#3 Evan Prodromou (Social Web Foundation) – For a Better Web

[Bruce:] Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the For a Better Web Podcast, in which I, Bruce Lawson, Technical Communication Officer from Vivaldi, ruthlessly interrogate somebody who, in their own way, in their own communities, is fighting for a better web. And today, it’s my absolute pleasure to be joined by Evan Prodromou, who is the research director of the Social Web Foundation.

But before we get into that, Evan, thank you for joining us. Could you briefly explain to listeners who might be not familiar with the term what we mean by the “social web”?

[Evan:] Yeah, I think it’s a fairly simple concept, right. We’re all used to the idea of a world Wide Web of documents and applications that we can all reach. They’re all connected using links, using open standards. And that that rich and multipolar fabric of different websites across the world presents us with a lot of choice and opportunity.

The idea of the social web kind of takes that World Wide Web idea, and applies it to social networks. Most of us have accounts on some social network, like a Facebook or a Snap or LinkedIn. And, the rules of those social networks are that you can only connect to people who already have an account on that social network, which keeps us constrained in those social networks, restricts what we can do.

The idea of the social web is that you can reach beyond the limits of that social network out into the rest of the world, so that someone on Flipboard can follow someone on Facebook Threads, or somebody on Mastodon server can follow somebody on WordPress. So it allows us to go across boundaries and make connections with the rest of the world.

[Bruce:] So it’s, if you like, a network of networks, much like the World Wide Web that we know and love, and presumably there is an equivalent to HTTP or TCP/IP, an open standard that will allow these social networks to federate: ActivityPub, is it called?

[Evan:] That is exactly what it’s called. So ActivityPub is the open standard that lets different social networks share data across the network boundaries. So we get that kind of social internet or social web. ActivityPub is based on HTTP. So it uses the same underlying framework. But it’s used to share activities, things that you do on the social networks.

So when you share an image or post, a note, your status or even longer text, posting a video, etc. that all goes across the network across ActivityPub. But we call it ActivityPub because it’s not just about that content, it’s also about social interactions, how we follow people, how we send direct messages, how we can comment, or like or share things.

All of those activities are represented in ActivityPub, and that means that we can we can use them across networks. So it’s not just about syndicating content, it’s about having real social interactions.

[Bruce:] Right. So it’s it’s a transport or a mechanism to alert the the social web, the Fediverse, whatever you want to call it. It’s not just: here’s something I said, it’s “here is a thing I did; I followed somebody, I blocked somebody, I shared an image, I retweeted, re-boosted (whatever the nomenclature is)”. You wrote this, didn’t you? You’re one of the people behind activity.

[Evan:] I’m one of the five authors so and I’m the last listed one. So I try to keep humble here. But yes. So we have five people who, worked on the, document itself, but it’s really a collective effort. The W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, which is the standards body that sets standards for the World Wide Web, roughly.

They in 2015 decided to start this process of creating a social web working group and creating social web standards. So it was a group of different companies, individual researchers, putting together this, this standard. So I was one of the people who wrote it. But, you know, we didn’t necessarily, design it from scratch. It was a collective effort. Right. And that often happens in standards world. Right? We have to do a lot of push, push and pull back and forth. A lot of voices, a lot of hands on the ball.

[Bruce:] Yeah. I mean, my name is somewhere on the HTML5/ living standard, but amongst hundreds of names. But but that’s the strength of the web or the open standards and open data. I think, is that they have to include as many different diverse voices, and that that makes the the end result stronger, even if it’s slower to actually reach a consensus because there’s more voices, you get a a better end result in my opinion.

[Evan:] But yeah. Absolutely. Right. There’s the, old saying, if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. Right. And that’s how that’s how standards work is that we all have to come together. We work out the standard. And by the time it’s actually released, we have a whole bunch of stakeholders, a whole bunch of implementers who are ready to go forward with that, with the implementation. So it makes it a stronger, system.

[Bruce:] I mean, you’re preaching to the converted here because I’ve been in standards forever, but ActivityPub is done through the aegis of W3C. It’s finished. It’s, a standard or a candidate rec (or whatever the nomenclature is) but it’s it’s there. People are implementing it. You know, I’m a big Mastodon user.

But it strikes me that whereas this is a great thing for open people, people, people like me who believe their world that works of wisdom should be read far and wide. Isn’t there an inherent tension here with the people who run the big social networks that like to keep you on their platform? Did you have much pushback from established social networks, or did they engage and embrace it? I don’t mean embrace in the Microsoft way. I mean, I genuinely embrace it.

