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FediForum April 2026:

Growth of the Open Social Web: Follow-up from the Un-workshop

/2026-04/session/7-d/

Topics:

Convener: Johannes Ernst (@j12t@j12t.social, @j12t.org)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

Un-workshop

The position statements submitted to the Growth un-workshop: https://fediforum.org/2026-03-growing-open-social-web/submissions/

Questions: (sometimes you need to know what you’re asking)

  • Do we have a definition of growth?

  • Do we need to reformulate the metrics for “growth”?

  • Johannes: make list of obsticles that block growth

  • Charles: Growth from regular people, they like to have fun and be entertained

    • some wants to watch / listen to Influencers/creators
    • Talked to them and their managers and talent agents, and they want a way to make a living (aka 💰)
    • e.g. Forkiverse created a Mastodon instance

  • Groups

  • I want billions of people here, not 5000 from any one place

  • What’s inhibiting growth? Groups.

  • Inability to form collectives, groups, etc.

  • The only “Group” we have is not allowed to be a group (lack of local-only posts for topic/community servers [using the most-implemented/most-users software implementation])

  • Groups

  • Social networks with dense close connections and loose third-party connections are the strongest

  • GROUPS!!!!!!

  • The current boost bot groups gets used a lot, but they aren’t sufficient

  • Reference material for Group dynanimcs/impact:

  • Reference material for why people use social media: (spoiler, top answer is “find my people”)

  • Groups

  • Johanna’s perpetual dead horse to beat: how do we connect the digital to the meatspace?

  • Alexis

    • Have lured people to fedi and they have left
    • Main problems: I can’t find people to connect to (aka the fediverse is too quiet)
    • Have tried to find people, but don’t know how to
    • DISCOVERY (content and/or people and/or both?)

  • Ozoned: We are missing tools

    • We’re missing bots, ways to get paid, emotes
    • however, everyone loves the idea, but nobody has the time or priority to migrate away
    • People would rather leave and not try anything else, than learn something new

  • Economic models

    • FOSS support model where a company sells the service or support contracts and sells it
    • Another option is Public broadcasting sponsorship and donation model. I’ve thought HEAVILY on this. But people have other priorities atm.

  • We need tech, but we can’t code our way out of these problems We have to meet people where they are, sell them this option, sell them on their freedom.

List of obstacles

  • Products and service improrvements

    • We need payments

      • So influencers/creators can make a living off of the Fediverse
      • So that they will bring in their audience to the Fediverse

    • We need groups

      • Instances as forms of groups is insufficient

    • Mastodon needs to implement it

      • or we need momentum outside of Mastodon

    • “I can’t find people to follow”

    • Need identify specific problems for specific user groups and solve those well

  • Legislative

  • Narrative

    • What is the purpose for being here?

  • Economic:

    • We need an economic model

  • Cultural:

    • Lack of acceptance of commerce by a small but hyper aggressive group of people

Sometimes, we (instance hosts and users) can be our own worst enemies, by gatekeeping whatever we have staked out as “our turf”.

Potential strategies:

  • Have organizations like universities provision Fediverse accounts at the same time they set up e-mail accounts for their students etc

  • Local community leaders, councillors, businesses that have a connected community of clients.

  • Gilles: Study the people we want to pull into the fediverse (that is: everyone), and ask them what they need. Particular groups of interest are:

    • people who got disappointed in the fediverse (inactive accounts) and
    • people who are still actually using Facebook.

    What would take it to bring them in? In discussions like these, we discuss many hypotheses of what would work. I think we should study these hypotheses. (please contact Gilles if you have questions you’d like to ask the people)

  • Evan: we don’t need to move people off their (non-Fediverse) platform, we can just connect their (non-Fediverse) platform to the Fediverse. Many corporate platforms support plug-ins etc, that we could use to connect them. Slack, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Workspace, …

  • Naming: Make it fun & cute

  • Don’t take me too seriously. ;-)

