Facebook has always stood for bringing people together and building a global community. When we began, this idea was not controversial. Every year, the world became more connected and this was seen as a positive trend. Yet now, across the world there are people left behind by globalization, and movements for withdrawing from global connection. There are questions about whether we can make a global community that works for everyone. We believe we can, and we believe ActivityPub and the Fediverse can help make it happen.

Today we are taking our next step. Instead of re-inventing the wheel and creating our own platforms, we’ve decided to take a synergistic approach. Over the past year we have been tapping in to existing technologies and communities of the current Fediverse. Facebook has contributed countless developers hours and lines of code to several ActivityPub based projects to help their growth. Furthermore, this has helped us prepare our switch to this emerging platform. I’d like to take this time to showcase a few of the projects we’ve been working on to ground Facebook in this new frontier.

PeerTube. We’re most excited about this project, as it places a majority of the bandwidth costs on the consumer, where it should be. This peer-to-peer technology will allow us to compete with other video services at a reduced cost. To support the adoption of this platform and encourage creators to make the switch, we have our next project to aid the transition.

Influencer Partnership Program. The first thing we noticed about the Fediverse was the lack of advertising. This program will make it easier than ever for companies and Fediverse influencers to partner for brand deals. This is a win for all involved. Influencers can bring more funding to their content, brands have a streamlined platform to showcase their products, and users will learn more about great products directly from their favorite Fediverse stars.

Pixelfed. When we first came across this Instagram-clone, we were tempted to flood the project with baseless lawsuits to halt development, but we decided to wait until the “federation soon” messages stopped. We’re happy to announce that after reaching settlement that Daniel "dansup" Sup is Facebook’s newest employee, and Pixelfed is our newest Facebook branded project. With growing incentives from the Influencer Partnership Program, expect to see your favorite stars in your timeline such as Kevin Hart, Snooki, and Wil Wheaton.

Hackers Town acquisition. While this is a small acquisition, it’s important as it gives Facebook a launchpad into the Fediverse. Additionally, Facebook has a long history of working closely with federal agencies, so this move shouldn’t surprise anyone.

With these great coming changes, we as a community will help shape the Fediverse from a place where self-proclaimed revolutionaries complain about unimportant issues such as privacy, human rights, and corporate surveillance, to a community where creators, influencers, brands, and governments can shape the internet of tomorrow, today!