[Evan:] It’s a difficult thing for companies who have run for decades now with these isolated social networks to get them connected. And it isn’t an easy choice. I think the like, conventional wisdom in social software has been that your network is one of your primary assets, and really giving anyone else access to that network is a big no-no.

But I think that that idea is changing. In some ways it makes… I have a rule of thumb, that where I say that, you know, networks join an network that is bigger than the network itself. So if you have a network of 100 people, it really makes sense to join a network of a thousand people because you get access to more audience for your great words of wisdom, you get, more content and interesting things to read.

And then, you know, that thousand person network might join a 10,000 person network because it’s bigger and bigger. So, I think that as we grow this, social web or Fediverse, we will see more and bigger networks joining up. It really has started. At the core of the network has been with like, open source social network enthusiasts, Mastodon users, etc. but over the last couple of years, we’ve seen an embrace, possibly in the Microsoft sense, but also in the, other sense from commercial social networks.

So, Automattic has implemented ActivityPub. Automattic has implemented Activity Hub for all WordPress.com blogs. They are working on bringing it out for Tumblr. Ghost, which is a newsletter service, is implementing ActivityPub has started the process. Famously Flipboard and Threads, which is the big Meta service.

So I think that covers some of my main ones. I try to be careful to make sure I get give focus to all of them. But, this large kind of coalition has kind of crossed over from that independent, open source, enthusiast into like a wider commercial space.

[Bruce:] Which is just how the web started, really. I mean. I discovered it in ’99 when it was already creeping out from weird hobbyists, but if you if you round it back 3 or 4 years before that, it would have been weird hackers, you know, in the Hollywood sense. And now, you know, every company’s on our web, every company is involved in the standardization of it.

[Evan:] I think for old-timers like me, there was an experience in the early 90s where the way that you connected to other people, was using, dial up online services. So in the U.S., we had AOL, CompuServe, similar systems, and they had the same kind of mechanism. You could only read documents that were in in the AOL universe, you could only send messages to other AOL users.

And over the course of about 18 months, the first one started implementing internet email, and web access. And then it became a competitive advantage that couldn’t really continue without having these features. And it really blew up and opened up email, the web, etc. And my hope is that as we see this kind of snowball effect happening, we’ll see more social networks approaching this, this place.

And it really does make sense for a lot of companies and organizations to get engaged with the social web, because social networks are such an important part of business, as a part of our lives, a part of the way that we work, that it really is something that we need to be, engaging fully and in this network experience.

[Bruce:] Completely agree. And, we’ve mentioned the parallels with the World Wide Web origin, so this is a chance for me to, give full disclosure to our viewers and listeners that, the Social Web Foundation was launched comparatively recently. I think a months ago. And Vivaldi, for whom I work, was one of the launch supporters. In fact, our CEO, Jon von Tetzchner, explicitly drew the parallel at the launch that, this reminds us of the early days of the World Wide Web breaking out of silos.

But I do need for our viewers and listeners to understand that Vivaldi and the Social Web Foundation have, you know, a new. But we do have a relationship. I really, really push I really push for transparency here. So that’s me being transparent. But can you tell us what the Social Web Foundation is going to do, why you set it up?

[Evan:] Yeah. So the Social Web Foundation started, about a month ago. But we’ve been working on it for a few months, and it is me, my two, co-founders, Mallory Knodel, who has a background in digital rights advocacy for equity, in digital spaces. My, other co-founder, Tom Coates, who has a big background in developing digital products.

So formerly at the BBC, was at Yahoo for the Brickhouse project and then has led a number of startups. He’s really a wonderful guy. We’re bringing together that idea of digital rights for Mallory, this idea of like digital products from Tom. And then I’m coming with the standards that we’re really hoping to have an effect on the, social web as a whole, because, the social web is kind of picking up this momentum.

It’s really exciting to see what’s happening. But we want to clear the way for different kinds of organizations to get involved. So, for example, we want to do outreach to media organizations who are thinking about publishing on the social web, give them a playbook so they know how to get started. And advocates within the organization can advocate for social web use at the org. Or universities and enterprises that want to set up their own nodes on the social web, give them information they need. The case studies kind of like pave the path for them.

We are so we’ve got a projects list that’s like a mile long, but our biggest goal is a bigger, better social web. We want to see more people involved, and we want to see a richer, more healthy, more, fulfilling experience for the people that are there.

