Objective

Since the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk over three years ago, the Open Social Web has been adopted by an enthusiastic community. People word-wide are building and using open social platforms and open social protocols to better interact with others online.

However, the Open Social Web still has only a tiny fraction of the users of the closed social media platforms, and growing that number significantly has turned out harder than expected.

This online event will bring together the global community of people who would like the benefits of the Open Social Web to be in the hands of more people, analyzing obstacles, proposing and brainstorming ideas for how to grow the Open Social Web, and connecting people to leverage each other’s efforts.

Who this un-workshop is for

• People using the Open Social Web themselves, and have experience (positive and negative!) with attempting to get their friends or families to join them;

• People who have unsuccessfully tried to use the Open Social Web, and are willing to share why it did not work for them;

• People who have done customer / user research with actual / potential adopters of the Open Social Web, and are willing to share their results;

• Advocates who are working to get value-aligned organizations on the Open Social Web (e.g. public service organizations, governments, libraries, schools, media etc);

• People who are advocating for Open Social Web adoption from inside their organizations;

• Open Social Web builders who would like their software / projects / products / services / to be used by more people;

• Experts in design thinking, serving customers, pitching, fundraising and more.

This un-workshop is not for people who do not share the goal of significantly growing the Open Social Web. We respect their opinion, but it is out of scope for this event.

Format: what is an un-workshop?

We will be using a modified form of the very successful FediForum unconference format that enables us to have a productive half-day that is focused on a particular subject:

• Prior to the un-workshop, we invite participants to submit a short post or position paper that summarizes their own perspectives on the subject. This may include experiences (positive and negative), learnings, ideas for new projects, proposals for the future and more. (Length: between two paragraphs to no more than two pages.) If you are working on growing the Open Social Web, tell us what you are doing and why you think that will help.

• In advance of the event, we distribute a (lightly curated) set of these position papers to other participants of the un-workshop for preparation. (See partial list below.)

• We will identify topic clusters from the submitted papers and pre-schedule sessions on those topics. Most of the time will be spent on discussion, rather than presentation.

Tentatively, on the day of the event, the agenda will look roughly like this (pacific time). Note that we may deviate from this depending on the number of position papers submitted and registrations.

• 8:00am – welcome, intro

• 8:15-9:15am Session 1: Topic 1

  • 3-6 attendees present their paper on Topic 1 (5min each)
  • Discussion
  • Break (5min)

• 9:20-10:20am Session 2: Topic 2

  • 3-6 attendees present their paper on Topic 1 (5min each)
  • Discussion
  • Break (5min)

• 10:25-11:25am Session 3: Topic 3

  • 3-6 attendees present their paper on Topic 1 (5min each)
  • Discussion
  • Break (5min)

• 11:30am: Lessons learned, next steps, and closing

• 12:00noon: End

People from all over the world are welcome, if you can make the time slot work for you:

• 8am to noon: Pacific Time
• 11am to 2pm: East Coast Time
• 13:00 to 17:00: Brasilia
• 16:00 to 20:00: London / UTC
• 17:00 to 21:00: Central European Time

Topics

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Experience reports: what has worked and what hasn’t getting people or organizations on the Open Social Web

• The needs of particular communities / verticals, how well we meet / do not meet them and what we can do about that.

• Use cases and usage scenarios: what exactly do people do on the Open Social Web? Can we lean into specific use cases and usage scenarios, and highlight those?

• Missing capabilities / products / features / services we currently don’t have on the Open Social Web, the evidence that we need them for specific audiences, and how we could gain them.

• Speaking the right language and solving the right problems: how do we move from a culture of protocols and technology to a culture of solving the real-world communities' and customers’ problems?

• Allies: are there value-compatible movements beyond the Open Social Web who we could partner with for larger impact? How would that look like?

… and more.

We will identify the actual topics for the tracks based on the submissions.

We encourage participants to not dwell too much on shortcomings, but on proposing promising ways forward that they are already working on or willing to help lead.

Venue

Unlike other FediForum events, for this un-workshop we are planning to use remo.co.

How to register and/or submit

During registration, you will be asked to submit a brief post or position paper on the topic of of this un-workshop. While it is not required to participate, we encourage you to do so.

If you forgot, or would like to do it later, just e-mail it to us at hello@fediforum.org.

Expected outcomes

We will publish the position papers, and summaries of the discussions here on the FediForum website.

Organizers and hosts

For this un-workshop, your hosts are:

• Johannes Ernst. Founder of FediForum. More of his background here on the FediForum website.

• Mike Masnick. Mike publishes the Techdirt blog, is the author of the paper “Protocols, Not Platforms”, and a member of the Bluesky board of directors.

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Position statements so far

(Updated from time to time as registrations and position statements come in.)

