Okay! So you know how you love decentralized social media? I mean presumably you do otherwise why would you ever read anything I write

Well the first two engineers on Spritely are also the two editors at the top of the ActivityPub spec (myself and Jessica Tallon) and this is no coincidence!

All software should be able to be social, peer-to-peer, secure over the network. This becomes clearer when you see that it's hard to convince people to use Libreoffice once Google Docs exists.

Secure collaboration is important.

But really, the BIGGEST thing missing to me about the present-day fediverse: it's *incredibly* short sighted in its ambitions.

Why have we carved out "social media" as this particular kind of facebook/youtube/web 2.0 company defined thing?

Why shouldn't ALL software be social?!

Some *obvious* things the fediverse needs to do:

- Content and accounts surviving when nodes go down (ATProto tries to address this, but I don't think quite does so right)!
- Self-hosting is a pain! More peer-to-peer!
- More secure! More private!
- Healthier communities!
- Less spam and abuse!

We are a nonprofit research institute building open source tech and open protocols for the commons that CHANGE THE GAME on how the internet works.

An internet for you, for your friends and community, controlled by you and friends, without large corporate gatekeepers.

But we need your help.

"Spritely, brought to you by the people who brought you the fediverse!" We've done the research. Not to be smug but we ARE the experts.

We are telling you, decentralized social networks as they exist today are not enough.

And we are building the future.

Please help us! spritely.institute/donate/

All this research, all the work the Spritely Institute, it may seem like it's been low level, a bunch of computer science nerdery, the kinda stuff you'd expect out of a bunch of SICP-hugging catgirls.

Well, okay, it is. But it's not ONLY that.

And it's that way for a purpose.

This next year, you're going to start to see the first pieces that start to hit users' hands.

Very technical users for the most part mind you, but more users' hands.

We're breaking out of "core foundations" mode. 2025 is the year you'll start to see people turn heads about Spritely, I think.

Here is where I pivot to the ask.

I am asking YOU to support the Spritely Institute.

If you want to read up, do it! The information on what we're doing is laid out for everyone to see. There are papers on our homepage. Find out for yourself.

But I am asking YOU to support us.

The future becomes the present when it hits peoples' hands. They start to assume of course, it was an inevitability.

Once Mastodon became a success, the popular response to ActivityPub switched from "I don't believe that could work" to "ActivityPub is obvious, anyone could have done it".

HN reply-guys always gonna armchair philosophize, act like they know everything once it's in front of their faces.

Well let me tell YOU what I think.

ActivityPub has been a big success. The fediverse as it exists has been a big success. I'm proud of that work.

But personally, I think retrospectively, it'll be a footnote in history compared to what we're doing now.

Yes, I really do believe the jump is that large.

The world is becoming far, far more dangerous of a place to be.

If human rights are going to survive, we're going to need better ways to not only communicate, but to collaborate. To do. To act.

We need stronger foundations than we have today. Stronger by a *long shot*.

I worry about the future of activism if it needs to happen on ATProto, on the fediverse, as they exist today.

*Especially* on ATProto, a system whose primary design point is "publicly index all content"; hardly safe for the current political environment. But the fediverse isn't much better.

It shouldn't be that writing secure, peer-to-peer applications is an exceptional thing.

Secure, peer-to-peer tech should be the DEFAULT THING you get when you write software, not the domain of experts.

Too ambitious? No! This requires some rethinking about how we write software!

If you remember when Django and Rails hit the scene, they were *revolutionary*. Not only did they make writing Web 2.0 applications *easy*, they made it so that you *learned how to think* like a Web 2.0 developer.

Spritely's work is akin to that, but for secure, collaborative, decentralized tech!

There's a lot more I could say, there's a lot more I have said in other places. I believe Spritely is the future. I know it's a lot to take in. ActivityPub was a lot to take in, once upon a time.

If you want to dive in, it's all there. All out there to read. We've got tons of information these days. Yes, I know it's a lot to absorb.

If you don't want to dive in, it's a leap of faith. Let me help you make it.

And if that's not enough... if that's not enough! If the moral ask ALONE was not enough!

We show off our tech by making video games and if you donate at the silver, gold, or diamond levels YOU GET YOUR NAME IN OUR OPEN SOURCE VIDEO GAMES how cool is that? spritely.institute/donate/

Oh man we are at 12 minutes to go and $88.5k!!! I might have to make that animation! spritely.institute/

Only 1.5k left to go if you want me to make a lil' celebratory animation about succeeding at our Spritely campaign fundraiser goals!

If we pass $90k before the top of the hour I will make a celebratory animation

If we pass $100k before the top of the hour I will make TWO celebratory animations!!!!

Thank you! As I write this we have ONE HOUR LEFT of our campaign and we have raised OVER $85k!!!! spritely.institute/donate/

THANK YOU EVERYONE! And if you haven't supported @spritely yet please do so! And thank you to those who have!

💜💜💜💜💜

FOUR MINUTES TO GO AND WE JUST CROSSED $90k!!!!! spritely.institute/donate/

I OFFICIALLY HAVE TO MAKE A CELBRATION ANIMATION

FIVE MINUTES REMAINING

$88.8k!!! spritely.institute/donate/

Can we cross the $90k line? I WILL MAKE AN ANIMATION

CAN WE DO IT

SEVEN MINUTES REMAIN
$88.7k!!!

SO CLOSE

well now that you mention libreoffice:

fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event…

I am not sure if the video is out yet :)

FOSDEM 2025 - Distributed real-time collaboration for Writer - a first prototype

^fosdem.org

personally, I think it's most important to have #MultiVendor & #MultiProvider, #OpenStandards that allow for #SelfHosting and a thriving ecosystem.

• i.e. #XMPP+#OMEMO works fine over @torproject / #Tor and that means both #Clients like @gajim / #gajim & @monocles / #monocles as well as #Servers...

Plus it allows for #SelfCustody of all the keys!