The Interledger Community 🌱: Jeremiah Lee

Web Monetization on the Social Web — ILF Grant Final Report

Jeremiah Lee — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 22:39:27 +0000

Note: I will use the term ‘social web’ instead of ‘fediverse’ to refer to federated, decentralized social networks.

Digital creators of all kinds across the world will benefit when they can fully own their social media presences, content distribution, relationships with their audiences, and compensation methods. The Interledger Foundation’s support enabled me to make significant contributions towards realizing this goal by adding support for micropayments to social web apps.

There’s a line in The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how to get there.” It means that sometimes you know the end goal, but the path to it is not obvious. Instead of worrying, you trust your skills and work methodically towards the goal.

My technical goals for my ambassadorship were to publish a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal that defined how to include payment pointers in the Activity Streams 2.0 specification and to submit a pull request to the Mastodon project implementing the FEP. These remain my goals, but they are not yet accomplished. I completed significant portions of both goals, but releasing them publicly at this point would be counterproductive to achieving the goals.

I believed the most significant risk to my work was triggering strong opposition to the introduction of monetization to the social web. Early adopters previously were critical of the introduction of full text search and I did not want to repeat that situation. I attempted to mitigate this risk by engaging with many Mastodon community server operators, social web app developers, and end users. I participated in 3 community events to workshop ideas and conducted over 20 interviews.

Community server operators are concerned about how to fund the increasing cost of providing service. Creators are unsatisfied with their monetization options on Mastodon compared to centralized social networks. While skeptical of monetization proposals and vendors, early adoptions of the social web are open to ideas.

Few people had heard of the Interledger payment network prior to my conversation with them. The recurring immediate questions were if it was cryptocurrency (no) and if it was the most viable option (maybe). The Interledger payment network appealed to these people because it was globally focused, championed by a non-profit, and federated in design—just like the Web. However, the lack of operating wallet providers and a browser extension kept people from embracing my proposal.

The Interledger payment network only gets one shot at a first impression. It has to be strong. I am withholding the introduction of a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal and Mastodon pull request until I can demonstrate everything working end-to-end with real money, without demo hacks, and reproducible by others.

Like a lion tracker, I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how to get there—and I will get there.

Even without the FEP and Mastodon pull request published, my ambassadorship resulted in:

improvements (1, 2) to Google Cloud Platform’s official Terraform provider (Interledger Foundation’s cloud infrastructure provider)
eased Mastodon deployment on Google Cloud Platform
bug fixes to Mastodon (1, 2)
the launch of Interledger.social
tentative refinements to the proposed Web Monetization specification
broadened community outreach and engagement with digital creators and early social web users
actionable research findings on digital creator monetization methods
participation in the Interledger Summit as a panelist, presenter, and hackathon judge
the launch of the Stockholm Social Web Meetup and plans to support expansion in more cities
advising Interledger community members on strategies and technical approaches

I am proud of this work and am grateful to have had the foundation fund it.

Open questions about open payments

By meeting a complex, real world use case, the proposed Web Monetization specification draft has been tested. The Web Monetization specification drafts have focused on a single-author, webpage-centric use case. The Mastodon use case is a web application with content aggregated from multiple authors. Both are valid use cases of the Web platform and need to be accounted for in Web Monetization’s design.

One such detail was how to specify a payment pointer in JSON-LD, the data format used by Activity Streams 2.0 and other W3C specifications. The current Web Monetization specification draft only defines how to specify a payment pointer in HTML. Progress was made, but open questions remain and block completion of my work. The Web Monetization working group decided to establish a namespace on interledger.org/ns, but continues to debate whether to rename payment pointer to wallet address and whether to adopt Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as the data format.

Another detail was how to handle multiple monetization tags. Earlier drafts permitted one monetization tag per webpage. The 2023-09-20 draft supports multiple monetization tags, but leaves several implementation details unanswered.

What happens in a Tweetdeck-like view when there are 30+ posts with unique monetization tags visible at once?
How should user agents send payments when the number of active payment pointers exceeds the user agent’s limit on concurrent HTTP requests?
If there were 30 active payment pointers, is the payment rate being multiplied by 30 (spending 30x as much) or being split 30 ways?
How frequently should the user agent / monetization provider send a payment anyway?

While W3C specifications vary in specificity of implementation details, I believe the current Web Monetization draft is too vague and that these implementation details will determine its success or failure. Technical specifications exist to create certainty in the user experience across user agents.

Lastly, I believe the 2023-09-20 draft of the Web Monetization specification needs additional functionality to meet how users expect micropayments to work. This belief is based on my interviews with digital creators and countless conversations at events during my ambassadorship. While my ambassadorship has ended, I continue to work on an additional proposal and hope to share that in the next week.

