SocialWebFoundation - what do people think?

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As, nobody has posted on #SocialWebFoundation let’s start a thread:

Corporate presence in the Fediverse?

The announcement from the #SocialWebFoundation is a corporate vision rather than something native, grassroots or revolutionary. Describing people as “users” who follow “influencers and brands” is a social mess, the commercialized, top-down paths that clash with the #4opens of collaboration, activism, and mutual aid path we build. On its current path this is a delusional dream from corporate America trying to coopt the #4opens network we built from community, solidarity and radical change. On the #mainstreaming #NGO current path this is not the kind of project to engage with or be a part of building, we do not won’t a space dominated by brands and influencers, it isn’t the future anyone actually wants or needs.

On mainstream paths, there is an unspoken disconnect between “volunteerism”, philanthropy, and “entrepreneurship” in the paths #opensource and decentralized tech people take. In #FOSS when people contribute their time and skills, there’s an assumption that their work is for the public good, but many are actually hoping for recognition or a way to generate financial stability. It’s not a contradiction to expect support for work that holds social value, though when this manifests as “entrepreneurship” we see the #deathcult path, underlining expectation for funding and sustainability. This is a hard path to tread and stay “native” to the #openweb

This ties into the mess with philanthropy and funding. For initiatives to gain traction and financial support, they need a compelling story, but many in the #FOSS and #fediverse communities struggle with this social storytelling part. They underestimate how few people aligned with their “native” vision, and how difficult it is to convey, outreach, the non-mainstream paths to a broader audience and the people who hold the money. The concept of “sustainability” for organizations becomes convoluted, with an overemphasis on replicating “common sense” venture capital models. It’s a mess that philanthropic groups have significant resources but fail in distributing them meaningfully, focusing instead on mimicking pointless tech startup mess. This is very likely a problem with #SocialWebFoundation path, the question is how to medate this, for better outcomes.

This tension between grassroots movements, the expectations of funding, and the structural constraints of both the tech and non-profit paths. An example of this is the #NLnet and #EU tech funding fits ithis conversation of how philanthropy and volunteerism fail to mix due to flawed execution and basic storytelling problems on all sides.

More of my thinking on this Search Results for “funding” – Hamish Campbell It’s hard to find a path to mediate, especially with the growing corporate presence in our #openweb spaces like the Fediverse. Ideas please?

UPDATE: its very #mainstreaming As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the ‘fediverse’ | TechCrunch

Some quotes from my prier work:

“Power only understands power, so, we might need something that looks like “power” without all the power politics that involves… this is bluesky thinking to this end. If #activertypub is taken up by the #dotcons this WILL BE IMPOSED ON US anyway.”

“its trying to think outside this traditional path, so we think BEFORE we inevitably go down it this kinda crap path.”

“As I said here in the end this will be IMPOSED as a governance model dressed in “community clothes” if we do not build something else with dancing elephants and paper planes.”

“Our current working models of “governance” in open-source projects are Monarchy (the dictator for life), Aristocracy (the devs), oligarchy (the NGO, funders) and finally way out on the edge Democracy (the users).” This above is a move from current feudalism to NGO, the funders.

“…all the existing power structures BEFORE Democracy. As we are “permissionless” we can’t stop them from doing this. We just have to do better, and being native to the fedivers is a big help here.”

“Power… in the Fediverse path comes from different places than a corporation, a government, courts, police etc. we need to think and build with this difference and NOT try and drag the Fediverse back to the normal path. REMEMBER, the Fediverse works BECAUSE it’s different. It’s easy to forget this important thing when #mainstreaming agender, grab and hold.”

#OGB “It’s the correct word Governance – Wikipedia “Governance is the way rules, norms and actions are structured, sustained, regulated and held accountable”

“Yep, the liberal foundation model will be forced onto us if the Fediverse is taken up buy large Burocratic orgs like the #EU and yes there will be a fig leaf of “democracy” placed over the self-selecting oligarchy that will be put into place by “power politics” that this path embeds. Yes this path is the default outcome.”

Likely more…

Peoples views:

https://hamishcampbell.com/corporate-presence-in-the-fediverse/

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I’ve seen stuff about Social Web Foundation, but I’ll reserve judgement until there is more than talk.

If what they’re going to do is properly maintain the ActivityPub spec, rather than leaving it frozen in 2018, then I’d welcome that. Having a dead “living spec” has been the main problem all along, forcing developers to grow their own.

