got the conversation going about questioning the term “user” AFAIK, and a lot of us have been influenced by this. I think there are legitimate use cases for “user”, eg where the “user” is not necessarily a person but could be a piece of software or a remote system. But once you get into the habit, it’s remarkably easy to replace most uses of “user(s)” with person or people, and in the context of social software, it does help to keep our eye on the ball.
Or phase shift into a new form, for new times. But yes, as the late David Graeber pointed out, many social movements achieve their goals far sooner than they expect, and collapse before they can agree on more ambitious ones. That’s definitely a risk for us at this inflection point.
I was going to argue with you, and then I realised we’re in heated agreement 
You’re right, there’s no point getting into the nitty gritty of where the plumbing goes, and which fittings to use, until you figure out which rooms need a water supply, and what for, and where in the building they’re going.
On that note, thanks for the bump @bumblefudge . I agree it could help to get more eyes on Fediverse Ideas, get a broader range of fedizens creating and commenting on issues there.
Is it useful to have evangelists there, with only the vaguest second-hand clue about implementation (ie people like me)? Or is it specifically a place for power implementers to jam on specs?
It might also be easier to pitch it to people who don’t want to install 10 different email apps because there are 10 different email protocols, and people are fragmented across the resulting jumble of email networks 
Come on Steve, that’s just BlueSky’s initials. Sure is convenient to people like me who think it is BS, in the sense you’re hinting at. In the same way it’s convenient for people who think SubStack are fascist sympathisers that their initials are SS. But just using those initials isn’t denigrating anything.
You going to check for dirt under their fingernails as well? Come on. Even Stallman is OK with having a presence on FarceBook or other Walled Gardens, if its purpose is to be punch a hole in the wall and show people how to get out.
There are those people. Also those who were preparing a bolthole, just in case, or thinking they could reserve their familar @handle, not understanding the first thing about how the fediverse works. But, that’s actually normal for social networks, and new web services in general. Account creation is always far higher than retention.
As things stand, MAU is not a better metric. Because the current implementations of NodeInfo, by which those stats are gathered, are totally whacky. As I understand it, accounts only counted in MAU if they logged in that month. Most of us leave our account logged in all the time, on all the apps we regularly use. So we’re only counted in MAU if we happen to try a new client that month, or have to log out of one of our apps and log back in for some reason.
Also, at least the fediverse has some stats collection, patchy as it is (and it’s an area that could do with some work). Are there even stats available on how many people have signed up for BlueSky or Nostr and abandoned them, or never used their accounts?
That’s true, but it’s an inherently unreliable connection. Like calling a friend on one phone, and another friend on another phone, putting one to each ear, and trying to relay messages back and forth. Far better to have a system where you can give them each others’ phone number (or @person@server.foo address, or whatever the identifier is), and they can call each other directly.
At the moment there is one bridge from the fediverse to BlueSky. One. Two to Nostr. One of which is blocked by most of the verse, and the other is also the BS bridge. It’s also a bridge to the IndieWeb.
So what would happen if a significant proportion of people in each network started talking across those bridges? I presume you’ve heard the term Single Point of Failure. Or Fail Whale, which is a specific example of one. The whole point of a federated network (or a decentralised network of any kind) is to avoid all that. Bridging is a stopgap, at best. Unless we get people running hundreds of them instead of running servers that host native accounts, in which case we’ve basically reinvented Nostr 
In the order you asked the questions; FEPs, yes, FEPs. Then as @aschrijver says, feed the output of that through to the SocialCG, and from there into a new version of the W3C standard as necessary. A formal standards process is the documentation process at the end of a period of experimentation, not the beginning.
100%. Give this man a coffee (or a joint, or a vodka, or a cigar, whichever he prefers) 
Fair point. But you seem to imagine that writing a standard is like waving a magic wand, that will cause all the implementations to start following the spec. The degree to which AP implementers follow the current AP spec suggests this is not how it works in practice, and there’s no logical reason why it would. A standards process is a rough consensus process among existing implementers or it is nothing.
The the best case scenario, this is something the SWF will help with.
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This is a silly rationalization for SWF’s X/Twitter account for several reasons, especially if you consider the context in which it was originally discussed. (The snarky opening was a hint of what was coming, I suppose.)
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I would say yes, but also, don’t expect things not to be technical, they are technical groups after all.
In the Trust & Safety taskforce I’m trying to include non-technical folks, but the nature of the work will generally be finding technical solutions to end-user problems.