[Bruce:] No, it’s really interesting. You say the word healthy. Yeah. And, you know, the triumvirate that’s heading up social web found ation. You, a product person, and a human rights person. So you’ve got standards, products, which is, you know, always useful. And human rights. It’s it’s come to my attention that one of the very big social networks that I absolutely loved is … diminished somewhat in its advocacy for online safety and human rights in general. Just, a healthy place to have a discourse.

You know, I don’t go there anymore, but I open it up and it makes me anxious because of all the horrific stuff. So can you speak a little bit about, to me, the fascinating nexus between the tech and the equity, the human rights, the stuff that Mallory, if she were here, would be speaking about.

[Evan:] All right, I’ll try. I’ll try to channel this. Right. So today in 2024, social networks are not a kind of, side part of our lives that we occasionally go to to have a little fun and see some funny memes or videos. Right. They are the way that we stay connected to the people that matter most to us, right? Our family, our friends. This is a, it is not a optional part of sociality in 2024.

It’s a very central way that we stay in contact with our friends and family. It’s also a way that, political groups organize people who are interested in gardening or in, ecological issues get together. It is the way that we do a lot of our civil society, as well as that personal private connections.

And for those reasons, it’s very important that we don’t have single gatekeepers that are able to say, oh, this is acceptable discourse, this is not. We need to have the kind of realistic choice where you can say, hey, I want to, connect and share my, vacation photos that include pictures of my kids that I don’t like to share publicly.

I need to be able to set the privacy controls exactly right. So it goes to my family and friends and not to not to people that I don’t know. And, my, I might not be able to find the defaults that I need on some particular network by being able to stay connected to people, but set my own rules for how the system works.

That gives me the chance to set my own privacy decisions. I give a very personal example, but that kind of, rights issue comes on civil society, political, religious issues, all of these things. We need to be able to set our own standards on privacy, on who we talk to, on what’s what’s allowed to be spoken about, and not leave that up to like, just one big organization that’s trying to make a one size fits all solution.

[Bruce:] Yeah, that that’s basically: civil rights, digital rights – The Venn diagram is pretty much a circle because so much of our life is online. And again, it’s not just talking to your mom on Facebook like I do. I was talking to my kids who are adults now about how we would organize anti-nuclear protests in the days before the internet: xeroxing pieces of paper and dropping them off in punk record shops when you went to a demo and asking other people to Xerox them.

And, and so much of the civil society is done on the internet that it’s really dangerous, I think personally, for any organization or mad billionaire (Oops. Did I say that?) to be able to to control it. And something else I’ve been reading recently is about how, often because the big tech behemoths are in the USA and in California, there seems to be, a creeping California-ization of what’s acceptable etcetera.

I’m interested because I’ve lived all around the world. I was reading somewhere recently about, a group of indigenous people in Central or South America, and they were thrown off, a social network because the, their indigenous clothing was considered to be unacceptable to arguably quite puritanical Californians. And it was their they was their damn clothing.

My daughter, she does, she’s a tattoo artist. And she was thrown off, showing a picture of – She’d done a tattoo on somebody’s mastectomy scars. And that was considered beyond the pale for some rather shrinking violet in California. Ifeel very deeply that that to to to perpetuate and continue with the diversity of world culture. We need a diversity of discourse and social networks. Sorry, this is your soapbox, not mine.

[Evan:] That’s okay. But these are these are questions that humanity has wrestled with since we started speaking and understanding each other and, and, I don’t think it’s fair for one product manager or a small group in a conference room in Silicon Valley to say like this is acceptable. This is not acceptable.

It’s also not fair to put that responsibility on them. Right? Like they don’t have to adjudicate, assess, acceptable discourse in civil society. We need to be able to use the power of choice to be able to find the platforms that work for us. Right. And that’s what a social web does. It lets us move around.

It lets us find the platform that works for us. The other thing talking about platform choice, is that, there’s business choice too, right? And all of our social networks, not actually, not all entirely, but most of our social networks are driven entirely by advertising support, which is a valid business model that exists on the web.

You can argue with it if you don’t like it, but it is one that definitely exists. But it’s very hard to find social networks that have any other business model. And if you want to have a business model where, say, you pay us a monthly subscription and you get to use the service, that’s not possible if, the platform you have has a specific business model. But by being able to choose your platform and still stay connected to the people that matter to you, we get to enable some really interesting business options, right?

So you have SaaS hosting for the Fediverse, or you have advertising supported, or you have volunteer systems, or you get your social networking from your university, just like you got email or a webspace. Right? So we have so many different ways that we can, support sociality that don’t have to fit into a particular business model, which might have been also a bit of a problem in the past.