Teddyverse

Selected posts on chat

Cagan:
I basically NEED Instagram because it is where all the content about an interest of me is. We need to make them available here which goes through Reiver’s point.
Samir:
Less people + less content = harder discovery
Samir:
Use Fedica :)
Julian:
use the threadiverse
Ozoned:
Fedica worked well for me! Been using it all day.
I’ve been using Piefed, but I need to check out NodeBB. Julian, how does NodeBB handle activity? Actually, ignore me. We can discuss it on WOMML.
Julian:
hahahah
Ozoned:
Sorry. I want it know it all, I want to know it NOW. And I remember what happened to Varuca Salt when she sang that song.
Cagan:
We talked about this on a previous session!
ozoned:
Babette was talking to me about Surf. Netherlands right?
NOT Mike’s Surf.
Julian:
I find it amusing how Alexis used the term “lured”… lured to the fediverse… how subversive
Ozoned:
I feel like Alexis is a troublemaker! Actually I think we all are! :D
Peter / zzepposs:
uni of Groningen — Babette was at fireside fedi (tnx ozoned!)
Ozoned:
She was. And she’s AWESOME.
Samir:
We are building for geeks
Alexis:
yep, and this is a big problem
Alexis:
The amount of different options we have is a weakness in this area because normies don’t understand or care - they just want to log in and chat to people
Reiver:
What do they want? What problems do they have?
JohannaB:
On top of that - it is an iterative thing. you don’t do it once, unless you’re a one-shot, cash in, and let your “product” become obsolete.
I was just nodding along with that. MS, Google and Apple have huge programs targeted at postsecondary education
Samir:
You have no idea how many times we get calls for “Fediblock” on our company account, and we make tools for the Fediverse!
Let alone normal business accounts
Mark Corbett Wilson
Immoderate moderation! Well done Johannes!
Reiver:
VHS vs Betamax
Alexis:
people are TIRED
JohannaB:
yeee-ep. Us included. If I need to have a job to support my “hobby” of tech-social systems design and support, I’m not gonna stay very effective at the one that doesn’t stock the pantry
Julian:
If you’re waiting for UBI to kick in, you’ll be waiting awhile :)
Alexis:
a girl can dream
Ben Pate:
x10 for a Fediverse Support Desk
(and whoever does that will make a ton of money)
JohannaB:
HIRE ME!!!
Julian:
Having an umbrella org to supply tech support and mod support would be interesting. However, I think this was IFTAS’ idea…
I don’t know how well that was able to pan out :(
JohannaB:
“This session could hav been a conference….”
Branding OMG.
OSW .. has anyone evil ruined that one yet?
Evan:
We should call it the Sexy Social Web so people are more curious about joining
Unnamed:
https://jaz.co.uk/projects/startheresocial/shs-community/
JohannaB:
can we write a paper on this?
Alexis:
oooh yes, think of the dragging in the press! All publicity is good publicity!

JohannaB: Switter exiles might have some advice on where the lines need to be drawn there …

ozoned:
IF ANYONE wants to work with me on ANY of this PLEASE let me know. I’m working with Ben and others, but I have NO CLUE how to run a business. I need help. @ozoned@btfree.social), https://btfree@btfree.org
Julian:
I am also not good at building a business. I’m just good at building software -_-
ozoned:
As much as we all hate businesses, there HAVE to be businesses. HOW do we solve that problem I think is the big thing.
Julian:
The open social web’s vocal minority’s aversion to making money is a problem.
JohannaB:
I think we need to coalesce around some different business model. The most dominant one is one of our biggest problems.
Julian:
The fediverse doesn’t have an outreach division because we can’t pay people to do this…
Alexis:
which is a real shame because there are “green-fluencers” or whatever they’re called who would be a great shout to be lured here
Cagan:
We just need to define “reasonable” early
JohannaB:
THAT TOO we need to stop with the “it’s like thing you know but open source”~ . ppl don’t care

Julian “It’s X but Y” arrrgh nooo

wjmaggos@liberal.city:
things are hard cause they are better :0
Julian:
Evan, you’re sounding a bit like Doctorow
Julian:
  • Cory Doctorow
    • Evan Prodromou
      • Michael Scott
Julian:
Alexis, you have a point… big social networks pay outreach teams because they have to incentivise people to do it. We might not have that hurdle.
Samir:
How about building that? We can raise money, or setup donation systems to compensate people?
JohannaB:
Post-social MEDIA should be a big gap to jump into with renewed social NETWORK.
Alexis:
I do think though (from having tried with some greefluencers) that the tech is the hurdle for them. They can’t figure out how to set up a PeerTube, they aren’t techy, they don’t want to learn that stuff, so the hurdle to join Fedi is enormous there
Unnamed:
See https://www.thecommonshub.com/ and https://newsmastfoundation.org/ for people doing the work to bring in existing groups and creators
reiver:
There were a lot of Twitter private DM groups that arose due to people being concerned of being (professionally or publicly) “canceled”.
Samir:
Traffic = money usually
reiver:
Come to the next session on Fediverse Payments :-)
Julian:
Yeah you’re asking for Patreon with AP support
Samir:
Yes, and Substack too
Alexis:
I might grab you to chat about a Fedi Fetlife alternative @ozoned (if my girlfriend doesn’t murder me for trying to do more first!)
Ben:
Patreon and substack are basically the same tech.
And we are this close to having it here, too.
Julian:
with Crowdbucks? Or did you have another software in mind
Unnamed:
monetization
ozoned:
You don’t want or like money? DON’T ACCEPT IT
reiver:
Both PayPal and Patreon did originally go after pr0n sites, too (in addition to other people).
Julian:
CC companies are typically averse to that though
ozoned:
Not only that Reiver, but all of those people are being pushed OFF of those platforms.
JenJen can no longer accept PayPal because she’s a high risk. For drawing anime titties.
Gilles:
so only the advertisement we like :)
ozoned:
VISA, MasterCard, etc are pushing people out. They don’t want that money, because it threatens their money.
JohannaB:
Somebody catch up with me about Ravelry, re: advertisement done RIGHT.
ozoned:
We NEED direct payments. I know Jeremiah is working on Interledger. I HOPE it comes sooner than later.
reiver:
I created the first ad network decades ago. We could chat more about that.
ozoned:
I can barely afford the conferences I’m going to atm. :( But this is worth it!
If anyone knows of conferences though, please let me know.
William:
but half my family would be blocked here
Behn:
More. Frequently.
Samir:
why not another unworkshop?
Unnamed:
it’s almost as if we need a group…
ozoned:
I would 100% join a nontechnical task force.
peter / zzepposs:
we (fedivariety) is setting up a meeting to prep a coalition aiming at horizon program (with some specialist coaches…) stay tuned