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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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/

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/

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

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

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

The Threads interpolation was a broad-day heist. They covered it with rosy blog posts, and comments meant to confuse and drain your energy. You remember two years ago, they were all under our posts putting in the work.

Why or how these major tech blogs never caught on to all this, I'll never know.

Never stop talking about it. It'll come to light.

#Fedipact#SocialWebFoundation

From: @ophiocephalic
https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/115011235861054411

The Threads interpolation was a broad-day heist. They covered it with rosy blog posts, and comments meant to confuse and drain your energy. You remember two years ago, they were all under our posts putting in the work.

Why or how these major tech blogs never caught on to all this, I'll never know.

Never stop talking about it. It'll come to light.

#Fedipact#SocialWebFoundation

From: @ophiocephalic
https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/115011235861054411