If they end up just doing corporate shenanigans then we can just forget about them. I’ve seen that kind of cynical money-grubbing stuff so many times that it’s not even worth the time of day.

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Personally not a huge fan of what they’ve said so far. I think the focus should be on grassroots and diversifying the fediverse, instead of a focus on Mastodon and other already-established platforms.

Especially working with the likes of Meta I find problematic. Meta has consistently prioritized profits over people. This is not necessarily a fault of Meta in particular, but a larger problem with the current unregulated late-stage capitalistic system. I don’t think the fediverse going in the direction of Meta is going to make it a better place. Maybe a bigger place, but not a better place.

I think we should prioritize quality over quantity and slow, sustainable growth - explosive growth can be disruptive.

All that said, I agree with @bashrc. Let’s see what they actually end up doing.

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The current path is a few people and money, trying to take the decision-making from the disparate libertarian cats and other people who live and create the value of this native openweb path. This is oligarchy at best, is this what we won’t? How can we, actuary, tell what we won’t, if not what can we do about this?

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I’m not sure that they have actually done any decision-making yet. If they make bad decisions I will ignore them anyway.

Corporations always try to launder money into influence. If the decision-making involves bunging me some cash then I will decide, but my decision will probably involve some expletives followed by the word “off”.

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I wrote a rather strong reply to this, take it in good faith please.

The replies to these subjects often exemplify the #stupidindividualism problem that plagues these conversations. Instead of engaging in collective, systemic thinking, people fall back on dismissive, reactionary attitudes: “I’ll wait and see,” or “If they mess up, I’ll just ignore them.” This approach sidesteps the responsibility we have to shape the fediverse and openweb decentralized networks. It’s not about waiting for corporations like #Meta to make a move or some #NGO driven entity to fail, it’s about organizing from the ground up and mediating these incursions before they take deep root.

I use the hashtag #stupidindividualism as it illustrates what “ignoring” means, damage has already been done. Once corporate influence is in place, it’s far harder to reclaim grassroots paths, which is why we need collective action now, not just after bad decisions have been made. The “I’ll just ignore them if I don’t like it” mindset is dangerously passive. It’s not enough to hope the right decisions will be made by those in power while reserving judgment until it’s too late.

The fediverse was not meant to bow unquestioned to the corporate agenda or chase explosive growth at the expense of its native values. The focus should be on building a diverse, sustainable, and resilient ecosystem from the bottom up. We can’t afford to stand by, waiting for others to decide our fate, if we do, we’ll just end up entangled in the same corporate mess the openweb was originally meant to avoid. If you have any thought, the time to act on this was yesterday, not just keeping watching from the sidelines.

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I am not a fan.

Beyond as others have pointed out, correctly, that it’s reducing things down to “ActivityPub” is extremely harmful and ahistorical:

For an open, thriving ecosystem where many flowers bloom it doesn’t seem like it wants to focus on any of the actual problems in this space.

Is it trying to develop a registry? No. Do anything to improve interop, a huge frustration that limits everyone who wants to talk to others to the mastodon-standard?

Is it trying to develop a test suite? Also no.

Stronger moderation tools? No.

Is it trying to determine what a major iteration of the protocol might look like? Similarly, no, and there seems to be significant resistance to even acknowledging the problems in this space.

Is it trying to address the lack of homongenity between different systems? Also no.

Improve community engagement? Not that I can see.

I applaud a GDPR effort, but what form will that take? Will it be just an unfunded proposal with some vague handwaving? Or something that requires multiple moving parts to all change in unison?

The E2EE project is barking up a very wrong tree and/or is misportraying the work that has happened to this point. Also again, what form will this ultimately take? Who will be doing this work?

Basically: will this help small developers?

Will this improve the experience of developing in the fediverse space, and by that I mean in more than ActivityPub.

Will this provide time, attention, and help bring contributors to small projects? Will it even help bring these things to Mastodon?

Worse than not accomplishing these things, it is my fear that it will suck the air out of the room to actually make progress in these areas and will further the harm in giving people the impression that “social web” and “fediverse” are equal to “ActivityPub,” something that has never been true and is actively harmful to the future of the so-called “social web.”

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This is a good summary of my concerns. If the Foundation had been called the “ActivityPub Foundation”, I’d have less issues with it. Although we need to watch carefully for what form the corporate focus and influence takes, it’s not generally a bad thing to provide funding to ActivityPub projects.