[Bruce:] And something that we at Vivaldi wrestle with as well. You know, advertising is, you know, there’s been advertising on radio and then television and cinema since those things were invented. We’re not in the business of fixing capitalism. I’ll leave that for next month’s to-do list. You know what? We have to work in the world that we’re in. But, yeah, it frees up business models or business models yet to be explored.

[Evan:] I’m definitely a big fan of competition. Open markets. Right. And that’s what open standards are allowed, is that people can choose the platform that makes sense to them, engage with it, in the way. And we all know. Right. Like the, number one, promise of market systems is that all players become better. They have to provide us better services or else we go to a competitor. So that’s the real advantage of having that kind of choice, is that we can say, hey, I want to try something else. I want to try something new. If you want to keep me improve your privacy, give me more features, give me more storage. Right. Like, I’m shopping around. I’m not just stuck here because I can’t get out.

[Bruce:] Yeah. So it it stops in or at least diminishes lock in – so that you’re “locked in” because the platform that you happen to be on offers you personally the best mix of features. And if it doesn’t, you can go and presumably take your address with you will.

[Evan:] Well, here’s what you can do is you can move between addresses. So if you have an account on, say Mastodon Social and you have decided that you want to move to Vivaldinet because you like the, service there, you initiate a move from, you know, Bruce at Mastodon to Vivaldi, and all of your followers will come with you.

So you keep all those social connections, right? So for you, for the people who follow you, it’s, like, absolutely transparent. It just like one day they wake up and you’re just, you know, you’re posting from a new address and they’re like, all right, looks good. We are working now. So you you mentioned like the fact that ActivityPub is an established standard, which is the case, but it’s also extensible, which means that we can build new parts to it and existing software will keep working even though there’s new features.

So, one of the things that we’re working on at the W3C right now, is a mechanism to bring all your content with you too. Right? So everything you’ve posted, all your, all your images and your videos, and that way this data portability becomes much more meaningful, right? So you’re not only bringing your social network, your social connections with you, you’re bringing all your content with you to.

[Bruce:] That is cool. I’m going to have to read that spec. It’s been a while since I’ve read that W3C spec, actually. And,

[Evan:] It’s it’s got a good name. It’s called LOLA. We’re really lucky. The CTO of the Data Transfer Initiative, named Lisa Dusseault, who also worked on calendar interoperability at CalDAV is helping us make this new data portability process at the W3C for ActivityPub too. So and that’s one of the cool things about working on open standards is you get these kind of rock stars or rock stars that, in the standards world that you get to work with because they are just as involved as as we are.

[Bruce:] Yeah. And and of course, they’ve worked on something like this in another standard and can bring a ton of expertise that maybe you didn’t… there’s so much you don’t know when you go into standardizing something and then somebody goes, yeah, what about right to left, or what about vertical text? So you go, oh, that’s a thing. And then once you realize it’s a thing, it becomes super important. And you’re so glad that somebody out there who knows about it has engaged with the standards, knows how to, knows how to make this stuff happen, I love it.

[Evan:] Yeah. I mean, there’s different I mean, one of the things that’s really interesting about, social software is that people are creating, like, new ways to interact all the time, right? Like, I want to interact with a random person. I want to interact in physical space with a group of people. So I’d like to invite people to come to the space.

And one nice thing about having an extensible standard is that we can let developers, entrepreneurs, founders expect agreement with those different kinds of interactions, and they can use the network that actually exists that has tens of millions of people on it already.

[Bruce:] It sounds to me what you’re talking about, data portability. You’re talking about promoting competition, potentially stimulating new business models. It sounds to me like in the best way, this sounds to me like a spiel that would go down very well with governments and regulators and people like that. Are you planning to or are you engaging with anyone like that?

I’m a hardened, seasoned veteran of regulators. So want any tips, come to me. But it strikes me that that because that stuff could be music to their ears, particularly in the EU, which I’m not in there anymore. Unfortunately.

[Evan:] Unfortunately for you. Sorry about that. But yeah, I think our intention at the Social Web Foundation is that for policymakers, regulators, etc., that we can provide the information that they need to make those choices, and in order to support those decisions. So I think one of the things that happens in areas where there’s a dominant player that is benefiting from network effects is that they say, hey, we can’t interoperate with anyone else, right? Everybody has a choice to go somewhere else. But, you know, we don’t interoperate with those.

And by defining standards, we make that entire operation possible. And it allows regulators to start demanding that interoperability. So, I think that we’re really like, enthusiastic about that. We think it’s fine to ask from dominant players. We hope that dominant players like get ahead of the game and start thinking about implementing open standards before regulators decide that. Then they need to do it. Yeah.