Samir Al-Battran (@samir@m.fedica.com):

Here are my suggestions for growth:

1. Content is king, do not advocate for major organizations to leave centralized platforms (it’s a losing argument unless they came to that realization on their own), help them publish on open platforms in addition to centralized platforms.
2. Content is king, invite celebrities and big creators to open platforms and offer incentives so that new comers would stay for the content (Threads was very successful in this).
3. Reduce churn: Dial down the walled garden mentality and the chasing away of those we disagree with.
4. Reduce churn: Simplify onboarding and tell better stories.
5. Inviting: Avoid political messaging. It’s hard to avoid this but it’s a big turn off for most people, OSW should be for everyone not those of specific political leaning.
6. Inviting: The focus should never be on being “federated” (it’s a bonus not a selling feature), most users don’t understand nor care if you explain it.
7. Inviting: Do not ignore other continents and cultures.
8. Inviting: End belittling “other” OSW platforms, continuing to point out one platform is inferior to others is a big turn off for the average user.

Terence Eden (https://edent.tel/):

Usability, usability, usability. No point having amazing technology if no one can use it.

Fred Hauschel (@naturzukunft2026@mastodon.social):

Growing the Open Social Web: Domain-Specific Applications Instead of Clones

The Fediverse today is dominated by microblogging clones. To truly grow, we need domain-specific applications that leverage ActivityPub’s full semantic potential — not just status updates, but recipes, events, reviews, collaborative documents, and more.

Two concrete suggestions:

1. Take Linked Data seriously. ActivityPub is built on JSON-LD, yet most implementations treat it as “JSON with extra steps.” When you actually embrace RDF/SPARQL, you unlock interoperability between different object types. A recipe app can federate with a food review app because both understand schema:Recipe. This is the protocol’s true strength — not replicating Twitter features.
2. Invest in Client-to-Server (C2S). Almost everyone focuses on Server-to-Server federation, but C2S enables client diversity — mobile apps, CLI tools, browser extensions that work with any ActivityPub server. This lowers the barrier for developers: build a client once, connect to any server. We need better C2S libraries and reference implementations. The opportunity: ActivityPub can become the “HTTP of social” — a protocol layer enabling thousands of specialized applications to interoperate. But only if we move beyond Twitter clones.

Newsmast Foundation:

See https://www.newsmastfoundation.org/our-blog/growing-the-open-social-web/

Anthony Zone (@ozoned@btfree.social, @firesidefedi@btfree.social, @btfree@btfree.social):

Be friendly. Be supportive. Share. Build communities. Donate to developers. Donate to admins. Create content. Whether that’s trying different software and showing people, creating docs, creating videos, etc. Make this your OWN that you want to share. Join communities of open social web such as developer communities.

Norm MacLennan (@nromdotcom.cloud):

See https://my.badtake.space/growing-the-open-social-web/

Timothy Bray (@timbray@cosocial.ca):

My position paper will be based on this blog piece: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/11/03/Time-to-Migrate

Jayne Samuel-Walker (@TCMuffin@toot.wales):

This comment perfectly describes what we at toot.wales are trying to achieve with our local, but global via the fediverse, instance…

https://social.seabass.systems/@seabass/statuses/01KFHBCGX14GSSAEMYWWJMVQFS

Elisabeth McDonnell (@lizanne7.bsky.social):

I’d be very interested in a more in-depth, strategic analysis of where we’re falling short from a growth and engagement perspective.

Is the issue that people make a profile on and then abandon it within 30 days? Is the issue that people are lacking a reason to make a profile in the first place? Understanding what’s actually going on would help us brainstorm and prioritize solutions.

Bonus! This is admittedly an off-the-cuff (and thus not an incredibly well-developed) idea but here goes: I keep thinking of how Farmville initially got a lot of people habituated to Facebook. Is there some kind of game that would not only get new people to the Open Social Web but keep them coming back for a bit? Or some kind of big moments that brings new users online for a specific reason. Some intentional programming, if you will. (The entertainment kind, not the engineering kind.)

Oh and PS: I think we need a better term than “Open social web.” The normies don’t get it. Maybe using the word “free” or the like. Anything we can do to distance ourselves from the crypto-sphere which I think has tainted the public’s view of decentralization!

Larissa Baca (@babaklar@hcommons.social):

I think we can best grow the Open Social Web by continuing to talk about how it benefits the community and how it is not run by tech giants who don’t care about people.

In my work as the User Engagement Manager at Knowledge Commons (which runs the https://hcommons.social server), I curate a lot of updates and content on social media, and have seen firsthand how there was a huge initial migration to open platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky. However, while we still primarily use Mastodon and Bluesky as our means of communicating with our users, I’ve noticed that we haven’t experienced long-term growth.

I look forward to thinking through this with the community.

Alexis Bushnell (@alexisbushnell@toot.wales):

I can offer input from the pov of someone who works in social media and has also run events and things to help people move to the Fediverse.

Klaudia Zotzmann-Koch (@viennawriter@litera.tools):

The open social web would be more commonly known, if universities, cities, local and federal governments, public broadcasting media etc. had accounts on the fediverse, as well as get all their employees there via their SSO-solutions. We somehow have to make the fediverse the “household name” for social media, for the “forum”, the go-to-place to communicate and discuss public matters together.