Real progress on audacious goals

I want to change the primary revenue model of the Web from invasive advertising to audience-supported creation.

This can be accomplished by building payments into the browser as a platform feature of the Web and by adding a social interaction layer onto websites to liberate creators from controlling, closed content platforms (eg Instagram, Twitter, TikTok).

Once the Interledger payment network is production ready and Web Monetization matches user expectations for passive, attention-based creator compensation, audiences will be able to support creators on the social web. This will accelerate the virtuous cycle of attracting more creators to the social web away from centralized platforms which will attract more people to join the social web.

I am grateful for the support from the Interledger Foundation and community during my ambassadorship. I intend to keep working in this domain as much as I can. A better social media experience for people and creators is possible, plausible, and within reach with continued support.

You can follow me on the social web at @Jeremiah@alpaca.gold.

Research I’d like to see funded

Jeremiah Lee — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:28:44 +0000

Building a global payment network raises a lot of questions. Some of them require deep knowledge to answer. When Interledger Foundation funds research, here are some topics I think would be valuable to have formal research on.

I don't represent the foundation in my suggestions. These just are questions I have asked from my personal experience participating in this community.

Background

The Interledger Foundation is attempting to build a federated global payment network. While some countries and regions have modern digital payment methods, none of them interoperate globally. The efficient international payment options that exist currently are single-provider solutions. Interledger envisions a world wide web of financial institutions capable of connecting every person on the planet to the global economy without sacrificing local regulatory compliance and safety.

The primary use cases are micropayments (Web Monetization), one-time payments, and recurring payments. A micropayment is a newer category of payment with unique nuance. This type of payment requires a transaction fee appropriate for the smaller size of the payment, which previously has not been possible with traditional payment networks. It creates new value exchange opportunities ranging from an optional tip to accompany one's gratitude to an improved user experience, like removing ads, to a more traditional transaction like paying to access of content.

1. EU GDPR compliance review

Does Web Monetization as spec’ed comply with GDPR? A payment pointer likely would be considered personally identifiable information, much like an IP address. Is sharing this, as required to facilitate a Web Monetization transaction, in the way Web Monetization works (automatically as you browse the web) complaint with GDPR?

Ideal researcher: someone with legal experience with GDPR

2. PSD2 compliance review

The EU’s Payment Services Directive (PSD2) introduced security requirements for the initiation and processing of electronic payments. PSD2 obliges payment service providers to apply so-called “strong customer authentication” (SCA) when a payer initiates an electronic payment transaction. Payment service providers include banks and other payment service providers.

There are exemptions for low value payments. Can Web Monetization meet all of the Article 16 conditions?

Ideal researcher: someone with legal experience with EU financial regulations

3. How money moves

Explain how money moves in the current state of the finance industry. How does money actually get sent from a person to another person/business? What are the intermediary service providers (merchant acquirer, credit card processor, payment gateway, commercial bank, clearing house) in that transaction? How does each make money off of a transaction? Who assumes risk/liability at each point in the transaction? How is this different for credit cards, international wires, US ACH, EU SEPA, EU PSD2 payments, India's UPI, Brasil Pix?

Model the answers after MobileCoin's documentation, where the information is presented to a 5 year old child, to a grandparent, to a first year college student, and to someone who works in fintech.

Ideal researcher: someone with experience in the finance industry

4. Web Monetization tax implications

The Interledger Foundation should offer country-specific guidance for digital creators earning income via Web Monetization. (General guidance with the usual "consult your own tax attorney" disclaimer.)

What is the legal definition of tipping? Does a streaming micropayment qualify as a tip? Does it have to be optional? Does it require voluntary amount selection?

How much value can be exchanged for a tip? Is there a difference between a Patreon membership to get access to an ebook and a purchase of an ebook? Is providing an ad-free experience for people who tip different?

How are tips taxed compared to other income in terms of both the transaction (“sale”) and the recipient’s income? Is the taxation different if it’s an individual, incorporated entity, or registered non-profit?

Ideal researcher: someone willing to find and consults with tax attorneys in many countries

5. Understanding the creator economy

Examine the major services digital creators use, what monetization opportunities they offer, how creators earn money from their influence, and what challenges creators have with each. Services of interest: TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Patreon, GitHub sponsors, Substack, OnlyFans

Ideal researcher: someone with formal experience conducting user research and familiarity with user generated content platforms

6. Interledger threat modeling

How could Web Monetization, Open Payments API, Interledger Protocol be exploited by a bad actor?