[Bruce:] Which leads me to the Zuckerberg elephant in the room, because one of the other launch partners of Social Web Foundation has been Meta of course, the organization most notably behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. I’m personally (and you didn’t ask my opinion, but whatever I’m going to give it) personally, I’m always ambivalent when a big org comes on board with something like this because it’s great.

They’ve got money. They have, you know, teams of people who can help with press and and getting the name out. But I’m always not suspicious, because I’m not a suspicious man. But there’s always a little bit of me thinks, what what what what’s their game plan? I mean, obviously you’ve got a relationship with Meta, and I don’t want you to give away any secrets, but why are Meta so enthusiastic?

[Evan:] So first of all, I’m going to say that, we do have a good relationship with Meta. We’ve tried to engage them with the rest of the social web. And I think it’s been a really positive aspect for me. From my point of view, it is a great attraction to other social networks to see that Meta’s involved. I think it becomes much more, accessible for, you know, I don’t want to name any names because I don’t want to put any pressure on them. But like big networks with 100 million people, a billion people to see that Meta has come in, they’re like, oh, maybe this is something that could work for us, right?

It’s also something where, even smaller networks. I talk about small networks, like tens of millions of people, for them to be able to say, hey, we would have access to this audience, Facebook, Meta threads is 200 million people. Now we have access to this audience. We can interact with them. Our creators on our service can broadcast to people on this service.

So it’s a really attractive, possibility for, for the social web. And we think it’s going to be a great way to kind of get that snowball effect keep going. Meta does not, share, like, business plans with me, Research director of an external nonprofit foundation. But I can tell you what they have told me, which is that they think that this is, the way that the social web is going and that, excuse me, that social networks are going, that they will be interconnected and that they want to be leading that process, not be dragged into it.

So I think that, you’ve talked a little bit about a, about regulators. Right? And this is me taking off my friend-of-Meta Hat and putting on my friend-of-the-social-web hat, I think that when we start talking about regulating large, digital platforms, having open standards that they’re able to implement and to connect to the rest of the world is a big advantage.

And so, it’s a lot better for them to be in that space early, rather than fight a long lawsuit to get dragged into it. So I think that that’s one thing I, I can’t imagine that regulators don’t play another part. I would also say that the that the other big issue is competition in this space, right?

Like there are a lot of other, social networks that are, that are around. And if Meta is able to engage with some of the smaller social networks or, or even some of the bigger ones, they provide a kind of unified block that makes it harder for some of the other ones to to compete.

So it’s, it has some competitive advantage. Participate in and and or network. Like you have you go from a very big audience to a bigger audience. But you also get the benefit of like developer environments, all kinds of like participation and innovation that happens and then that network and it has a benefit even for a huge company like Meta.

Now, if you had told me three years ago, like, Meta is going to be one of the first big companies to jump on board with open standards for social networking, I would have laughed. I’m very glad we have them. I hope that, you know by this time next year I’m talking to you about 2 or 3 big, tech companies rather than just one.

[Bruce:] Interesting though. I mean, I think you’re right. My experience, before Vivaldi with Open Web Advocacy in the EU is that regulators see walled gardens, as a more compelling target than companies that, doing a bit of lock-in, but primarily based on open standards. So there is, as you say, there’s, you know, nobody wants a regulator sniffing around them. If if only because it sucks time and press good will. So, yeah, if they do engage and they’re engaging in a positive way, that’s obviously going to be a net win, I think.

[Evan:] Yeah. I think one of my personal goals and, and, this is just between you and me, right? We’re we’re not recording this or anything. So one of my personal goals is to see other big companies get off the bench and and get involved. Right. So I would love to see, I won’t name names again, but you can imagine big browser makers or mobile operating system providers who give you an email address, a calendar, a place to store your files. They’ve already got these cloud-based systems for doing a lot of managing of your, life and interaction to extend that with a social network structure, much the way that Vivaldi has. Seeing other, operating system providers, browser providers, etc. say, hey, you, we’re all we gave you an email address, let’s give you a social network space and said, so I think that that is a case where we could really see that kind of thing snowballing.

[Bruce:] And that would be cool from a consumer perspective, because I joined Mastodon a long time ago, but didn’t really use it because Twitter hadn’t turned into what it’s turned into now. I’m quite techie, I’m not as techie as people think, but I’m reasonably techie, and I found it a little confusing to get my head around the federated nature of it.

