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
Agreed that there’s a difference between funding and other kinds of engagement – and a difference between initial funding to get them off the ground. Right now it’s not exactly clear what funding Meta’s contributed and what the longer-term plans are. One of the other polls in the thread was about transparency, and (at least so far) 90% of the respondents are saying that SWF should be transparent about the funding it’s getting from Meta. And, another poll zeroes in on funding and has different options for initial and up-front, and whether or not there are any strings attached.