- From: Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2023 08:46:17 +0300
- To: public-swicg@w3.org, Ben Savage <btsavage@meta.com>
Welcome, Ben! (It will take some effort to ensure others keep feeling welcome too.) > What can Meta do to support the fediverse? I'll give it a try. In the short term, Meta Platforms Inc. can support the diversity and health of the fediverse with financial contributions showing a long-term commitment while actively giving up influence. To do so it needs to cooperate with something already existing on its own. Just some examples come to mind: 1) Software developer support. Donate 100 M$ upfront to NLnet to run a 10-year program similar to what they've been doing in this space, without any requirement other than FLOSS licensing (and perhaps non-profit status for projects/instances receiving support for operational costs). It's easier to federate with thousands of nodes if you're more confident about their cybersecurity. https://nlnet.nl/foundation/ANBI.html 2) Legal support. If the userbase explodes, there will be a deluge of lawsuits and compliance issues for thousands of fediverse admins. This is tricky to say the least, but maybe donate up to 10 % of the existing budget to orgs active in legal support (like EFF, ACLU, Digital Freedom Fund). Find a research centre à la create.ac.uk able to willing to produce or commission legal handbooks and practical templates for fediverse admins in 100 jurisdictions and cover the cost. 3) Education. Ask the HEERF how to match their support to HBCUs, which provide much-needed diversity in STEM in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1161896053#cite_ref-87 > How can we ensure our entry to > this ecosystem is a positive thing that helps grow the community? No idea but you're right that moderation plays a big role in the puzzle. Has Meta Platforms considered running more than one node? For example one by country, with jurisdiction-specific rules. Or even one by county/province in the bigger jurisdictions.* > How can > we support this standard? While not necessary to be standard-compliant, a commitment to opensource in all the implementations would help. It's much easier to understand how a standard works in the wild, and to evolve it properly, when the implementations can be studied. Even if the main application source code can't be shared at the beginning, it would still be possible to open up individual components, especially those which have spillover effects on federating nodes. For example you could start from whatever is going to be the actual ActivityPub endpoint and with the classifiers used internally for moderation etc. (That could include working with the industry and researchers to publish PhotoDNA, GIFCT etc. datasets in a suitable privacy-preserving way that allows them to be studied in the open and potentially used by self-hosted pure-FLOSS software.) Cheers, Federico P.s.: My first post here. (Second try after subscribing.) It was supposed to be a short reply but here we are. The list archives state that "Anyone may read or write to this list." Please let me know in private if it's inappropriate. Cf. https://fosstodon.org/@blake/110698633595942360 (*) Apparently that would mean up to 700k users in California and DC. That's a bit less than the current biggest fediverse nodes, though far larger than I've personally considered advisable so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_(United_States)#Statistics
Received on Wednesday, 12 July 2023 08:00:35 UTC