The minutes from yesterday's Forum and Threaded Discussions Task Force monthly meeting can be found at this Google Docs link

Apologies in advance if I misrepresented anybody or missed any crucial bits of information.

Of note:

Mastodon and its treatment of non-note items

• Darius Kazemi (@darius@friend.camp) reports that Hometown already supports improved conversion of non-note items (like as:Article) into statuses, and that this serves as a working proof-of-concept towards getting this merged upstream into Mastodon proper.
• We discussed briefly the Mastodon PR approval process and how it sometimes drives away contributions
  
  • Darius emphasized the importance of showing real user support to facilitate the merging of pull requests.

  
  

Context Collections and FEP Convergence

• Julian proposed consolidating various FEPs (7888, 400e, 171b) to publish a unified recommendation.
• Evan (@evan@cosocial.ca) objected to the use of the "context" property in FEP 7888, advocating for a new vocabulary instead.
• The discussion included differing views on the utility of the context property and its historical usage.
• Darius utilized his data observatory (TBD) data set to hopefully prove that context is not a properly currently seeing any usage.

"Convenings" and Collaboration Initiatives:

• Darius, representing the Applied Social Media Lab, proposed organizing physical meetings to enhance interoperability in the fediverse.
• He will provide a blog post detailing the ActivityPub Data Observatory and related goals.

ActivityPub Trust & Safety Task Force

• A new task force will focus on protocol-level issues within ActivityPub, including proper content warnings and labeling.
• Meetings are tentatively scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month (starting November), with a call for input on scheduling.

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

I want to highlight some of the blog posts and social updates of support for the Social Web Foundation since our launch on 24 Sep 2024.

It was great to get so much support and encouragement from everyone involved in making this launch happen. This is just the first step on a ten thousand kilometre journey, but we’re lucky to have such an encouraging and supportive team and community behind us.

Founders

• Announcing the Social Web Foundation from Evan Prodromou
• On the Social Web Foundation from Tom Coates
• The Social Web Foundation from Mallory Knodel

Supporters

• “Happy to be a launch partner” from Eugen Rochko, Mastodon
• The Social Web Foundation launched today. from Flipboard
• “Thrilled that the Social Web Foundation is now live” from Rob Sherman, Meta
• “We’re excited to be partnering with the Social Web Foundation” from Ghost
• “We’re incredibly proud” from Pixelfed
• Welcoming the Social Web Foundation from IFTAS
• “Welcome to the Social Web Foundation” from Matt Baer, Write.as
• “I’m thrilled about the launch of the Social Web Foundation“, Hannah Aubrey, Fastly
• Social Web Foundation launches, supported by Vivaldi by Vivaldi

Advisors

• Unlocking the Fediverse: The Social Web Foundation is Shaping the Next Era of the Web by Ben Werdmuller
• “The new ‘Social Web Foundation’ is launching today” by Johannes Ernst
• “Looking forward to supporting the Social Web Foundation” by Chris Messina
• “The Social Web Foundation has launched” by Chris Riley

Press

• “Evan Prodromou Launches the Social Web Foundation” – WeDistribute
• “Social Web Foundation Launched” – The New Stack
• “As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the fediverse” – TechCrunch

Friends and allies

• “Corporate social media locks you into their platforms” – EFF
• “We are happy to share that today the Social Web Foundation launched” – W3C

As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the 'fediverse' | TechCrunch

A new project launching today aims to capitalize on the momentum seen within the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which describes

^{Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)}

evanp

2024-09-24 13:36:29

Announcing the Social Web Foundation

I helped launch the Social Web Foundation today and will serve as its first Research Director. I’m proud to be part of the group of supporters, advisors and founders who made this foundation possible; it is an honour to be among people who share my passion for ActivityPub and the Fediverse.

I want to say why I think it’s an important project.

Since its publication in 2018, ActivityPub has had support from different organizations. The W3C formalized the standard. Mastodon led implemention and defined the network. The EFF have advocated for the Fediverse. Until now, no major organization has taken on advocacy for AP as its central goal.

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.

For me personally, the work will be straightforward. I’m going to continue doing the work I’ve done for the W3C and other ActivityPub projects: protocol refinement, documentation, meetings, speaking engagements, reports. But from here, I’ll be doing it with my SWF hat on.

I’ll also help develop the content like explainers, guides, and case studies for different targeted audiences. And I’ll do outreach through speaking at events, private meetings, or other personal engagement.

This work won’t replace my regular job at the Open Earth Foundation, which is important to me. I’ll just be taking on additional responsibilities with SWF.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us financially, with advice, or with feedback. And thanks to my family for their patience; with the book launch, the foundation, and my work at CoSocial, there’s a lot of talk about the Fediverse around our house every day.

ActivityPub

ActivityPub is the new standard for connecting social networks together on the social web. This open, decentralized social networking protocol defines an API for sharing activities to a social network … - Selection from ActivityPub [Book]

^{O’Reilly Online Learning}

Tor Project e Tails, due organizzazioni non-profit che lavorano per la protezione della privacy e dell'anonimato online, hanno annunciato la loro fusione. Questa unione permetterà di migliorare la collaborazione, ridurre i costi e aumentare la sostenibilità delle due organizzazioni, consentendo di offrire strumenti di sicurezza più efficaci per contrastare la sorveglianza e la censura online.

La fusione è il risultato di una lunga storia di collaborazione tra le due organizzazioni, che hanno lavorato insieme per 15 anni per proteggere la privacy e la sicurezza degli utenti online. La fusione permetterà di offrire strumenti di sicurezza più completi e robusti, come ad esempio la combinazione di Tor Browser e Tails OS, e di aumentare la visibilità di Tails tra gli utenti che necessitano di strumenti di sicurezza avanzati. La fusione sarà anche accompagnata da un aumento delle attività di formazione e sensibilizzazione sulla sicurezza online.

Il testo completo su torproject.org