Ideal researcher: someone in information security (InfoSec)

Cover image by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

Web Monetization in the Fediverse — ILF Grant Progress Report #1

Jeremiah Lee — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 18:25:03 +0000

Overview

In April 2023, I began working with the Interledger Foundation as a technical ambassador to advance Web Monetization in Mastodon and other applications using ActivityPub. ActivityPub is a W3C standard that adds a social layer to the Web platform. It enables any website or app to have social networking functionality that can interoperate with other websites and apps. Instead of everyone having to join one social network, people can now pick a social network provider like they can pick an email provider. My project’s goal is to adapt Web Monetization to work within federated social networks with Mastodon being the reference implementation.

Project Update

Building a fediverse home for the Interledger Foundation

My first task was to setup a Mastodon instance for the Interledger Foundation. This required more effort than I anticipated. The Mastodon project did not have an automated way to operate the server application and its required dependencies with the security and reliability expected of commercial services. I created a Terraform project to provision the cloud infrastructure necessary to run a Mastodon instance and deploy the Mastodon software on Google Cloud Platform. This code is now open sourced and anyone can use it to easily deploy their own Mastodon instance onto Google Cloud Platform in under 30 minutes! I also submitted multiple fixes and bug reports to the Mastodon project and to Google Cloud Platform’s Terraform provider.

Once the technical part was ready, I worked with the foundation to establish community guidelines, a privacy policy, and moderation plan to support inviting the general public to join its Mastodon server. I documented Mastodon-specific norms for brands and worked with @julaireh to start posting all of the foundation’s great social media posts on Mastodon too. We then opened Interledger.social to the world. I hosted 3 office hour sessions to help people learn about Mastodon, federated social networks (aka “the fediverse”), and get their accounts setup.

Building Web Monetization into Activity Streams

Before support for Web Monetization can be added to Mastodon, support for Web Monetization must be added to the technology standards that Mastodon uses. Mastodon and other federated social network servers send data to each other using a protocol called ActivityPub. The data must be sent in a format called Activity Streams.

Web Monetization requires a payment pointer, which is a URL to an Open Payments API entry-point. I wrote a proposal for how to add a payment pointer to the Activity Streams data format. It’s now being reviewed by people working on the Web Monetization standard.

The W3C group that defined the Activity Streams standard concluded its work in 2018. Extensions to the data format are now proposed and adopted informally by the developers of federated social network servers. Once the Web Monetization group agrees on how to represent payment pointers in the Activity Streams data format, I will submit a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal for consideration by server implementers.

Building Web Monetization into Mastodon

Once the Fediverse Enhancement Proposal is finalized, I will submit a pull request to the Mastodon project that adds functionality to:

Allow a server to set its payment pointer
Allow a user to set their payment pointer
Append a user’s payment pointer to their posts and profile
Store payment pointer information for received posts and user profiles
Dynamically set the active payment pointer in the Mastodon web app based on the post or user profile being viewed

When this work is completed, Mastodon servers and creators with payment pointers will start receiving streaming micropayments from followers who use a browser with Web Monetization support.

Project Impact & Target Audience

Federated social networks allow a digital creator to finally, truly own their online presence, relationship with their audience, and their distribution. It’s now possible for digital creators to break free from the problematic algorithmic curation of centralized social networks that never shows their work to their followers or unjustifiably moderates their posts. Marginalized communities can create their own safe places online, set their own rules for acceptable behavior, and decide how to deal with bad behavior by people on other servers. We have a unique opportunity and momentum right now for people to choose an online community managed by people like them and say goodbye to exploitative, privacy-invading, ad-filled social networks like Instagram, Twitter, and others.

These community servers are not free to run. They need tools to help financially sustain their operation. Similarly, digital creators need tools to be supported financially by their fans. If we can get Web Monetization added as a standard feature in fediverse servers and we can convince fans to setup a digital wallet in their browsers, we can expand the economic opportunity for digital creators globally.

The potential is huge. This is a multi-year journey dependent on several other efforts the foundation is investing in. The exciting part for me is how achievable this all feels in this moment.

Communications and Marketing

I led a session on financial sustainability of fediverse server operators at Fediforum virtual conference and participated in the MozFest workshop on the next steps for the fediverse in March. That led to creation of the Fediverse Developer Network, a group that meets regularly to discuss progress and challenges in developing fediverse servers.

I presented an introduction to Mastodon and federated social networks at the June Open Payments Huddle (video) and to the Future Money Grantees in July. I also wrote a summary of that presentation.

