Social Web Foundation

Towards a bigger, better fediverse

Blog: https://socialwebfoundation.org/

Last Notes

2026-09-18 16:11:13 GMT

This week, Social Web Foundation Executive Director Mallory Knodel joined EFF’s Babette Ngene and public interest technologist Bruce Schneier for a conversation about how to build a decentralized web that truly works for all.
The discussion was part of EFF’s *EFFecting Change* series and explored what the fediverse can offer as an alternative to today’s centralized social platforms.
The conversation started from a question we think about a lot at the Social Web Foundation: what would it take to build an internet where people and communities have real choices about how they participate, where their data lives, and how their digital spaces are governed?
One answer is to fix the old platforms! Mallory’s message was to work on liberating people from the platforms that have walled them off for so long. This might seem like a long shot, but getting incumbents to use open social web protocols (or asking regulators to step in) is a durable and immediate tactic.
Interoperability allows people to connect with the rest of the social web without having to leave their networks.
Watch the full conversation, including audience Q&A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8G1zqGraRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8G1zqGraRA

2026-07-23 14:09:50 GMT

Years of thinking from scholars like Francis Fukuyama and Renée DiResta have gone into what are called “middleware” solutions to content moderation. With Evan Friedman from FABRIC, this is our contribution to the solution space—a standardized protocol suite to facilitate an opt-in way of seeing how different communities understand the same story, where they disagree, and where they find common ground.
In a new piece for *Tech Policy Press*, Social Web Foundation and FABRIC argue that context should not remain a proprietary feature trapped inside dominant platforms: it should become an open, provider-agnostic, standardized protocol that works across browsers, publishers, and social networks.
**[Read “The Web Needs a Context Layer Built on a Shared Protocol.”](https://www.techpolicy.press/the-web-needs-a-context-layer-built-on-a-shared-protocol/ )**

2026-06-11 18:19:04 GMT

Into our second year our mission to foster an open, decentralized, and user-centric social web continues. SWF are official W3C members, we have secure core as well as project support through 2026 and, well, we have been *all over the world* talking about the fediverse.
Today we are publishing our 2025 Annual Report to spotlight the generous support from our funders and advisors. We also preview 2026 and how we plan to deepen our community engagement and technical work on protocol development.
Read the full report [here](https://socialwebfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SWF-Annual-Report-2025.pdf ) to learn how we’re laying the foundation for a social web that serves everyone.
[SWF Annual Report 2025](https://socialwebfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SWF-Annual-Report-2025.pdf )[Download](https://socialwebfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SWF-Annual-Report-2025.pdf )

2025-02-11 18:33:38 GMT

SWF has joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to advance open standards for the social web. Evan Prodromou will be SWF’s advisory council representative as he continues in his role as maintainer of the ActivityPub and Activity Streams 2.0 specifications.
Extending and expanding the implementation of the ActivityPub is a core area of work for SWF. ActivityPub is the only open standard that can underpin a social web that is truly interoperable, fostering innovation and usability across social platforms like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Ghost, Threads, Flipboard and an increasing number of other online spaces.
The SWF and its founders have a history of engagement in the W3C. Evan was co-author on the Activity Streams 2.0 and ActivityPub specifications. As head of digital at ARTICLE 19 and later CTO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, I’ve engaged as both an invited technical expert and an advisory council member under CDT’s membership on topics related to technical standards and human rights issues.
The W3C Social Community Group is the primary vehicle for ActivityPub extensions that provides a structured process for introducing new features and updating the existing specifications. The W3C CGs are open to anyone who would like to join and contribute.
SWF joins CDT as one of the few civil society organizations that comprise the Consortium. SWF’s membership in the W3C underscores our commitment to promoting an open and federated social web, and our alignment with the W3C mission to develop web standards through community consensus that ensures the long-term growth and accessibility of technical specifications that are openly licensed.
In terms of concrete ongoing work, we look forward to bringing end-to-end encryption to direct messages in ActivityPub, developing groups on the social web, supporting data portability with ActivityPub, making discovery of ActivityPub objects and their authors easier. We’ll participate in ongoing maintenance and development of the core standards. We’ll also work alongside the renowned experts in web accessibility, building with potential companies and organizations who might become SWF supporters, and serving as a voice for the public interest in this important forum for multistakeholder internet governance.