Based on fedi posts, Evan clearly wants an ActivityPub-only fediverse and that perspective is evident in the description of the Foundation. I’m strongly opposed to that, because it’s an attack on the fediverse tech diversity that I greatly appreciate. However, I’m even more concerned that the Foundation mission statement isn’t clear about it. It is poor phrasing at best, deliberate misinformation at worst. The planned “education” program to promote the misinformation is also a concern to me.

As the “Father of the Fediverse” (see his SWF bio), I assume Evan sincerely believes this Foundation will help the “fediverse” (as he defines it), but it feels divisive and dishonest to me.

This is my response to the “what do people think?” topic of this thread. However, I’m also interested in “what can/will people do?”.

My answer: I don’t know what to do about it. I’m a tech nerd, not an experienced activist. I’ve expressed my concerns and have made suggestions, but Evan seems to be only listening to feedback from “supporters”. And most of the supporters seem to be companies or projects hoping to get some of the promised funding. The most likely outcome is that I’ll “vote with my feet” and go elsewhere. Ironically, I’ve been primarily focused on ActivityPub for the last several years, but this Foundation motivates me to explore what I can do to help other Fedi protocols make progress.

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The history of the fediverse is messy. I personally removed a lot of horribly integrated Google stuff from GNU Social back in the day. So it isn’t accurate to say that it was always designed to resist corporate agendas. You could say that the fediverse emerged from the primeval swamp of corporate entanglement, only later to flop onto dry land and metamorphosize into what it is now.

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FWIW, I’ve come to about the same point in my own thinking as to “what do we do going forward.”

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Yeah, Why choose a narrow, gatekeeping, ahistorical ActivityPub-only definition of the Fediverse?, from a couple of weeks ago, talks about how the AP-only view clashes with the Fediverse’s multi-protocol history. And speaking of ahistorical, Evan also claims to have made “the first post on the social web in 2008.” Whatever.

More generally, I agree with @hrefna’s points about SWF in its current form with its current program and initial projects. Those could change of course … for example in How to make progress on the almost complete absence of Black people in SocialHub and SWICG discussions?, I talked about how funding for trust and safety could support long-time volunteers as well as broadening participation, and SWF’s got the budget to make that happen. That’s not on their list now, but their executive director Mallory mentioned the importance of reducing harms, and said that she’s going on a listening tour over the next months, so perhaps things are subject to change. Time will tell.

I’m still sorting out my reactions but in general I see SWF as a good thing. I look at it in terms of the tensions in the Fediverse due to the increasing dominance of the corporate fediverse, a shift to the US-based institutions, and the schism in process between those who embrace Meta and the “free fediverses” who reject surveillance capitalism (with a middle ground of non-aligned instances). There’s a lot of money to be made here, and @bashrc’s right about the long history of corporate involvement in the Fediverse (starting with Evan’s venture-funded startup StatusNet in 2009). So an industry-funded Meta-friendly non-profit with a focus on promoting multipolar corporate interests – including ad funding – is inevitable.

If SWF actually does change their focus and follow through on their claims to believe in equity, they could have a big positive impact on the corporate fediverse. Given Mallory’s perspectives on human rights and feminist technology, some of that may have broader benefits was well.

If SWF doesn’t change their focus … well as everybody knows I don’t think Meta has the Fediverse’s best interests at heart. And SWF’s current mission reflects Evan’s “Big Fedi” philosophy of welcoming Nazis, racists, transphobes, white supremacists, hate groups who target people of color, LGBTQIA2S+ people, and other marginalized communities to the Fediverse. So if SWF stays on their current path and Meta and their allies want to waste their money on a that works on things that aren’t important in the grand scheme of things and instead of dealing with to ActivityPub Fediverse’s (including protocol weaknesses as well as racism and anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry) winds up highlighting them … as Napoleon supposedly said, never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake.

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As an experienced activist as well as a tech nerd, it seems to me there are a couple of paths forward. One is to press SWF to change. If there’s any chance of that happening, Mallory – the executive director, and also the director of the Exchange Point 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor – is the key here. Looking at her writing about the Fediverse (here’s a post from February), my guess her view of the Fediverse has largely been shaped by conversations with Evan … I have no idea whether she’ll be open to other perspectives but with her feminist and human rights background she might well be. Also, I think I saw @benwerd post that he’s an advisor, and fastly’s one of their launch parterns so Anil Dash is potentially involved at least to some extent; they both understand the importance of equity and safety, and think about things strategically, so they could potentially be allies. Jon (@jdp23) | Blåhaj Zone is my initial attempt to engage on that front.

