Notices by elle (elle@weathered-steel.social)

Just finished the "Merge Requests: Open" (https://codeberg.org/activitypub-rs/activityforge/pulls/66) section of ForgeFed spec (https://forgefed.org/spec/#opening-mr) for ActivityForge 🚀

One step closer to federated merge requests. Next up is "Apply" (https://forgefed.org/spec/#applying-mr), "Close" (https://forgefed.org/spec/#closing-mr), & "Review" (https://forgefed.org/spec/#s2s-mr-review)

After that, I'll probably cut an alpha release, move onto initial "Issues" implementation, & flesh out the remaining activities for both Merge Requests + Issues

@silverpill

https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10083/2

Under "September 25 is not a deadline for silence":

> People in the United States should not improvise donations, disguise payments or route resources through another person, organization, currency or country.

@cavallette

@silverpill

"Because from the perspective of US government, any circumvention is money laundering."

Exactly, they don't want anyone getting themselves or other orgs into legal trouble, and it could also jeopardize any future legal action A/I wants to pursue to get the sanction lifted.

@cavallette

@silverpill

looks like the point is moot now, anyways:

https://mastodon.bida.im/@cavallette/117224324379772923

they're shutting down A/I 😰

@cavallette

@silverpill @cavallette they also advise not to try to "circumevent" and/or "route through another person" any financial contributions in their public statement. imagine that would also cover trying to route money to them via *any* cryptocurrency, even Monero. I hope they find a way through this.

@phnt

> I would rather not add (world) politics into Fediverse development and its direction

Sorry to tell you, but Fediverse tech is inherently political, as well as the wider FOSS movement as a whole. Committing to users having a right to freely interact, own their own data, be free from extractive, privacy-abusing surveillance tech, etc. are all political positions.

@jupiter_rowland @rimu @silverpill @smallcircles

@silverpill "How do you want it to work?"

more-or-less what you're working on w/ private groups + e2ee :)

very much had been imagining what @soatok laid out in the article: paid subscribers get decryption keys + access to private groups with paid content (tutorials, early access to videos, commissioned art, etc)

@soatok so with you on all of this. especially around the e2ee private groups-for-paid-subs Patreon alternative. if we could pull it off, that would be huge.

also, have been mulling the idea of decentralized ed for a number of years (off and on). especially now, that's so important. not in the grifter shill "intellectual dark web", we need the exact opposite like you point out: publish/teach the banned books/knowledge they would love to burn.

@soatok combined with the e2ee groups, that could be a legit funding mechanism for the educators in that system (since there would be no institutions likely to back us). in whatever way I can, I'm down to help build out these projects/platforms.

@bnjbvr almost entirely the funding, Tangled has enough VC money to not only fund full time developers, but also send people to table at conferences.

@silverpill it does seem weird they would use that justification to remove the link. thought at first they might be consolidating for W3C-only resources, but there are non-W3C guides under the `Documentation` section (which is where I would guess the `ap-next` guide would also fit).

outside of clarifying underspecified pieces of the protocol, and highlighting some useful FEPs, how is the `ap-next` guide a "fork"?

@silverpill that's interesting information I wasn't privvy to, thanks for changing that.

no, I don't see many fedi devs there, outside of Embassy + Bonfire folks. I'm also not a fan of the use of GitHub, and brought up moving to an alternative git forge. we reached a middle-ground of linking to discussions on activitypub.space, but I still don't like the continued presence of FOSS on a platform like GitHub that is actively hostile to its existence.

@silverpill absolutely, E2EE is still WIP. I don't think MLS is so complicated that no one can implement it. in a lot of cases, implementers shouldn't have to touch the low-level MLS implementation. OpenMLS exists for Rust, and ts-mls exists for TS/JS. the OpenMLS can be wrapped by anything that can talk to a C FFI. at least how I understand the Embassy/Bonfire impls, they are using those MLS primitives to build up the protocol.

@silverpill I agree MLS is complicated, however it's the best standard for doing E2EE, and it's been vetted by a number of trustworthy professional cryptographers. whatever alternative is chosen would need to meet at least that level of scrutiny. also, if we want to be interoperable with what SWICG is working on, it would need to be MLS based, as that's what they've chosen.

if going in a totally different direction, I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind

@silverpill @benpate yeah, fwiw they are the main standards body, though. i know you know that, just saying that there is value in trying to work together with them, since w/e protocol they land on will likely be adopted by Mastodon, and thus a very significant portion of the fediverse.

not saying an independent alternative impl is valueless, i'm serious about working on it, only that we're still at a stage in fedi-e2ee dev to meaningfully influence the protocol in a positive direction

@silverpill @mkljczk I can't load that for some reason... it redirects me to this link: https://pl.fediverse.pl/@/posts/AmWtsGl9UNnu7VAzqq

@silverpill yeah, that staging process is definitely more bureaucratic and formal than "write a FEP, implement it, respond to feedback". but plenty of non-corpo entities have a similar level of bureaucracy, especially in the standards space. idk, am relatively new to the space, so if there is some history or context I'm missing, I'm open to new info.

I'm also down to work together with you on writing an FEP together, and/or writing up some of my ideas about how an MLS-based protocol could work

@silverpill understandable. fwiw the gate is pretty easy to open, but does require signing a CLA.

how else do you suggest we develop an E2EE protocol for the fediverse? you mention in your FEP that you are giving up on it for a proper E2EE impl. genuinely asking b/c I'm interested in getting E2EE, hopefully interoperable with widest number of clients possible.

also, what do you mean by corporate takeover?

@silverpill nice! there is a workgroup meeting tomorrow for activitypub-e2ee, are you planning to be there?

https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/ad4d3e0b-e227-4119-acdc-9943a2b19f70/20260728T150000/

@aral @_elena I don't understand the EC here, like just use Mastodon, or pay Mastodon/fedi devs to build a "custom" (read still 100% interoperable) version. None of that requires VC funding, and Mastodon is already EU developed (last I checked Germany is in the EU).