And I think if, for example, a large company that offers all those email address and calendars, etc. just gave you that address and then the Federation was all merrily happening, but you didn’t have to think about it in the same way as, you know, nobody thinks about how email works when bob@gmail emails alice@hotmail. It just works.

[Evan:] It just works. And we’ve gotten used to the idea from the very beginning that that’s the way email works is that we we send emails from my .edu address to your Hotmail address to a Gmail address, and it just constantly works. And that is the promise of the social web, is that we can have that same kind of interactivity and interconnectivity without worrying about those boundaries that demand levels.

Yeah. So I think, but let me I do want to address the question that came up that you had about Mastodon. Right. Which is not an unusual experience. Right. We’re all used to some of the affordances that are built into centralized networks, where they promote people for us to follow, or there’s a search mechanism so you can find people, maybe there’s a way to take your contacts from your address book and say show me their accounts on this service for anyone I know.

So we have all this work that’s gone into these platform rooms to make them easier to use, more sticky for you, more interesting. And, we haven’t done that as much on the social web, especially among those, like, open source, systems like Mastodon. And one of the things that we want to do at the Social Web Foundation is to make those kinds of services that can work across the entire network.

So, being able to say, hey, I’ve just set up a new Mastodon account. Where are my friends? Because I want to follow them. That’s a really important part about onboarding to any system. And it’s not really well addressed yet, so we’d like to see that happen. That’s the kind of thing that we’ll be working on in terms of tools that will build.

[Bruce:] I was going to answer when you said that it’s not really addressed. Is that not addressed in the underlying protocols and standard in ActivityPub, or is that already there in the standard? But nobody’s yet implemented it. Where, what layer is the the place? Okay.

[Evan:] Super good question. So we have things like associating an account with your name and your bio and things that you’re interested in. What we don’t have is the connection between, say, your email address and that account. But it would be perfectly nice to be able to go to a search system and say I have Bruce’s email address, can you show me his Mastodon account because I want to follow him.

And so using your contact list to find people on the on the Fediverse, obviously very important that we include, consent that it’s an opt-in system, that it is something that if we withdraw consent, it doesn’t last forever. So we want to be very careful about it so that it supports people’s expectations of privacy, at the same time being able to find out how many people you already know are on the social web and get connected to them. It’s such a key, important part about getting to that next step of becoming an active user.

[Bruce:] So it’s a it’s a it’s a mix, if you like, of of needing to specify this mechanism, but also needing all the social -not constraints- all the things you have to consider like consent, privacy.

[Evan:] Completely. It’s interesting stuff, you know. So there is not that kind of growth mentality. A lot in the individual software packages that make up, the, social networks there is obviously at like, Matt, at Flipboard, at at automatic, they think about growth. But for Mastodon or some of the smaller, that’s just not has not been priority for them.

So like being able to say like, hey, we’d like more people to have this great experience. Let’s figure out ways to improve that, to keep them around.

[Bruce:] Another advantage then, and having, big commercial players behind the Social Web Foundation is that commercial organizations think about growth and therefore they have, if you like, an imperative to be easier, be more inclusive, be more open, be easier to on board. And if they’re working with you that then cascades, for want of a better word across the whole (and I hate to use the word) ecosystem, but I’m going to say it.

[Evan:] Ecosystem is fine. I love it because we have like, you know, in an ecosystem in which there’s a real variety of different kinds of creatures and kinds of characters and players in this space, you know, from, one side where we’ve got fire-breathing, open source free software folks, to like the other side where we’ve got product managers and Silicon Valley, and everywhere in between. And I think it’s really cool that we’ve got a lot of different stakeholders in the space of the social web. So I guess the big thing that we want to make sure of, is that when people are interested in this space, they know how to get started.

Right? Like if this is something that they want to do. And I think what’s surprising for a lot of people is they may already have an account, that is like an we call it Fediverse-enabled or Social Web-enabled. And they just haven’t actually turned it on. Right. So you’ve got an Instagram account, you can automatically get a Meta Threads account.

And with Meta Threads you can connect to the Fediverse. Right. So that’s a that’s a really easy step that already hundreds of millions of people already have those accounts set up. But if you’ve got a WordPress blog or you use Flipboard already, you also have access to these systems, already existing. So I think that, part of the work that we’re trying to do at the Social Web Foundation is like, let people know the platforms are coming to the social web. You can get ahead of them and get your Mastodon account, or use a service that already has it in and involved. So, you know, we also I know I’m not plugging Vivaldi just because we’re all, we’re we’re.

