#swicg — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #swicg, aggregated by home.social.
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Notes from the 2026-04-09 #SWICG #GeosocialTF meeting:
- @herebox update on geosocial work presented at AT Protocol Atmosphere conference
- @evan microsyntax for location doc PR
- FediForum session planninghttps://hedgedoc.socialweb.coop/s/L0a0Gqvz4
Next meeting: 2026-05-14
Agenda: https://github.com/swicg/geosocial/wiki/2026%E2%80%9005%E2%80%9014-agenda
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Notes from the 2026-03-12 #SWICG #GeoSocialTF meeting:
- First draft of explainer doc merged: https://github.com/swicg/geosocial/blob/main/explainer.md
- Starting of validation implementation of Places OrderedCollection proposal
- Starting microsyntax proposal for location without server-side support -
The monthly SWICG GeoSocial Task Force meeting is about to start if you have thoughts on location data use cases and the social web.
https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/ed630a3d-7581-4053-9978-75949ad42f2a/20260108T130000/
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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
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #Whatsapp #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
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Notes from the 2025-11-13 @socialcg Geosocial Task Force meeting
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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.
#MetaOutOfSWICG #DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
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There is currently a rumor afoot that Zuckerberg is planning to expropriate the AT protocol for Threads. If true, the pattern is undeniable, suggesting that any remotely open social media protocol which finds its footing will be subjected to a Zuckerberg incursion. Accordingly, future protocol developments should insure Zuckerberg-resistant measures as early as possible in their life cycle.
🐸 Protocols should incorporate Zuckerberg-repellent technology into their foundational codebase
🐸 Protocol projects should exclude the participation of anyone who could later become a Zuckerberg collaborator (e.g. het cis white guys who want to "keep politics out of it")
🐸 Protocols should be oriented, both in developmental organization and in the emergent community topologies they engender, to horizontally distribute and diffuse power; power concentrations become throttle-points for corruption, primed for Zuckerberg exploitation (e.g. SWICG, SWF)
🐸 Protocols should be designed to encourage the kinds of communities in which Zuckerberg-hate is a prominent characteristic, and which will be quick to activate and organize a social opposition to Zuckerberg incursion (e.g. FediPact)
We can take our lessons from the current failures; ActivityPub was deficient in all of these requirements except the last, and if the rumors are true, there's no hope at all for AT. Put simply, the protocol that powers the decentralized social network of tomorrow will be the one with the most successful Zuckerberg-resistant adaptions
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG #Bluesky
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Parents outraged as [Social Web Foundation partner] Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man - Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’
[SWICG member] Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man […] The man noticed that posts encouraging him to “get Threads” […] were being dropped into his Instagram feed featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.
The children’s images were used by [ActivityPub development participant] Meta after their parents had posted them on Instagram to mark their return to school. The parents were unaware that Meta’s settings permitted it to do this. One mother said her account was set to private […]
The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings […] Meta […] said the images did not violate its policies.
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
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In his recent FediCon talk, Evan Prodromou implicitly rationalized his collaboration with Meta by proclaiming, "you don't negotiate with friends". Maybe not, but you don't hand enemies the keys to your kingdom either, which is exactly what he has done by giving Meta seats at the table of the ActivityPub working group. And for that matter, accepting a relatively significant sum of money from those enemies to fund your foundation goes rather beyond the negotiation phase as well, does it not?
As it stands, we have a hostile element enmeshed in the development process which undergirds the entire network, all the while systematically violating every last consent boundary the fedi has defined and defended over the course of its history. This is a power imbalance so egregious and amoral that it negates the raison d'etre of the fediverse altogether. Meta must be removed from SWICG
🧵 3/3 end
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
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The development process of the protocol is poisoned by the presence of Meta. Any significant revision the organization proposes will be perceived as an aspect of the Meta incursion, suspected and resisted, whatever its actual origin. The backlash to any perceived attempt by Meta to manipulate the backbone of the fedi could lead to an existential crisis.
Under these circumstances the only way to avoid such a backlash is to refrain from advancing protocol development at all, which is also unsustainable. The way out of this is the ejection of the Meta intruders from SWICG and any other working group which has an influence on the future of ActivityPub.
🧵 2/3
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
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We already know that the Social Web Foundation and SWICG leadership will ignore the latest news of Meta's mass datacrime against the fediverse and continue enabling the parasitic Zuckerberg entity to influence the future of ActivityPub development by facilitating its presence on the W3C working group overseeing AP. This is not a sustainable arrangement.
There is absolutely no basis of trust whatsoever between the fediverse network of communities and Meta. The idea that representatives of this slimy fascist operation are insinuated into the organization shaping the next generation of the protocol underlying our network, while they simultaneously inflict nonconsenual predatory "AI" extractivism against us, is ludicrous and intolerable. This right here is the destruction of every single value the fediverse claims to stand for in one fell swoop.