Of course there’s no way of knowing how amenable Mallory will be, or for that matter how much power she really has, so your mileage may vary as to whether it’s worth the effort. From a social justice activist perspective, I still see it as useful: if SWF keeps on their path, there’s a clear and public paper trail that they’re choosing a path that they know is racist and anti-LGBTQ+. And from an anti-Meta perspective, if they don’t change path, it’ll be another data point highlighting that people who embrace Meta almost always wind up having to compromise their principles.

In terms of the protocol, I’d strongly recommend letting people know you’re planning on voting with your feet unless something changes – and start thinking about what that could look like. If you’re doing something with an all-public focus, AT is (at least in my opinion) likely to be a much better choice today anyhow. There aren’t any great alternatives right now for scoped-visibility protocols as far as I know but there are lots of interesting possibilities and other protocol stacks to build: LEAF is building on WIllow. What about something based on Veilid? Spritely Goblins has some great ideas. And for that matter AT could potentially be extended to scoped visibility; Bluesky’s said it isn’t on their short-term priority list but it’s certainly something they’re interested in.

And from an activist perspective, I’d be very loud about starting to investigate other protocols – and why you’re doing it. To be clear, I personally don’t think SWF is the the primary reason to look at other protocols; there’s also AP’s complexit and lack of attention to safety, the racism and dysfunctionality of the SWICG, and Meta’s embrace-extend-exploit plans for AP. But SWF in its current form doubles down on all of that. So focusing on that could help pressure them to change … or, if not, highlight that they’re choosing to be part of problem.

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If anything, the recent developments have definitely gotten me to more seriously revisit some ideas I had a few years back about a multi-protocol approach[1] and how best to synthesize several different protocols that have similar or different approaches to certain things. The main thing I’m trying to formulate right now is a generic understanding of what is a protocol and what makes up a protocol. To give an example limited to just 3 “protocols” that mostly work off of from/to semantics, we can look at SMTP, XMPP, and ActivityPub.

  • Data format: SMTP is more or less plaintext, XMPP is XML, and ActivityPub is JSON.
  • Message payload format: SMTP uses RFC 822 messages, XMPP uses stanzas, and ActivityPub uses AS2 Activities.
  • Message semantics: SMTP messages have headers and body content. XMPP stanzas can be message, presence, or information query. ActivityPub activities… are activities. That’s it.

So before you even get to the part where you can do anything interesting, you find that ActivityPub is really not much of a protocol. All three of these protocols let you “send and receive”, but there’s more to communication than just sending and receiving. So, given that, what does ActivityPub actually provide?

The best I can describe it right now, ActivityPub provides the following “protocols” layered on top of LDN:

  • A protocol for “following”. You send a Follow, it can trigger an Accept or Reject, you can Undo it later, and there are side effects of being added to followers/following.
  • A protocol for “liking”. You send a Like, there are side effects of being added to the likes collection.
  • A protocol for “(re)sharing”. You send an Announce, there are side effects of being added to the shares collection.

Everything else is far too undefined or under-defined to constitute much of a “protocol”. Things like Create have “surprisingly few side effects” according to the ActivityPub TR, because they were intended for the C2S API to be able to do basic CRUD and Collection management. But in the fediverse, Create actually has a lot more to it! So if we were to define a basic “social media post” application protocol for the lowest common denominator of most of the current fediverse, then we need to define more than what the ActivityPub spec concerns itself with, just to get to “hello world” levels of functionality. We need to explicitly define the following additional things to get from “AP Create notification” to “social media post” in its most limited form:

  • You send a Create where the object is a Note.
    • The object MUST have content whose value is a string.
      • The content MUST conform to some sanitized subset of HTML.
    • The object MUST have a published whose value is a string containing a timestamp.
    • The object MUST have an attributedTo whose value is exactly one actor.
      • The actor MUST be of type Person.
      • The actor MUST have a name whose value is a string.
        • The name MUST be plain text, and will be interpreted as plain text.
      • The actor MUST have an icon whose value is the URL to a 1:1 image file.
      • The actor MUST have a preferredUsername whose value is a string.
        • The username MUST be unique on the domain.
        • The username MUST link back to the actor when querying that actor’s domain’s WebFinger endpoint for an acct: URI formed of the username and the domain.
    • The object MUST have to or cc or both, whose value is an array which contains at least https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public.

