Mastodawn

Introducing tags.pub

tags.pub is a new service under development by the Social Web Foundation. It is a global hashtag server -- it lets you follow a hashtag across the Fediverse. There's lots of information on the tags.pub home page, and I (Evan) did a talk about tags.pub at FOSDEM 2026. This blog post answers some basics about tags.pub. To follow a hashtag globally, search for a user with that name at tags.pub, like @example for the #example hashtag. Follow that account, and it will share all the […]

https://socialwebfoundation.org/2026/03/17/introducing-tags-pub/

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Stefan Bohacek Dec 19

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/

#fediverse #meta #news #TechNews #threads

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fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷Dec 11

#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/

#SocialWebFoundation #BridgyFed

ophiocephalic 🐍Dec 11

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

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/11/meta-shuts-down-global-accounts-linked-to-abortion-advice-and-queer-content

#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #Whatsapp #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG

Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

More than 50 organisations report sites being restricted or removed, with abortion hotlines blocked and posts showing non-explicit nudity triggering warnings

The Guardian

Sozialwelten Dec 2

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

Aral Balkan Nov 29

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/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

• ‪ 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

Gaza Verified

We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

ophiocephalic 🐍Nov 6

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.

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/

#MetaOutOfSWICG #DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG

Harito Oct 30

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

fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷Oct 23

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/