🧵 1/3
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SocialWebFoundation #SWICG
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Notes from the 2025-07-11 @socialcg Geosocial Task Force meeting
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The monthly meeting of the @socialcg Geosocial Task Force is starting now!
https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/ed630a3d-7581-4053-9978-75949ad42f2a/20250710T130000/
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Notes from the 2025-06-12 Geosocial Task Force meeting
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The geosocial task force in the W3C Social Web Incubator Community Group meets today at 19:00 CEST / 13:00 EDT.
Join if you would like to discuss details related to representing location on the social web. @herebox is leading the writing of an explainer for the most common location-related usecases.
https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/ed630a3d-7581-4053-9978-75949ad42f2a/20250612T130000/
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Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Meta has been providing an "AI"-based pedophilia simulator, both to adults - interacting with bots who identify as children - and to underage users, who were offered the experience of sexual exploitation by a virtual adult, right from their own home feed. Paywall-free link (CW - disturbing): https://archive.ph/tl1Pw
Needless to say, the Social Web Foundation and SWICG leadership have failed to respond to this news concerning their close partner. Do note that Meta's most forceful advocates on the Fedi have also been among those most insistent on a claimed need to impose algorithmic police-tech on this network - for the sake of the children.
SWF and SWICG leadership will, as in all previous cases, ignore the latest Meta atrocity. But we can expect them to surface soon with an edict that it is imperative for the Fedi to succumb to the new ROOST "trust and safety" surveillance ploy built by the likes of OpenAI and Google, while all the while enabling the internet's most prolific CSAM generator to influence the course of ActivityPub development
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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In this recent communication, SWICG leadership discuss forming a task force to "approach and facilitate [AI] Avatars and Agents" in ActivityPub, and discuss topics such as "using AI for content filtering" and "for algorithmic feed reading": https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2025Feb/0025.html
These are the people in charge of the ActivityPub specification, and this discourse is occurring in the
context of the chartering of a new working group to oversee the development of AP2. This is where the protocol is going next. Meta is right in the middle of it.This is why it's critical to lend support and solidarity to protocol projects pointing beyond ActivityPub like @spritely and @VeilidNetwork , as well as the developers of emerging progressive fediverse services which refuse to align with the Social Web Foundation. And it's why we @FediPact advocates and agitators should continue to ring this bell - and zero in on those among us who are selling out the fediverse to a fascist intruder.
🧵 4/4 end
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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It is completely unacceptable, in this moment, for Meta to have the slightest presence in or influence on this network. @jat23 , in their paper on the FediPact movement ( https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20563051241308323 ), refers to the praxis of "Strategic Closure". Fair and good, but this is a necessarily defensive response. We would argue that it is time for a complimentary offensive opposition. It may not be sufficient to merely batten down the hatches while a corporation with near-totalitarian reach and explicitly fascist intent insinuates itself into the development processes of the protocol underlying the fediverse.
The leadership of the W3C SWICG ActivityPub working group - and by extension, of the Social Web Foundation, their gambit to privatize and de-democratize the evolution of the protocol - have discredited themselves by colluding with the Zuckerberg entity and accepting its bribes. They do not deserve the trust of the communities and developers of the fedi. They have proven themselves incapable of responsibly wielding the power to shape the future of the fediverse they claim for themselves.
🧵 3/4
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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There is now a notable influx into the fedi of folks trying to escape the Meta networks, both occurring organically and due to the Pixelfed boom and efforts like #GlobalSwitchDay (and not at all, btw, because of the Threads bridge). But does this network really offer them that refuge?
Meta's own terms indicate that they are ingesting the profile data of every account behind every toot that crosses the bridge. That means that new users may be showing up here from FB or IG, setting up profiles with details that match those of their old Meta accounts, then replying to Threads posts unaware that they are still being surveilled by Meta, and that their presence and activities here could be compiled into their identity dossiers back there. The fedi is already serving as a surveillance vector.
Meta was always an abhorrent monstrosity; but with the recent turn, it has now directly telegraphed itself as a Trumpist organ. It is an explicitly fascist entity colluding with a fascist regime. And anyone who is collaborating with Meta in the fedi and enabling their ability to exercise power here needs also to be understood accordingly.
🧵 2/4
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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FediPact is now, unambiguously, an antifascist struggle.
To be sure, it's not the most most important front; not when we see, for example, the bureaucratic precursors to literal trans genocide. But it's not unimportant either.
There's been a lot of talk around here about the fediverse being a holdout and refuge in an age of fascist capture of capitalist social media. That can and should be true - but is actually not, so long as the Zuckerberg entity continues to be provided the power to manipulate the future of ActivityPub.
Don't assume that the current status quo will hold or that the threat is waning. Don't assume that Meta will not advance its fediverse integration beyond the current, bizarrely stunted joke of a bridge. Don't forget that they always unilaterally force the next step on us as a sudden surprise with no advance warning.
