Meta, one of the early members of the #SocialWebFoundation, has put the fediverse integration in Threads into a "maintenance mode".
https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fediverse-report-147/
#SocialWebFoundation
#Mastodon is now finally speaking out but it may be too little too late. We had the chance to reject #Meta's plan to take over the #SocialWeb but a few influential #Fediverse leaders decided for us that our future on the social web would include Meta.
Even now, as Mastodon Org speaks up, they refuse to call the enemy by name, referring to Meta as "another corporate social media platform"
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/12/the-world-needs-social-sovereignty/
Social Web Foundation partner and ActivityPub working group member Meta has shut down the accounts of more than 50 mainstream advocacy organizations providing reproductive health information and LGBT support, across its Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp networks. Among the groups targeted are Women Help Women and Sex Talk Arabic, which provides Arabic-language content on sexual and reproductive health.
In response, SWF Research Director Evan Prodromou strongly condemned - nah just kidding, he's still collaborating with them
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #Whatsapp #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
End-to-end Encryption (E2EE) over ActivityPub
Encrypted direct messages supply the confidence that people need to connect with family, friends and colleagues privately over a social network. As part of the Summer of Protocols 2024, we explore the integration of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) into the ActivityPub protocol.
https://socialwebfoundation.org/program-protocol-e2ee/
#ActivityPub #E2EE #SocialWeb #Foundation #SocialWebFoundation #Encryption #Verschlüsselung #Sicherheit #Privatnachricht
Someone kindly reached out to ask if I would consider speaking about Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org/) at the Social Web Devroom being organised by the Social Web Foundation at FOSDEM.
My answer is no.
And I feel it’s important for those of us who care about such things to understand why:
• Social Web Foundation (https://socialwebfoundation.org) partners with, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises Meta
• FOSDEM (https://fosdem.org/2026) allows itself to be sponsored by, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises, Google and IBM (Red Hat)
Meta and Google are both surveillance capitalists with strong ties to the Trump regime that is arming and financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. IBM, apart from having helped Nazi Germany carry out the Holocaust, is also singled out by name, alongside Google (Alphabet, Inc.), as complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/1/un-report-lists-companies-complicit-in-israels-genocide-who-are-they).
It shouldn’t be hard for organisations that purport to be alternatives to toxic Big Tech to not be sponsored and affiliated with them. But apparently it is.
Personally, I have no trouble saying no to having my name and legitimacy being used to whitewash these corporations and I have been doing so since the beginning.
• https://ar.al/notes/rightscon-or-a-right-con/
I will not stand – literally or metaphorically – in front of their banners and talk about an initiative that tries to help the very people victimised by these corporations in their sociopathic quest for profit at any cost.
I hope more people start doing the same if we are to have any chance of making these corporations with their toxic business models and their complicity in genocide socially unacceptable. If we cannot even meet that already-very-low bar – as long as those of us with legitimacy allow ourselves to be used to normalise them – nothing will change.
#FOSDEM #SocialWebFoundation #BigTech #sponsorship #whitewashing #legitimisation #institutionalCorruption #israel #genocide #Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerified
Everyone, meet the "partner" working with SWICG and Social Web Foundation on the next generation of ActivityPub:
> Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.
> …Meta’s own research suggests its products have become a pillar of the global fraud economy. A May 2025 presentation by its safety staff estimated that the company’s platforms were involved in a third of all successful scams in the U.S.
> According to a December 2024 presentation, Meta’s user base is exposed to 22 billion organic scam attempts every day. That’s on top of the 15 billion scam ads presented to users daily.
> Every six months, Meta earns $3.5 billion from just the portion of scam ads that “present higher legal risk” […] That figure almost certainly exceeds “the cost of any regulatory settlement involving scam ads.” Rather than voluntarily agreeing to do more to vet advertisers, the same document states, the company’s leadership decided to act only in response to impending regulatory action.
#MetaOutOfSWICG #DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
fediverse question: Can an ActivitiPub instance bundle in a STMP server with E2EE and use it as private DMs. Email interfaces can be modern, it's chats with muscle. email protocol as is always made the analogy to explain the fediverse, is the second most wide standard after the web.
Shouldn't be it the protocol for private comunications between groups in the Fediverse?
#fediverse #stmp #fediprotocol #activitypub #w3c #socialwebfoundation #fediquestions
Remember when the founder of the #SocialWebFoundation was encouraging people to use #WhatsApp over #Signal? Because his boss owns #WhatsApp?
#ICE can compel #Meta to hand over lots of user metadata because Meta also uses metadata to spy on users, as a way to circumvent the encryption.
