The Social Web Foundation (SWF) is a new non-profit with a mission of "a growing, healthy, financially viable and multi-polar Fediverse”. In TechCrunch, Sarah Perez reported that SWF has “some backing” from Meta as well as Flipboard, Ghost, Mastodon, and others as well as a “large grant” from the Ford Foundation. “In total, SWF is closing in on $1 million in financial support.”
One of the hot buttons in the discussion is SWF’s relationship with Meta. So I set up a series of polls on Mastodon. Here are the options for this one – I’m not sure how to do polls on Lemmy, so please leave your thoughts in the comments
- SWF shouldn’t engage with Meta at all
- SWF should work with Meta occasionally, when it’s necessary
- SWF should work with Meta together often, but no formal relationship
- SWF should have Meta as a partner, advisor, or some other formal relatoinship, but no funding
- SWF should take funding from Meta, but no formal relationship
- SWF should take funding from Meta and a formal relatiionship
They don’t “need” the SWF. If Zuckerberg wanted to simply takeover the control of ActivityPub, they could just use their existing devrel people that work with the W3C and push the changes directly at the “authoritative” organization.
Gah, don’t give them ideas! 😨
My point is that we should take their current approach as a good thing.
I"m not saying that we should blindly trust them, but I am saying that if we want corporations to Do The Right Things, then it’s a lot better to let them have a seat at the table and participate with the community than to simply ostracize them forever because of their past wrongdoings.