🧵 1/4
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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f you're new to the fediverse and you're trying to escape Facebook or Instagram, you need to know the ugly truth: Certain power-concentrating figures have carried Meta's coat tails right into the fedi and are collaborating with the Zuckerberg entity to help it take over. But it won't work because everyone despises Meta and the @FediPact movement is standing in the way!
Article on how to block Meta by @thenexusofprivacy : https://privacy.thenexus.today/how-to-block-threads-on-mastodon/
Database of fediverse community servers that block Meta: https://fedipact.veganism.social/?v=2
The FediPact itself, where it all started, by @vantablack : https://fedipact.online/
The Free Fediverse wiki with tons of info on FediPact and Meta's crimes against humanity: https://freefediverse.org
#GlobalSwitchDay #DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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The problem with a campaign encouraging people to escape from Meta by switching to the fediverse is that they're not escaping Meta by switching to the fediverse. Social Web Foundation and SWICG leadership have damaged the fedi's credibility as an alternative by collaborating with the Zuckerberg entity
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation #GlobalSwitchDay
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Meta is now flagging Linux-related topics as "cybersecurity threats" and blocking the accounts of users and groups who discuss FOSS.
If the Social Web Foundation and SWICG leadership can't be bothered to care about genocide instigation, privacy invasion, fascism promotion, disinformation, collusion with dictators, the censoring of marginalized communities, labor and child abuse, or nonconsensual behavior modification experiments, maybe NOW they will understand they're serving as the tools of an enemy?
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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The inevitable news that Meta is beginning to deploy ads in Threads has traveled quickly. Less well-known is that the Social Web Foundation, which has self-assumed stewardship of the future of the fediverse, also sees the introduction of ads into the fedi as an aspect of its mission to commercialize the network.
That won't be evident if you visit the Mission page of SWF's website today. which displays the expected press-release happytalk about sustainability and "social infrastructure": https://socialwebfoundation.org/mission/
However, an archive.org backup of the text copy on this page from September 2024, shortly following the organization's launch, reveals a passage that was then quickly removed: https://web.archive.org/web/20240925094541/https://socialwebfoundation.org/mission/
The passage reads: "The Fediverse cannot thrive without people building clients or running providers. And to do those things, they need money. Whether that’s advertising supported, or funded by charities and non-profits, or based on paid-for services, or affiliate revenue, we are working to find ways that companies can do well in the Fediverse."
The Research Director of SWF also leads the W3C ActivityPub working group and has provided Meta with several seats at the table around which ongoing development of the protocol is decided. And in a January 12 blog post following Meta's intensified embrace of fascism, SWF reaffirmed its partnership with them and rejected the validity of defederating Threads: https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/01/12/content-policy-on-the-social-web/
We can presume that the Social Web Foundation sees the introduction of ads on Threads as just another step in the mission it shares with Meta - the normalization of surveillance capitalism on the fediverse
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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In the last 2 days, Social Web Foundation partner and W3C ActivityPub working group participant Meta has blocked and hid the posts of abortion pill providers. https://archive.is/TnwMw
Neither SWF or SWICG has condemned the action. Why do these organizations continue to provide the Zuckerberg entity with influence in determining the future of the fediverse?
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation #Abortion #ReproductiveRights
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In the last few weeks Social Web Foundation partner Meta has:
💀 Donated $1 million to the inauguration fund of the new fascist dictator
💀 Fired its fact-checkers
💀 Changed its hate-speech rules to allow calling women "household objects", Mexicans "pieces of shit" and trans folk "mentally ill"
💀 Killed its DEI programs
💀 Made its workplaces more hostile to trans employees
💀 Hosted an "AI Hitler"
💀 Censored links to fellow Social Web Foundation partner Pixelfed
💀 Subjected users to force-follows of the rulers of the fascist regime
💀 Suppressed searches of Democrat-associated topicsYet the Social Web Foundation continues to accept Meta as a partner in good standing, and more to the point, continues to accept Meta's money. And the SWICG - The WC3's ActivityPub working group - continues to offer Meta a seat at the table for discussions on the future of the fediverse. Why?
#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Zuckerberg #Threads #Facebook #Instagram #SWICG #SocialWebFoundation
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For a meeting that didn't have but 1 agenda item before it started, the SWICG Geosocial Task Force just had a discussion packed second meeting figuring out how to make location data better on the social web.
Next meeting on February 13.
Notes: https://hedgedoc.socialweb.coop/s/D7yKLjJQs
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@ophiocephalic While #Meta is certainly trying to get their foot into every door they can, Ben Savage of #Meta has become a member of the "Social Web Incubator Community Group" (#SocialCG / #SWICG). Anybody can join, see https://swicg.io/
The group that actually worked on standards was the #W3C "Social Web Working Group" (#SocialWG, closed in 2018). That being said, the "incubator" is influential, for sure.