I submitted proposals to several conferences and hope to speak more about my work this fall and into next year.

What’s Next?

Finalize the representation of payment pointers in Activity Streams with the Web Monetization standards group
Submit the specification as a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal
Complete the code and submit a pull request to the Mastodon project implementing the specification

Community Support

If you haven’t already, follow Interledger on Mastodon or your preferred fediverse server.

If you haven’t joined a fediverse server yet, read my getting started guide and consider joining Interledger.social.

When my Fediverse Enhancement Proposal is published, please add a comment stating your support for the idea and why you believe this particular implementation is the best one. This will show Mastodon and other federated social network server developers how much support there is. I do not work for the company that created Mastodon, so I cannot guarantee my pull request will be accepted. My hope is that people who believe in the fan-supported creators will join me in advocating for this feature to be included.

Special Thanks

@ericahargreave for brainstorming with me early on about bringing federated social networks and Interledger together and encouraging me to apply for the ambassadorship
@laka for providing constructive feedback along the way
@chrislarry for connecting me with the right people within the foundation, generally making things happen, and getting up super early to fix Zoom meeting issues
@ayeshaware for helping me prepare for the Open Payments Huddle, being a fantastic MC, and answering my newbie questions about setting up Eventbrite webinars
@julaireh for making the Interledger fediverse account worth following with great posts
@ adrianhopebailie and Kevin Swiber for feedback and guidance on using JSON-LD
Anna Sheard for reviewing my blog post drafts
@ huijing for approving my PRs
@ sabineschaller, @ lwlkarama, and Melissa Henderson for the productive conversations about how the Web Monetization spec should evolve

(Sorry for the broken username tags. The website won't let me tag more than 7 people in one post!)

Interledger launches a Mastodon instance + office hours

Jeremiah Lee — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 16:56:55 +0000

The Interledger Foundation now operates a Mastodon server at Interledger.social. You can follow @Interledger@interledger.social from any Mastodon or fediverse/social web app.

Mastodon is similar to Twitter. The biggest difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that Mastodon is decentralized. No single company controls the social network. Instead, Mastodon uses a network of thousands of independently managed servers. Once you join a server, you can interact with people who use any other server. It’s similar to how we can send email to each other without having to all use Gmail.

As I shared recently, the Interledger Foundation is sponsoring me to contribute to the open source Mastodon project as a Web Monetization ambassador. Today, we are running the latest released version of Mastodon. In the future, we may operate a pre-release version of Mastodon with Web Monetization features we are contributing to the project.

The foundation welcomes people interested in the Interledger Protocol, Open Payments API, and Web Monetization API to create an account on its Mastodon server. We will review account requests manually to prevent abuse. Enter your community.interledger.org username in the “reason you want to join” to help expedite approval.

If you already have a fediverse account, there is no need to create a separate account just for Interledger-related discussion unless you want to, as you can follow the foundation and all activity on the server from your existing account. That’s how the social Web works!

Office Hours

If you would like help setting up a Mastodon account or want to learn some tips for using Mastodon, join our office hours on Tuesday, August 1, 2023. There will be 3 sessions:

12:00–13:00 CEST (convert time) Sign up
12:00–1:00 PM EDT (convert time) Sign up
12:00–1:00 PM PDT (convert time) Sign up

Other fediverse friends

Some other great accounts I personally recommend:

@feditips@mstdn.social: Tips on using Mastodon / the fediverse
@fediversereport@mastodon.social: News about social web tech
@Flipboard@flipboard.social: Variety of human-curated content
@Techmeme@techhub.social: Influential tech news aggregator
@w3c@w3c.social: The World Wide Web Consortium
@mozilla@mozilla.social: Mozilla, creator of Firefox
@creativecommons@mastodon.social: Creative Commons
@wikimediafoundation@wikimedia.social: Wikimedia, operator of Wikipedia
@internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org: The Internet Archive

You can follow me at @Jeremiah@alpaca.gold.

Interledger joins the fediverse

Jeremiah Lee — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 14:35:35 +0000

You can watch the full presentation of this announcement with a lot more info here (15 minutes).

In the last 6 months, millions of people started using Mastodon. It’s a new type of social network that allows you to follow friends and interesting people without intrusive advertising or questionable algorithms deciding what you should see.

The biggest difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that it is decentralized. No single company controls the social network. Instead, Mastodon uses a network of thousands of independently managed servers. Once you join a server, you can interact with people who use any other server. It’s similar to how we can send email to each other without having to all use Gmail.

This decentralized technical architecture is called federation. Each server is autonomous, but uses the same W3C technology standards to be able to work together for the greater good.

