this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the 'fediverse' (techcrunch.com)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A new project launching today aims to capitalize on the momentum seen within the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which describes interconnected social networking services powered by the ActivityPub protocol. Co-founded by the co-author and current editor of ActivityPub, Evan Prodromou, a new nonprofit organization called the Social Web Foundation will focus on expanding the fediverse, improving ActivityPub and the user experience, informing policymakers, and educating people about the fediverse and how they can participate.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago (1 children)

“The fact that Threads has joined the space has made it really interesting for other companies,” Prodromou says. “Threads is bringing a really big audience, as well as big names — like @POTUS is on the fediverse … So that makes this process a lot more interesting for other organizations — both for publishers who want to reach those audiences, as well as for existing social networks who want to have those influencers and celebrities available to their users.”

So this is just about piggy-backing on Threads, not any real support for the principles of open software.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's the most famous ActivityPub social just because people don't know what federation is and that Threads implements it (disabled by default).

All IRL people who know Threads whom I asked what made Threads different from Twitter didn't know about this feature.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's like people can't get interested in anything unless it has the Big Tech stamp of approval. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

It's just about marketing. People don't know about what they don't hear about, and the wealthier companies can make sure people hear about them. There's no budget for that with regular Fediverse sites.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

And make sure they hear about it in such a way that it seems interesting. The fediverse doesn't use any basic marketing plan techniques, and enough people are conditioned to them (after a lifetime of growing up surrounded by advertising on television and in their spaces) that anything which doesn't fit that template scoots right by.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

People don’t know about what they don’t hear about

Some people take the initiative to learn things on their own though. I suppose we're not their target audience however.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

In their favor I can say that none of them are tech savvy and they got to know Threads just because Meta put Threads links and icons all over Instagram (which those people use).

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Good. The death of corporate social media can't come soon enough.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, Meta is listed as one of their partners

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

🤮

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't be too bad if they just host threads and abide by ActivityPub without getting hands on, but they clearly want to shape it how they want.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I have a feeling this could very well end up in similar fashion to g*gle talk and IRC. Let's hope it doesn't, but I don't have enough faith in large companies not trying to completely destroy the Fediverse for profit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I would like to see more investment in informative media. Social media has been one of the best sources to get information about local events, news, and alerts.

Speaking from an American’s perspective, I would like to see federated networks organized similarly to the United States. There should be one main federal instance, then a sub instance for states, eventually down to micro instances for neighborhoods or zip codes.

My complaint about “corporate social media” has been its need to make money from advertising driven by engagement. This means I miss tons of posted information by family, friends, businesses, bands, restaurants, record shops, farmers markets, city council members, police departments, reporters, etc.

I still want to connect with these users but getting them on board with the fediverse is an uphill battle if they’re only in it for the memes. Creating a platform that makes some tangible sense to people, I think, would drive more adoption. If you want to connect with your city, join cityname.state.US.verse. This wouldn’t exclude the creation of other networks like I dunno… nestle.corp.verse or tiktok.social.verse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Its non-hierarchial. That's a good thing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Just Like Mozilla and Google. 🤔

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Can you extinguish a protocol nobody owns?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Google pulled it off with GChat. All told, those of us who run our own XMPP servers aren't even a rounding error when compared to everybody who uses Google Chat, FB Chat, Slack...

Interoperate with it. Add proprietary extensions faster than other implementations can keep up with (at least two orders of mag). Render software that isn't yours unusable by suddenly cutting over to something else internally; let connection attempts continue for a while to frustrate users while simultaneously releasing your own. Then cut away all points where legacy connection attempts could be done.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I'm really surprised servers have not started by default limiting and/or vetting who can federate with them. I know many Lemmy instances block many other instances from federating with them, but only after learning about what a lot of their content is. To me this practice kinda creates a very fragmented "which wind would you like to piss into" problem.