Now, I’m simplifying a bit, so the above has the following caveats:

  • Requirements can be relaxed or willfully violated as various needs arise. For example, if an actor is missing an icon, the protocol can be modified such that a “default avatar” is assumed instead.
  • Requirements can also be added or extended as the protocol matures and develops. For example, support for inReplyTo, attachment, tag can be added over time.
  • Protocols may require other protocols or specifications. For example, WebFinger in the above “social media post” protocol.
  • Additional protocols would be need to be defined for each use case. For example, a similar protocol for “making a blog post” could be defined using Create Article.
  • Specifications ideally ought to be followed, but ultimately the real protocol is what implementers end up doing, and the above protocol codifies some mistakes and errors into itself. For example, hard assumptions of actor and object types, hard requirements on the maximum cardinality of properties like attributedTo, soft requirements for specifically https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public instead of as:Public. (All of these things represent real incorrect assumptions by real implementers.)

When you put it like this, it becomes clear that if the fediverse wants to continue to make use of ActivityPub, then there are a lot of things that need to be explicitly defined as protocols layered[2] on top of ActivityPub. The “implicit protocol of the fediverse” is not sufficiently described by “the ActivityPub specification”. We need to standardize and align on common patterns and common protocols for those patterns.

And the challenge here, the issue is, that if we don’t do this work at a grassroots level, then Meta will do it for us. (Can you imagine a “developer portal” for “interoperating with Threads”?) Things like the FEP process allow writing up these “micro-protocols”, and then after that, the difficult task of cat-herding begins, as you need to get implementers onboard with adhering to these specifications. And of course, we’re all mostly doing this in our free time and without access to the resources that larger organizations have or can gain access to. So it’s going to be an uphill battle. But whichever “protocol building blocks” we can agree and align upon, let’s go for it.

  1. I was specifically looking at a “unified communication” project, which mapped abstract forms of communication like “messaging”, “publishing”, “discussing”, “reading” onto existing protocols like SMTP, XMPP, ActivityPub, IRC, RSS, ATOM, HTTP. There’s a risk of ending up with something like Pidgin here, but maybe that’s not the worst thing. ↩︎

  2. And of course, other protocols and other layerings are possible. Libervia (formerly Salut a Toi) does AS2 with PubSub over XMPP, but offers an “ActivityPub gateway”. You could, if you wanted to, send AS2 over an SMTP transport. ↩︎

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Really interesting thinking! I very much agree on looking at it in terms of multiple protocols; there isn’t going to be only one “winner”; and (strategically) tying apps and communities specifically to ActivityPub decreases the potential benefit and increases risk (both of continued protocol stagnation and of getting locked into a dependency on something Meta controls to some extent).

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Meme showing Gollum and the One Ring with text "Biz. To rule us all" and "AS/AP.. My precious"

LoTR already showed us that having “One Ring to rule them all” only leads to a mind-numbingly linear plot to slog on towards Mount Doom, feeling miserable all the time, until the moment that that decision can be undone and fate is once more on our side. /s

Fediverse’s AS/AP has had a fantastic history. It has managed to unite folks from across the social web to co-create open standards as formal W3C Recommendations. Then subsequently a big ecosystem of apps and services emerged that allowed a many ‘fedizens’ to interact, socialize and create communities and vibrant culture together. Fragile, imperfect, yet blooming, with emergent properties and great potential still untapped.

And all that wholly driven by the commons, not co-opted by commercial interests. This is rather (or totally?) unique!

Yet in hindsight it was also clear that trouble was brewing. That the commons pretty much hadn’t managed to evolve the open standards since 2018. That everyone in the ecosystem was doing their own thing. A care-free creation of AS/AP protocol flavors, with mostly code-only innovations for others to reverse-engineer. Leading to protocol decay, tech debt, and inefficient whack-a-mole driven development.

With technology adoption progressing it was clear that commercial interest would follow, and that a gradual corporate takeover was set in. Right now we are Middle Earth seeing the forces of Sauron at our doorstep and we have neither a standing army nor a Fellowship of the Ring to hold them back. We are only individual peasants with pitchforks now.