This is completely wrong. MAU (Monthly Active Users (neé People)) refers to anyone who has been active in the past month, not just logins, but also any active login session continued into new months by use of the API as an authenticated user.
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Hey, Jon. So, we’re fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)3, which means our financials have to get filed annually in a form 990.
So that’s definitely a great time to look over the books!
@eprodrom Form 990s are certainly a great time to look over the books – especially since it’s legally required at that point! But why wait? There’s a lot of mistrust about SWF right now. Being transparent can be useful in several ways.
For example:
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as @thisismissem pointed out, SWF publicizing a commitment to invest X% in trust and safety can help encourage other organizations to take a similar approach. Of course in the very short term, because initial work includes projects like E2EE that are already in the works, the actual expenses might be lower than your goal … but publishing it now could help address the concerns I’ve heard that SWF as an organization will prioritize growth over safety
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in terms of the elephant in the room (and I don’t mean Mastodon!), transparency about how much you’re getting from Meta can only help in the short term. If you’re just getting support in kind, or a relatively small amount to get you off the ground and catalyze other funding, it could help alleviate the concerns many have voiced that SWF is basically a Meta front organization. Conversely if it really is a substantial chunk of your budget, it’s better to be up-front about it. (And just to clarify my own position on this front, while I’m certainly not a fan of Meta, I can certainly see why it makes sense for SWF to engage with them – I talked about this more in a reply to Anil at Jon (@jdp23) | Blåhaj Zone , and will go into more detail in a blog post)
Of course you don’t have to do any of these things – many non-profits aren’t particularly transparent about their funding and spending other than 990s and annual reports. But in a situation like this where there’s a lot of mistrust to start with, lack of transparency reinforces mistrust – it not only makes it look like you’re trying to hide something, it also gives the perception that you aren’t willing to do something that responds to concerns multiple people have addressed.
More positively, like @benwerd says, more transparency is a straightforward way to show that you have heard the concerns, and are doing something to address them.
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I want to be clear that my suggestion was to be transparent about decision-making, not finances. Having worked in non-profits for a while now, I know there are quite a few reasons why making those available in real-time may not be desirable - not least because it may impact ongoing fundraising from other groups, which would be pretty counter-productive in this case.
It’s clear that SWF isn’t a Meta front organization: there are 13 partners on its website. Understanding what decisions have been made should also allay those fears.
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Understood. I’ll consider joining.
In theory, yes. But are you sure that’s how it works in practice? I may be mistaking my fertile imagination for my patchy memory, but I remember @jaywink explaining Mastodon’s NodeInfo output this way when he was talking about updating NodeInfo before 2020 knocked Feneas sideways.
Perhaps we could carry on the discussion about stats collection in this thread on how NodeInfo might be improved?
I’m sorry it came across that way. That opening was intended to be a light-hearted way of saying that you were over-inflating a minor issue, and indulging in the narcissism of small differences. Not that you’re alone, this has been common in the responses to SWF, here and elsewhere. Not saying I’m immune either, we’re all human …
You going to tell us what they are?
Thanks for the clarification, Ben. I agree that transparency about SWF decision-making would be a good thing … and point taken that there can be reasons for making specifics available in real-time may not be desirable. Presumably they’re sharing rough current and projected numbers with current and potential funders, so I’m not sure why it would impact fundraising from other groups as long as it’s properly caveated, but yeah if they think transparency would be counter-productive in some areas, I can see why them might not want to go in that direction. Still I’d expect that with some creativity there are opportunities to share some information in ways that funders would approve of.
Not everybody shares your confidence SWF won’t in practice be a Meta front organization. I’m in the “time will tell” category, some non-profits that take funding from Meta (or any other big tech company) do some very good work, others are in practice Meta front organizations. Mallory’s been at Center for Democracy and Technology, which I see this as navigating fairly well in the privacy and digital rights space – they do great work on a lot of issues even though sometimes they’re more industry-friendly, so in my books they’re very much a net positive. Then again other Meta-funded and big tech-funded non-profits often operate as Meta front organizations, so we shall see.
And others are a lot more skeptical than me. And I understand why! Last year Evan objected to a mention of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” on the mailing list of SWICG, the standards body whose standard Meta is embracing. Some of the comments by SWF advisors and launch patners about Meta are naive and sycophantic – Eugen’s “a great victory for our cause”, Johannes’ “Meta is actually at the forefront” of “when an industry transforms from proprietary to open networks”.
Like I say I also understand why SWF wants Meta on board at this point, but I don’t think they’re well-served by just ignoring the concerns or just saying “it’s clear this isn’t the case.”
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