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2024-09-25 00:39:25

mike@flipboard.social

So excited about the Social Web Foundation (@swf)!

@evanprodromou and team will make the #fediverse more interoperable, foster more developer collaboration, inspire more innovation and help more people see the benefit of the social web. Honored to be part of this.

https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/09/24/launch/

2024-09-25 00:53:47

Evan Prodromou

evan@cosocial.ca

@mike @swf @evanprodromou thanks so much for the support!

2024-09-25 02:00:32

Johannes Hentschel

johentsch@hostux.social

@mike
Not everyone is so enthusiastic about it https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/113194004277305120

2024-09-25 03:02:32

Mike McCue

mike@flipboard.social

@johentsch yes I’ve been following along with the conversation here. I understand why people would be skeptical and/or concerned about an organization like this. From my vantage point the fediverse deserves to grow and that is what this org is all about. Not everyone wants that to happen because of the risks involved (which are real) Plus there’s a genuineness to the fediverse now and people are afraid we’ll lose that as it grows. I’m concerned about this too.

iMO it would be tragic if, because of these legit concerns, we missed the opportunity for the fediverse to become the scaled open social alternative to the walled gardens. Further, the web desperately needs an open way for human connections to form if it is to survive in the era of AI. Establishing an open social layer for the web is both important and urgent right now. It’s not just about building an open Twitter. It’s about baking human connections into the web itself.

I think an org like @swf will help to protect, evangelize and instill the values of the fediverse as it grows so we can maintain what we love while bringing it to more people and rejuvenating the web.

2024-09-25 10:05:52

Johannes Hentschel

johentsch@hostux.social

@mike
The "open social layer" is already established: ActivityPub.
I don't believe Meta is truly interested in openness, otherwise we would have seen that a long time ago. Their interest is hegemony. SWF is their latest coup to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

2024-09-25 10:51:05

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Johannes Hentschel

Their interest is hegemony.

They won't be able to achieve that. For that, they'd all have to join forces. Instead, the big players would rather bash each other's heads in.

If Zuckerberg wanted to buy out the Fediverse through the SWF and assume full control over it, that'd go hard against what Flipboard wants, what Ghost wants, what Mastodon wants etc.

If you think Zuck and Gargron will join forces in EEE'ing the Fediverse, I have a bridge to sell you. If Zuck wants to EEE the Fediverse, this includes Mastodon which is why everyone panics. But Gargron himself wants to EEE the Fediverse, too. Mastodon users don't notice it, but everyone else does, from Misskey to (streams). And if he could, that'd include assuming indirect control over Threads by forcing Mastodon's proprietary, non-standard solutions upon it.

Write.as, maintainer of WriteFreely, is a supporter of the SWF, too. WriteFreely is basically one of the Fediverse's alternatives to Medium. Notice how Medium itself is a supporter. Medium won't try to build a monopoly and get rid of WriteFreely through the SWF if WriteFreely itself has a saying in this. And so does Automattic because Medium competes against WordPress.

Mastodon vs Write.as + Medium + Automattic = "The Fediverse is for microblogging, we won't support more than a tiny subset of HTML, and the rest of the Fediverse has to adjust" vs "Everything in the Fediverse must support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects."

And the SWF won't grant voting power according to how much money someone invests into it. Meta won't be able to out-vote everyone else by pumping a billion into the SWF. If that was possible, @Evan Prodromou, as the very founder of the SWF, would have no voting power at all.

Lastly, these are the supporters. The financial backers. Not the only members and even less the only members the SWF will ever have. It's just kind of difficult for a Fediverse project with nothing but one or two spare-time devs behind it to join the SWF.

CC: @Mike McCue

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MetaPlatforms #Threads #Automattic #WordPress #Medium #Write.as #WriteFreely #SWF #SocialWebFoundation #EEE #EmbraceExtendExtinguish