More coverage of the Social Web Foundation has been rolling in today. (See my coverage of the announcement over here.)
The fediverse has been a critical development in the open web over the past several years, since most of the social media landscape is dominated by centralized platforms — including Meta. If we want the open web to not just survive, but perhaps thrive again one day, we should all (hopefully including the father of the web) get behind the fediverse and support the Social Web Foundation.
“I wish I would’ve started it five years ago,” Evan explains in a call, “We’re seeing growth of ActivityPub in the commercial sector, we want to help guide that work, especially for devs that don’t know how to engage with the Fediverse, or the work that happens in private spaces. As we’re seeing a lot of growth, it’s important to help push that growth forward, we’re really filling in the crack no other organization is doing.”
Part of the group’s efforts will be focused on making the fediverse more user-friendly. Though Mastodon offers a service that functions much like Twitter/X, its decentralized nature — meaning there are multiple servers to choose from — makes getting started confusing and difficult for less technical users. Then, much like X, there’s the cold start problem of finding interesting people to follow.
We are happy to share that today the Social Web Foundation launched with a mission to help the fediverse to grow healthy, multi-polar, and financially viable. We are looking forward to continuing to support the work that [Evan Prodromou, Tom Coates, and Mallory Knodel] are planning in the new non-profit foundation for expanding and improving ActivityPub and the fediverse. We are delighted that to the Foundation will be becoming a W3C Member.
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. It’s great that social networking companies are supporting the Fediverse, and Vivaldi is pleased to support Social Web Foundation so that we can once again have a town square free of algorithms and corporate control.
Independent Federated Trust & Safety:
ActivityPub has enabled thousands of platforms to communicate seamlessly across the Fediverse. This framework encourages a healthier online experience by supporting diversity of thought and content while redistributing governance back to the communities that can best serve their members. In an era where centralised networks dominate, the SWF’s commitment to open standards represents a renewed opportunity for a democratic and inclusive web.
And then Evan Prodromou wrote his own post on the launch:
Many people have ideas about what the Fediverse needs to be bigger, safer, and easier to use. But the solutions they propose fall between the cracks of any one implementer or service. We want the SWF to be the entity that takes on those jobs.
Not everyone agrees that the Fediverse needs to be available to more people. That’s OK. And not everyone is going to be comfortable with the mix of commercial and Open Source implementers plus civil society groups that form the support for the SWF. That’s OK too. Hopefully, our work will still benefit you.
Exciting times for the web.
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