At this moment I see only two options for where AS/AP will go:

  1. There will be a corporate takeover, and the future of the fediverse will be decided by corporations.
  2. Another protocol will “win” the protocol wars and they’ll see corporate takeover instead.

If option 1) plays out then fedi will become indistinguishable for “the corporate web” and current nich/nice/rich cultural achievements will be pushed to the fringes. But they’ll still exist. If option 2) plays out, then a niche AS/AP fediverse will continue to exist for many, many years. Just like usenet and bulleting boards.

The corporate takeover reality is where Evan’s initiative with the SWF aligns. The SWF looks to be created by the enterpreneurial types, pragmatic, capitalist, and loudly proclaiming: "Come along, folks. Fediverse is open for business :money_mouth_face: ".

Yet if it weren’t the SWF then other similar clubs would come. I have no doubt that Evan has the best intentions wrt the future of the Fediverse. How they hold up against a corporate onslaught remains to be seen. But a non-profit SWF that manages to evolve protocol standards may be preferable to, say, seeing Meta or another big corporation throwing a couple million $$$ into a developer portal and become the leading ‘king of the ecosystem’.

Luckily things aren’t as bleak. Beyond corporate takeover we find …

The Social Web

One thing that the Fediverse has with its diversity, and the commons as a grassroots movement brings with its chaos, is resilience. Someone can claim to be a leader, and can say how things ought to be. Yet reality is spun up collectively and from there the truth appears by emergence.

In the same way that no one can say what the logo of the Fediverse should be, no one can dictate what protocols are involved with the Social Web or not. If I look at the term “Social Web” it is painfully obvious that it cannot be co-opted by anyone. It consists of two parts:

  1. Social. Encompasses all the ways that humans (and other living beings) relate to each other.
  2. Web. How technology helps us do this.

To me the social web is any technological innovation that supports our social interaction online. That means many different protocols, variations thereof, experiments. Any creativity that may lead to progress.

Another observation is that nowadays (and maybe at any time) the commons is way better equiped to truly innovate, whereas increasingly the corporate world has mastered the dark arts of Enshittification. Where the commons is very, very bad is to keep ownership of their innovations. The dynamics in our hypercapitalist society are such that we continue to let corporations harvest the low-hanging fruits of our labour and see a minority make unfair advantage of that.

Had we been better at organizing in our grassroots commons, then with AS/AP protocol standards a 3rd option would be ours:

  1. The “Let’s Play and Win Our Own Game” strategy as outlined by @darius in 2020.

In my honest opinion for AS/AP this option is no longer available. But for any innovation that relates to the social web where a corporate stranglehold hasn’t set in, the field is totally open for the commons to take a strong position.

The initiative is all ours to organize to defend Middle Earth and put Sauron on a leash. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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For people who ask about activism. We talked about this here What would a fediverse "governance" body look like? and then here Working and thinking on "native" #openweb aproches to governance and agen here were the conversation goes off the rails OGB Means Open Governance Body

A video on the ogb project that came out of us outreaching AP to the EU, the last time we did manage to herd the “cats” for a good outcome.

This is a “native” path that we know will work to both empower “us” and disempower “them” it’s easy and simple and native.

The #SWF and #socialhub would have a voice, they simply become an affiliate stakeholder, like meany others.

I don’t have the focus to push this any more, so it will need a crew.

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I would counter that perhaps there was always a deliberate “airgap” and separate of concerns between the abstract protocol of AP and the concrete protocols on top of it that overload and profile AP semantics for specific user-stories and form-factors. These latter are, indeed, the domain of FEPs and CG Notes today, and I would argue that is actually optimal to maximize innovation and minimize breakage of “user space”. Which isn’t to say that I disagree about the backlog of specification and harmonization-- just that I don’t think we should delegate that work to some future WG with normative powers. Some grant-funding for it would be nice tho :sweat_smile:

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We just recently had a big thread about problems with ActivityPub, so in some ways I guess we’re already thinking about it? :sweat_smile:

Personally, with the issues I’ve learned about ActivityPub and from what I’ve gathered that other people have talked about, it really seems like AP is ripe for a 2.0, or a spiritual successor, and this is while not even considering the SWF. The way the SWF is talking about AP 1.0 just makes me want to “fork”, if I can even use that term. These motivations are compounding.

