ActivityPub is the W3C standard for distributed social networking. In this project, we will investigate opportunities for extending the standard’s direct messaging mechanism with end-to-end encryption (E2EE). As deliverables, we will propose the protocol as the basis of a new report of the Social Web Community Group at the W3C, and provide a working prototype of the protocol.

Tom is an entrepreneur and technology leader specializing in new product development and product strategy. He’s developed products for Time Out, Jawbone, and Nokia. He ran an R&D team at BBC Radio and Music, and was Head of Product for Yahoo’s Brickhouse incubator where he launched the pioneering location service Fire Eagle. More recently he founded the smart-home product Thington – which was acquired by Eero – and Planetary, a decentralized social media client built on the Secure Scuttlebutt protocol. A regular public speaker, he lives in San Francisco.

Evan is a software architect and distributed social network advocate. He founded identi.ca in 2008, co-created the GNU Social platform, and co-authored the OStatus protocol. In 2014 he co-chaired the Social Web Working Group at the W3C and co-edited Activity Streams 2.0 and ActivityPub. He is the current editor of both standards. Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Evan is married with two teens and a cat. He is the Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation and the author of the upcoming book ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web from O’Reilly Media (Sep 2024).