[Bruce:] Fine. It’s fine. You can, you can you can plug Vivaldi!

[Evan:] Absolutely. So like every Vivaldi user has access to Vivaldi dot net, which is a Fediverse-enabled platform. Right. And that’s just that’s just amazing. Once you’re in the ecosystem, you’ve got these services already built in and you don’t have to start anything.

[Bruce:] Yeah, I mean, the Mastodon instance was before my my time on the payroll, but I know the people involved and it was just a no-brainer because Vivaldi wants a better web and, a social, a Federation of social networks is not controlled by one silo or gatekeeper, no matter how benevolent he or she might be, is obviously to us a better web.

I mean, as you know, I’m English and I’m a middle aged man and therefore I haven’t had an emotion since 1983. But I will tell everybody that this is my excited face. I’m genuinely excited about this because it does feel like the beginning of the web, you know, when fire-breathing, open source zealots had to sit down with shiny suited, brylcreme-haired Silicon Valley product managers, and get shit done. And, you know, by God, they did get shit done. That, we’ve got the web, you know? Yeah, this is possible. We’ve seen it happen. It can happen again.

[Evan:] So one of the things that is really, interesting about this space, is that there are these like, different groups of, of folks. I’ve got a single person Mastodon…. Not single person. I set it up for my family. So me, my wife, my kids. We have that. We use that for sharing photos. We share it with my family, my my more extended family. And and it’s great mechanism. And so we are a tiny player on this social web compared to 200 million people at Threads. And yet we are we have just as much of a voice. If you’re just as much of a part of this system as if we were, you know, as if we were a huge company.

And I think that that’s a that’s a really nice, nice part is that we get to set our own rules. Nobody gets to tell us how it works. Well, okay. I’m the dad, so I kind of get to tell everybody how it works. But mostly people have a say in how it works. And I think that that’s a really important part of an equitable system. I don’t have to be in charge of the entire social web in order to be in charge of my part of the social web. Right. And that’s that’s the that’s the nice thing for me.

[Bruce:] And that’s a great thing about the social web. By the way, am I am I supposed to call it “social web” rather than “Fediverse”? Are the two interchangeable?

[Evan:] I use them interchangeably. There are some people who will tell you like one is very specific, like they’ll apply social web to social networks from the early 2000s. And I’m like, look, this is what the social web is in 2024. You can define it however you want from like, back in the ancient days. But but now is, now the social web means ActivityPub-enabled systems.

Some people call it the “Fediverse”. Some people call it “Fedi”. I’m perfectly fine with anything. We use Social Web Foundation just because it’s a clearer term. I think for a lot of people, and they understand that, the web, they understand the, the idea of the, the document web or the application web. They can extend that to the social web.

[Bruce:] Oh, I think it’s I think it’s a good term, you know, if, I’m quite geeky, but, when I first heard the word “Fediverse”. So I thought, what is social web? If somebody says, yeah, it’s about social networks on the web, go, yeah. Make sense. Does what it says on the tin as the Ronseal advert says.

[Evan:] Yes, indeed. But also those goofy names they like work, right? Like talk about “blogs” and “wikis” and and this and that.

[Bruce:] Yeah, yeah. True.

[Evan:] “Tweets” and “Twitter”. Silly names are valuable. So all switching back and forth I’ll say Fediverse or I’ll say social web, in the same sentence. Right. And I think it’s, I think it’s fine. But, I know that “Fediverse” is a very special word to a lot of people who’ve been around for a while. And I think, like given that some respect is important, too.

[Bruce:] Agreed, agreed. Very quickly because, we’re nearly at the top of the hour. What’s next? What top of your to do list? Are you able to share that with us? Should what what should we be looking out for in the imminent future?

[Evan:] So from, so let me kind of go out; start with me, and I’ll work my way out. Right. For sure. Most recently, I’ve published a book, with O’Reilly Media: ActivityPub programing for the social web. It’s a book for software developers. So people who are into software, into building things, I think is a great place for folks to start. So it’s from O’Reilly, which is known for their animals on the cover. And I highly recommend it for people who want to get started thinking about ActivityPub for their software.

For the Social Web Foundation, we have a few big projects that we’re working on right now. One is -you mentioned the E.U.- we’re doing an analysis of the protocol for, compatibility with the GDPR, which is the new privacy, regulations to make sure that organizations that implement ActivityPub aren’t accidentally stepping out over the lines of GDPR, how to how to do it in a way that’s GDPR aware.