Are there any existing promising protocols out there that could satisfy/fix the issues we’re seeing? Ideally while simultaneously not being too different from ActivityPub so that a potential migration would be feasible? I honestly don’t know the ecosystem out there. It’s very tempting to just try writing a new protocol obviously…

Leaf sounds interesting but perhaps too complicated for this use-case? Willow seems to be a very general thing, but I think we can be more specific (and therefore simpler) when we know that we want to constrain ourselves to whatever the “social web” means.

Veilid sounds very technical - can this be user friendly enough? I’ve tried getting software engineer friends to sign up for Matrix and even that was difficult!

I would not trust Bluesky or any other centralized entity to be the future of the fediverse, especially not a profit-based one.

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What we can do from the activist prospective:

What the #dotcons think the future is, from meta

The current path of distraction’s and #stupidindividualism are pushing the cycle of pointless noise that is feeding into our inability to focus on real change. People are busy, swept up in distractions, and pointless pursuits to be the change and challenge they need to be. It’s a cycle of complacency with a bad outcome. Agitation, anger, and disturbance are powerful motivators, but we need to focus into something meaningful, to avoid drowning in the noise, we need to focus on what’s actually going on. But, in this mess, how do we push people to grow up and focus without falling into the trap of more #blocking or just offering more distractions or ‘better bling’?

The answer is simple and #KISS, by recreating collectives. We’ve seen first hand how hyper individualism (#stupidindividualism) isolates people, leaving them powerless against larger systemic issues. Rebuilding real, engaged, and active communities is key. Movements like #OMN, ogb, #indymediaback, and #4opens are examples of initiatives that become the change and challenge we need. These projects draw from undercurrents of ideas that we know work, combining them with the best of openweb tech to grow from small seeds into real change.

But it’s also essential to dig at the roots of the mess: #pomo (#postmodernism) and the #deathcult (#neoliberalism), ideologies that have shaped the mess we’re in, cynicism and cutting off collective alternatives. If we don’t address these root issues, they will keep returning, and we’ll remain stuck in the same cycles of decay.

The #geekproblem is real, it’s the problem of domination and control born out of geek culture shaped by “common sense” paths. Look at the decline of the #dotcons like #failbook and Google, where #fashionista optimism gave way to corporate greed. Then look at early days of openweb projects like #couchsurfing and #indymedia, we had healthy, thriving native cultures that weren’t obsessed with control. The key is to recognize what went wrong and build on a path that doesn’t repeat those mistakes.

The challenge is that many within geek culture can’t see the value of projects like #OMN, as it exists outside their narrow, “common sense” world-views. We need to help people see beyond the obvious, look for non-mainstream alternatives, and recognize that the solutions aren’t in the corporate web but in the decentralized, open spaces, commons, we create ourselves.

Now is the time to reboot our own media and to be wary of #fashionista agendas that hijack and dilute the change we need. The way forward is messy, organic, and rooted in collective action. What we can do:

  • Agitate and Disturb: Use media, art, and culture to push people out of their comfort zones and make them question the status quo. The hashtag story is a tool to do this.
  • Build Collectives: Recreate spaces where people can work together meaningfully, paths that empower communities to balance the current #stupidindividualism. The OMN are projects for this.
  • Focus on the Roots: Don’t only address symptoms, dig deep into the core ideologies that keep returning and haunting us, like #pomo and the #deathcult. This website is a tool for this
  • Reboot Media: We need to take back control of our media, using open technology to create alternatives that aren’t based on capitalist greed but on #KISS shared values. There is a native project for this indymediaback
  • Stay Wary of Distractions: Resist the temptation of ‘better bling.’ The solution is not to make the distractions shinier, but to focus on what matters.

The path out of this mess is in part social tech, which we need to build. It’s time to grow up, pay attention, and start building the world we actually want to live in. A shovel is need to compost the current mess #OMN. But I don’t have the focus to do this, we need a crew.

To make the relevance clear, we are talking about the #dotcons in the image. The key part of this is WHO decides, this is a political and democratic issue, not a tech “problem” we need to build with this strongly in mind.

From The path out of this mess is in part social tech, we need to build this path – Hamish Campbell

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You don’t have to trust Bluesky to use ATProto or fork it. But as far as other protocol options there are https://versia.pub/
https://activitypods.org/
ActivityPods · GitHub
An Overview of polyproto - Polyphony
Muni Town · GitHub
https://pzp.wiki/

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