Mastodon is just one of several products that use these standards. There are now federated alternatives to every centralized social media service. For example, while Mastodon offers a Twitter-inspired experience, Pixelfed offers an Instagram-like experience and PeerTube offers a YouTube-like experience. Collectively, these federated social networks are known as the fediverse.

A creator economy owned by creators

Federated social networks shift the power from a handful of companies deciding how billions of people should interact online to a multitude of smaller communities who can better self-manage. Each server operator can decide its governance model, like what behaviors are acceptable on the server and how to handle bad behavior on other servers. Individuals can find the server that best aligns with their ideals or start their own.

The original promise of the Web was the ability for anyone to publish information. Centralized social networks lowered the barrier for people to share their digital creations and for interacting with each other. Federated social networks now make it possible for individuals to truly own their online presence and the relationship with their audience with the same rich, two-way interactions. We think this is a notable improvement for humanity and we are excited to share how we intend to invest in furthering its development.

Money matters

Centralized social networks earn revenue primarily from online advertising. By contrast, federated social networks today are funded by donations of time and money. A variety of monetization methods will be required to support the fediverse growing from use by ~10 million people to eventually billions of people. While ethical forms of online advertising exist and may have a place, we envision cooperative memberships and fan-supported models becoming dominant.

Most people will pay to support media that brings them value. Public radio and television broadcast stations pioneered audience donation financing in the 1970s. The Internet equivalent is Wikipedia, the 7th most popular website in the world funded entirely by donations. Today, niche creators with comparatively small audiences use Patreon, GitHub Sponsors, and Substack memberships to support their work.

Federated social networks can attract more creators from centralized services by offering the features they need to be supported financially. More creators will attract more audience members, resulting in a virtuous growth cycle. The same features that help individual creators receive support could be used by server administrators to sustain their operations too.

Key creator monetization features for the fediverse:

Passive micropayments using the proposed W3C Web Monetization standard
Memberships using recurring payments
Tips using one-time payment
Rewards/perks access for supporters
Sponsored post labels (required by law in the US and many European countries)

Some people might worry that introducing monetization features into the fediverse will turn every social interaction and relationship into a transaction. That would be harmful and is not the intent. No one wants a Web with a thousand paywalls. Growing a fanbase requires being accessible and payment-gated content inherently is less discoverable. We think most creators will opt for greater potential reach to attract more supporting fans over predominantly exclusive paid access.

Federated social media, meet the federated payment network

The Interledger Protocol was conceived as a payment network modeled after computer data networks. It brings the fast transaction speed and negligible transaction fee features of cryptocurrencies to legitimate, regulated financial institutions. It’s not tied to any single company or currency, fiat or otherwise. A payment can be facilitated simply with a special type of URL called an Interledger Payment Pointer. Streaming, recurring, and one-time payments are supported by any wallet app that implements the Open Payments API.

Our next steps

The Interledger Foundation is joining the fediverse with the launch of a Mastodon instance later this week. We also are open sourcing our first contribution to the Mastodon project: Terraform code to easily and resiliently host Mastodon on Google Cloud Platform.

This is my first work done as an Interledger Foundation technical ambassador to the fediverse. I’m a software engineer who has worked with social network APIs since the original Facebook Platform and most recently managed financial infrastructure at Stripe. I am thrilled to get to work on two areas of technology most interesting to me.

Enabling the previously mentioned monetization features requires Interledger Payment Pointers to be added as metadata to fediverse posts and user profiles. In the coming weeks, we will issue a request for comments on a proposal for extending the Activity Vocabulary in the context of the ActivityStreams 2.0 format for ActivityPub implementations to support Web Monetization and Open Payments. We then will submit a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal to encourage all fediverse servers and clients to support this extension with a pull request to the Mastodon project as a reference implementation.

Not just Mastodon

We’re starting with Mastodon today because it’s the most deployed fediverse server. We hope to collaborate with the entire ecosystem of server and client apps. The Interledger Foundation first supported federated social networks with a grant to PeerTube in 2020. Castopod, an open source podcasting fediverse server, also supports Web Monetization.

“Castopod has been supporting Interledger’s Web Monetisation for more than 2 years. It allows podcast lovers to support their favorite shows by sending micropayments, promoting a fair and sustainable ecosystem.” —Benjamin Bellamy, Castopod CEO & Founder

Open and inclusive to put humanity first

The Interledger Foundation believes its technical standards and network of payment providers can help federated social network servers sustain their operations and help digital creators be supported by the fans who love them. We look forward to working with fediverse software authors, server operators, digital creators, and their fans to realize this vision.