I agree that transparency of both decision making and funding would be beneficial to the Foundation’s cause. I personally feel like there’s some misinformation surrounding the way the organization is being marketed and even some translucency, if not transparency, might help.
I think this is fallacious reasoning. Just because there are 13 “partners” doesn’t mean they all contribute equally to funding or influence. It’s not “clear” at all how much influence Meta has (maybe very little, maybe a lot, – I don’t know). These kinds of statements from Foundation founders, supporters, and advisors increase my concerns rather than lessen them.
Some related information…
“The Social Web Foundation is a fiscally-sponsored project of Exchange Point Institute, a US 501(c)3 non-profit.” – Donate | Social Web Foundation
The sponsoring “Institute” (directed by Mallory Knodel) appears to have been financially inactive for the last several years [1]. The Ford Foundation only reports a $50,000 grant to the Exchange Point Institute in Feb 2024 for the “Infrared Network”, but I can’t find any description of that network, so I don’t know if it’s related or not [2]. In any case, that’s a long way from $1M in available funding.
Some of the projects listed for the “Social Web” Foundation appear to include projects that were already funded prior to its formation. Even then, I’d be surprised if that funding was anywhere near $1M. My guess is that the $1M is more aspirational than real, like the “tens of millions of users connected by ActivityPub” claim.
I don’t think this organization is a grift, but it “smells” a little like one. I think there’s been some bad decisions about how it is being promoted and some misinformation, but I also assume the founders have good intentions. However, good intentions are not enough. I wouldn’t donate any of my money to them based on the currently available information.
FYI the InfraRed network is an international grassroots sysadmin network encompassing more than twenty historical and current radical tech collectives working to provide alternatives to the Tech Giants. I know because petites singularités has been part of it for some time. I do share your concern though about Mallory Knodel conducting this survey of In.fra.red AND being in the Social Web Foundation with Mata as one of its founding members. The paradox seems self-evident to me, but remains unclear for the rest of the network, which I’m about to address soon.
It’s certainly worth investigating – although necessarily linked to SWF, Mallory’s done a lot of other work as well. And looking at it from the positive side, it would be great to get twenty historical and current radical tech collectives more involved with the fediverse, and it sounds like Mallory’s got a good connection with them. BUt yeah, this is clearly another area where transparency would be useful.
Here’s a Mastodon poll I set up. I know it would get more responses if the text was shorter and the poll showed “above the fold” but I wanted to give people the context (including Ben’s point that there are often reasons not to have real-time financial transparency) so that they understand there are potential tradeoffs.
It does indeed look very corporate, yes. But I dont necessarily see that as a bad thing. I’m all for the “wait and see” approach, and giving it a chance.
The only thing I didnt like was:
The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”
Because the fediverse is not the same as the social web, it’s the federated approach to the social web. The social web itself is more diverse and has many more projects.
I agree with everything @stevebate says in his last post, and I appreciate the research he’s done on institutional relationships.
Despite my position of cautiously supporting SWF, I wouldn’t suggest giving them any money either. They seem to have access to plenty of that for now. In fact one reason I support the SWF strategy is that it’s redirecting funds from DataFarmers into supporting a post-DataFarming future for the net (hopefully that’s what’s happening and @eprodrom’s involvement makes me more inclined to think so).
If any of us can spare a few dollars, I suggest we put it into either;
The entity that looks after SocialHub (currently Petites Singularité)
CodeBerg, which hosts the FEP and Fediverse Ideas repos, and a number of other fediverse-related projects (including fediverse.party)
Any legal entity whose mission is to support work on forge federation, including Forgejo, which CodeBerg is now an instance of. Liberating Free Code developers from HitGub using a federated model would be a game changer.
I’ve expanded on my thoughts on SWF in a couple of blog posts.
The Social Web Foundation and the elephant in the federated room has my overall persptive: if SWF evolves in the right way it can potentially be a very good thing for the fediverses (not just the corporate fediverse), and even if it doesn’t it’s still llikely to catalyze positive changes. In fact, it already has! And the post goes into a lot of detail about the elephant in the room that’s not getting a lot of attention in the discussions (and I don’t mean Mastodon)
More questions than answers: another post about the Social Web Foundation and the fediverses builds on @trwnh’s excellent point about the ultimate takeaway from this thread: what are you going to do about it? It’s got questions for people who (mostly) support SWF, people who are concerned about SWF and/or Meta, developers thinking of different protocols and/or multiple-protocol solutions becauise of concerns about the directions of ActivityPub, Bluesky and the ATmosphere, and people organizing and developing for free fediverses (defined in opposition to surveillance capitalism) that prioritize justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Eventually it will also have some more detailed discussions of key questions for SWF about transparency, equity, and safety … but not yet
Will the Social Web Foundation prioritize safety?, currently a draft, looks at why there are concerns that they won’t … and some ideas if they do. There are a bunch of specific areas I’d like feedback on at the bottom.
A core tension between alternative cultures and the mainstream: the mainstream demands that alternative cultures, like #FOSS conform in order to be effective, while the alt paths intentionally resist this push, aiming to remain distinct and radical. This clash creates a deeper issue—#mainstreaming voices tend to block and reject the need for a bridge between these two spaces. The failure to recognize the importance of building such bridges leads to division and stagnation, perpetuating the current social, technical and political mess.
The root problem lies in “common sense” blocking and an intolerance toward the very idea of bridging these divergent paths, hindering progress from both sides. it’s up to us in the grassroots to build this bridge and hold it in place.
I agree about the core tension of the mainstream demanding that alternative cultures conform. It’s recursive too, and is also true within cultures that see themselves as alternative. The current discussions on a Black-led allowlist instance has some great examples of this, with some people coming from the (mainstream-within-FOSS) definition of openness decrying it as a violation of the fediverse’s values.
But it’s not just a matter of mainstream organizations rejecting bridges. The mainstream wants bridges on their terms – Threads federation for example, and Meta’s plans to offer their racist ,anti-LGBTQ+ moderation tools to the Fediverse. And the alternative cultures may want to reject bridges too; white supremacy is mainstream, but the Fediverse collectively rejected a bridge to Gab.
Tying it back to SWF, I think there’s an opportunity for grassroots to influence what kind of bridge it will be. But I also think it’s quite possible that the “free fedvierses” focused on opposition to (mainstream) surveillance capitalism will choose to reject this bridge … obviously I think it’d be better if it evolves in a way where the bridge has significant benefits to the free fediverses as well as the corporate fediverse, and if so that could change the dynamics. Time will tell!
On the other hand, with this kind of attitude from @eprodrom , SWF’s going to do more harm than good to ActivityPub and the Fediverse.
Heaven knows I don’t always agree with Masnick but even though Bluesky cites his “Protocols not Platforms” as the basis for their approach, and he’s now on their board, he’s consistently framed things in terms of multiple protocols. In fact I actually do agree with the way Masnick phrases it in the article Evan is being so rude about –
So I don’t so much see other decentralized social media systems like ActivityPub (Mastodon, Threads, etc.), nostr, Farcaster, Lens, DSNP, etc., as competitors.
Rather, I see them as all presenting unique experiments to see where the real value can show up. I think there’s a ton to learn from all of them. For example, I think Mastodon’s focus on local community and the power of defederation is a fascinating experiment. We’re also seeing some interesting new systems built on ActivityPub that challenge the way we think about decentralized apps.
@deadsuperhero’s response here is completely right: behavior like this from Evan pushes people away from the space.