#ActivityPub is getting its first formal update path since 2018.

#ActivityPub is getting its first formal update path since 2018. I wrote about why this matters, how this leads to some strange and funny power dynamics, and about who actually participate

I did not think about this aspect (why would I, I have no idea who is a paid member of the W3C ), but this is a potentially concerning data point.

> There are only two organisations that are active in the fediverse that are a paid member of the W3C: Meta and the Social Web Foundation. With the Social Web Foundation also receiving funding from Meta, the company that built Threads now has more institutional standing in ActivityPub governance than any of the organisations actually building open fediverse software. Mastodon gGmbH, Framasoft, and others are not W3C members and cannot participate in the Working Group unless they are invited.
>
> This is by all accounts an extremely funny outcome for a network that aims to be independent of Big Tech’s power.

— @fediversereport@mastodon.social

How this WG shapes up in the coming weeks will be interesting to watch Thank you for sharing this update.

@julian @fediversereport That doesn’t sound good …

Thank you for the information.

@julian @fediversereport Have you thought about NodeBB joining the W3C as a member organization? It's not cheap, but it's also not impossible.

@fediversereport So, I think this is a really interesting article, and I agree that participation and representation matter here.

I hope that more ActivityPub implementers step up to become W3C members. There are several funded nonprofits and commercial organizations that could probably afford it. I'd recommend that people who use ActivityPub software let the software creators know that they should participate in the WG process!

@ArneBab @julian @fediversereport I agree, there should be more people working on this stuff but nope, and that is bad.

@fediversereport

I think all of the editors and authors of ActivityPub and Activity Streams in the previous iteration of the working group were "invited experts", except one (@jasnell ). One of the chairs (me) was as an invited expert.

The chairs (@tantek.com , @lehors and I) had a "knock to get invited" policy: anyone who expressed interest in participating in the working group was invited to join. I can't remember a situation where we turned someone down.

@fediversereport We also proactively reached out to distributed social network projects and commercial social network implementers. I'd been organizing the Federated Social Web Summit events for a few years, and we'd talked to dozens of different projects, so we had a lot of contacts there.

@fediversereport Finally, we've been planning to work in a "staging process", where ideas and changes come from the developer and user communities, through the Community Group, and then optionally go to the Working Group if they need the structure of an official W3C standard.

@fediversereport I think that's a really healthy structure. I think it's likely that the Working Group will be focused on upkeep and maintenance of the core docs (ActivityPub and Activity Streams), and the Community Group will work on broader applications of the protocol through extensions.

@fediversereport

"there is a good change [sic] that Meta has no interest in actually participating."

***

Probably a good change indeed.

@fediversereport I hope people in the ActivityPub community put the invited expert policy to the test. There's a good explanation of the IE role here:

I would be really surprised if qualified ActivityPub specialists are turned down for IE roles!

@fediversereport Having had some involvement with IETF back in the day, Mastodon GmbH being a member doesn’t really change the power dynamics. When a large commercial player is on the committee, they already have the ability to force an agenda by virtue of having the resources and leverage in userbase to just implement it. If there is disagreement from smaller players, the most they can do is declare that this isn’t part of the “official” standard, which then makes the standard irrelevant. (1/2)

The only way compromise happens is if there are other players of similar size in the committee to counterbalance a large player. If this is Meta and a bunch of nonprofits, Meta either dictates the standard or forks it and effectively replaces it. (2/2)

@slyborg@vmst.io yes that's exactly why I want to bring together disparate threadiverse implementations so that we can petition for changes and make our voices heard as a collective instead of individual software platforms.

The ForumWG has had some early successes!

@fediversereport This is great to hear. I'm working on building a decentralized Meetup alternative for in person events, and I'm planning to add Activity Pub support.

@slyborg @fediversereport

if there are other players of similar size in the committee to counterbalance a large player

Some of us knew that capture through W3C is only a matter of time, so we put a lot of effort to establish an alternative standardization process for Fediverse:

Here's my question though... The w3c rules stipulate that any changes must be accompanied by two implementations.

That's a pretty strong check against unilateral decision-making and introduction of breaking changes from the WG.

@silverpill@mitra.social @slyborg@vmst.io @evan@cosocial.ca

@slyborg @Connected Places If Mastodon really tries to shape ActivityPub around Mastodon and only Mastodon, you can expect quite some opposition from and head-butting with players such as Flipboard, Ghost and especially Automattic (WordPress).

The same who must have pressured Mastodon into "better" support of Article-type objects. That's limited to Mastodon's previews now including the summary as well, but the full long-form HTML rendering with all bells and whistles which not only they wanted is something that Mastodon will never touch.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

@fediversereport If they are smart they will fix a raft of fundamental UX pitfalls in current ActivityPub by defining a protocol handler for it.

Email needed its protocol handler spec while it was getting established – and arguably still does – and I do think this is one of the ways in which ActivityPub is "like email".