So that’s number one. We’re doing some other work on enabling different kinds of content. So we’re especially interested in long… Well, we call it long form content, but like article length texts, like magazine articles, blog posts. Because we want to not just have that micro, blogging, you know, single paragraph stuff, but can you read a full article within your Mastodon or, or elsewhere? And we want to be able to make that a really nice experience.

We are working on… let me see. I’ve got a couple of others top of mind. One is and a landing page. So we want to make it so that if you are interested in the Fediverse, interested in the social web, we just have one place that you can share what is the Fediverse, and explains it and gives you next steps.

And then lastly, let me see if there’s one more I have. Oh, end-to-end encryption. ActivityPub is encrypted on the fly. So someone, reading, someone looking at your service from outside can’t see your stuff. But when you store stuff on your service provider’s disks in the cloud that’s stored in the clear.

And so we want to make it so it’s encrypted when it’s on the service provider’s network, so that you can talk about things with your friends, and not worry about whether your service provider is reading your messages or whatever, or you know, targeting ads towards you because of your messages. So we’re trying to take that messaging aspect, which has become the like default standard for most social networks and bring it to ActivityPub so it works between social networks.

[Bruce:] Interesting. So you can’t target ads based upon the content of the message, which is nice. Does that inhibit potential advertising supported model or…?

[Evan:] Yeah. No, I mean if you can’t get good advertising focus out of my public posts and things that I already follow, I think that it’s probably okay to focus your advertising model just on people’s public posts. Yeah. On their, you know, message to mom or or whatever.

[Bruce:] So it encrypts *private* messages.

[Evan:] It encrypts private messages and stuff that you’re sending directly to somebody else. Yeah. Yeah.

[Bruce:] That’s great. That’s great. Yeah.

[Evan:] So, and then, I will go out one more, please. W3C is working on things like data portability. The work that we’re doing on end to end encryption is also working with the W3C, and working on like a next, backwards-compatible version of ActivityPub, incorporating some of the things that we’ve learned in the last five years, and making it bigger and better.

So, those are the things that are happening right now. I expect to see even more cool ActivityPub implementations over the next year. Hopefully next time on For A Better Web, I can tell you about even more companies that have implemented the standard.

[Bruce:] Well, I was just going to say, it would be really nice to have you back in a few months and discuss how it’s gone on, because that to-do list, it’s going to take until at least next Thursday.

[Evan:] Absolutely. Maybe even through the weekend.

[Bruce:] Don’t work the weekends mate, it’s a mug’s game. No, but that’s really fascinating. Thank you, Evan. Folks at home or listening in or on the train or whatever. This is Evan Prodromou of the Social Web Foundation. I’m going to buy his book, because I don’t know it nearly enough about the tech that underlies this stuff. And I’m geeky enough that I want to. And, I do like a nice O’Reilly book. What animal’s on your cover?

[Evan:] What a good question. It’s a ‘nanday conure’, which I had never heard of before. So you don’t get to choose your animal. They assign an animal. Nanday conure is a parrot that lives in South America and has very interesting nesting, structure, which is that they nest in individual trees, in their family units and kind of raised there, but they come together for, flocking. Right? They. Yes, absolutely. So they’re in full control of their own little nest. But when it’s time to connect, they’re able to do it in a larger way.

And I was like, oh wow, you guys really nailed it. That’s like, wow, this is a good one. Yeah. So, Amanda Connor. Yeah. So it’s a beautiful green parrot. You can’t miss it.

[Bruce:] Well, you’ve sold one copy today at least. And, hopefully when this goes out, it shouldn’t be too long. You’ll you’ll, you’ll be out-selling Harry Potter.

[Evan:] Yeah. Now, can I also, while I’m plugging, just say, like socialwebfoundation.org. We have a big link at the top about what is the fate of Earth. If you’re interested in this, it has, we have a page with lots of links explaining how the Fediverse works and explaining how to get started. So, good way to get going.

[Bruce:] And we’ll put that link in the show notes when it goes on the website. Evan, thank you so much for fighting for a better web. We wish you all the best with this endeavor. As you know, Vivaldi, we’re great fans of the Fediverse, the social web. And I personally am. So thank you very much for your time. And thank you very much for what you’re doing. And we hope to see you again and hear lots of success stories.

[Evan:] Thank you so much for for the chance. I really have enjoyed it.

[Bruce:] Oh, and a belated happy birthday.

[Evan:] Thank you very much.

[Bruce:] 21 again?

[Evan:] 21 again.

[Bruce:] Thanks, Evan. See you.

[Evan:] Thanks. Bye bye.