Conversely, Signal does everything in its power to minimize the amount of metadata it collects.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/the-wiretap/2025/10/21/ice-spies-on-whatsapp/
#fediday2025 Evan Prodromou - Cooperative Social Networks
Sunday Paper – ActivityPub, BlueSky Patent, WordPress, Social Web Foundation
Here are a few bits of text I read recently.There is currently a rumor afoot that Zuckerberg is planning to expropriate the AT protocol for Threads. If true, the pattern is undeniable, suggesting that any remotely open social media protocol which finds its footing will be subjected to a Zuckerberg incursion. Accordingly, future protocol developments should insure Zuckerberg-resistant measures as early as possible in their life cycle.
🐸 Protocols should incorporate Zuckerberg-repellent technology into their foundational codebase
🐸 Protocol projects should exclude the participation of anyone who could later become a Zuckerberg collaborator (e.g. het cis white guys who want to "keep politics out of it")
🐸 Protocols should be oriented, both in developmental organization and in the emergent community topologies they engender, to horizontally distribute and diffuse power; power concentrations become throttle-points for corruption, primed for Zuckerberg exploitation (e.g. SWICG, SWF)
🐸 Protocols should be designed to encourage the kinds of communities in which Zuckerberg-hate is a prominent characteristic, and which will be quick to activate and organize a social opposition to Zuckerberg incursion (e.g. FediPact)
We can take our lessons from the current failures; ActivityPub was deficient in all of these requirements except the last, and if the rumors are true, there's no hope at all for AT. Put simply, the protocol that powers the decentralized social network of tomorrow will be the one with the most successful Zuckerberg-resistant adaptions
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG #Bluesky
The guy funding #SocialWebFoundation and other #OpenSocialWeb groups is becoming real chummy with Donal Trump. I'm sure it's nothing.
#USPol #Microsoft #Google #Meta #oracle #SocialWeb #fedipact
Parents outraged as [Social Web Foundation partner] Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man - Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’
[SWICG member] Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man […] The man noticed that posts encouraging him to “get Threads” […] were being dropped into his Instagram feed featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.
The children’s images were used by [ActivityPub development participant] Meta after their parents had posted them on Instagram to mark their return to school. The parents were unaware that Meta’s settings permitted it to do this. One mother said her account was set to private […]
The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings […] Meta […] said the images did not violate its policies.
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
@rysiek Those #SocialWebFoundation partners are at it again then. It still boggles my mind how they can entertain working with them.
Engagement at all costs is the Meta way.
Social Web Foundation is Betting Big on Client-to-Server API https://wedistribute.org/2025/08/social-web-foundation-is-betting-big-on-client-to-server-api/ #OpenProtocols, #SocialWebFoundation
Social Web Foundation is Betting Big on Client-to-Server API
From the outside looking in, it can sometimes feel unclear as to what steps the Social Web Foundation is taking to achieve its goals. The non-profit organization's About Page states lofty ambitions, such as bringing together implementers to build tools, policies, and protocols to advance the Fediverse. The Projects Page includes End-to-End Encryption, a Fediverse Starter Page, GDPR Compliance, and Long-Form Text. However, the SWF has been working on several interesting projects outside of […]https://wedistribute.org/2025/08/social-web-foundation-is-betting-big-on-client-to-server-api/
Social Web Foundation partner Meta is sticking its dirty fingers deeper into California politics
Meta to launch California super PAC backing pro-AI candidates: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/meta-launch-california-super-pac-backing-pro-ai-candidates-2025-08-26/
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #CApol
Has the #Threads interpolation deal made the #Fediverse better or worse?
#Meta #SocialWebFoundation #MetaWebFoundation #SocialMetaFoundation #SocialWebMeta #MetaMetaFoundation #MetaMetaMeta #fedipact
The Threads interpolation was a broad-day heist. They covered it with rosy blog posts, and comments meant to confuse and drain your energy. You remember two years ago, they were all under our posts putting in the work.
Why or how these major tech blogs never caught on to all this, I'll never know.
Never stop talking about it. It'll come to light.
#Fedipact #SocialWebFoundation
From: @ophiocephalic
https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/115011235861054411
In his recent FediCon talk, Evan Prodromou implicitly rationalized his collaboration with Meta by proclaiming, "you don't negotiate with friends". Maybe not, but you don't hand enemies the keys to your kingdom either, which is exactly what he has done by giving Meta seats at the table of the ActivityPub working group. And for that matter, accepting a relatively significant sum of money from those enemies to fund your foundation goes rather beyond the negotiation phase as well, does it not?
As it stands, we have a hostile element enmeshed in the development process which undergirds the entire network, all the while systematically violating every last consent boundary the fedi has defined and defended over the course of its history. This is a power imbalance so egregious and amoral that it negates the raison d'etre of the fediverse altogether. Meta must be removed from SWICG
🧵 3/3 end
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst