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FediForum "Growing the Open Social Web" Un-Workshop position statement

Jon

• 5 min read
FediForum: Growing the Open Social Web??? Also, surveillance-capitalism-friendly images, described in the article

Note: feel free to skip the narrative, and go straight to the position statement!

""Open Social Web" is a term surveillance capitalism companies and their friends have been using since at least 2008. The framing puts focus on the "openness," so erases the trans/queer/non-binary-driven oppositional view of the Fediverse as a critique of openness – and also erases the free fediverse's anti-fascist position of refusing to be open to Meta (and earlier, Gab)."

– me, in I for one welcome Bluesky, the ATmosphere, BTS ARMY, millions of Brazilians, Black Twitter, and sex worker Twitter to the fediverses! (September 2024)

When I clicked the link last moth in FediForum's announcement they were branching out from their usual pay-to-play unconferences to host a pay-to-play "un-workshop" on March 2, my email client warned me that it was a tracking link.1 A couple hours after I tagged FediForum and made a snarky remark thanking them for providing such a great example of the surveillance capitalism-friendly nature of so many supporters of the "Open Social Web", they posted that oops, their mailer appears to replace URLs with tracking URLs even if "do not track" is checked, and they didn't mean to track people – and included a non-tracking link.2

I have no interest in growing the "Open Social Web", but I do have strong feelings on one way both the Fediverse and the ATmosphere can grow, so once the non-tracking link was available I decided to check it out. Even after reading the page a couple of times, it's not clear to me why they're calling it an "un-workshop". The approach of the program committee identifying topic clusters from the submitted papers and pre-scheduling sessions seems like a pretty standard workshop to me – and the exact opposite of the self-organizing approach of an unconference. And call me a Luddite, but I can't say I'm particularly optimistic that remo.co (the "all-in-one online event solution" from events.com that they're using) will succeed in creating an "engaging environment where attendees can connect, interact, and move like it's a real-life event."3

But oh well, it is what it is. Workshops can be useful, there are some interesting people who have signed up. Since I've hosted sessions on organizing and activism at the last two FediFora, I figured I might as well sign up and submit a short position statement.

Registration didn't take all that long, but by the time had seen the prominent display of Google Pay, caught the clever attempt by Humanitix (the platform they continue to use even though it won't allow them to offer free registrations) to opt me in to receiving their spam and unchecked the box, noticed the prominent Cloudflare logo, and then (after I paid) discovered that my signup also entitled me to five free tickets that have something to do with a "Special offer from Disney+ and Hulu, win $2,000 and more" ...

Well, let's just say I was very tempted to ditch my position statement, and instead talk about how one good way for Fediverse can grow is to position itself as an alternative to surveillance capitalism (as Blacksky is doing in the ATmosphere) – and it's very hard to do that while embracing surveillance capitalism framing and technologies. But then again, it's not an un-workshop about the Fediverse, it's an un-workshop about the "Open Social Web," so it's probably not the ideal audience for that perspective.

Before we get to the position statement, here's another excerpt from I for one welcome Bluesky, the ATmosphere, BTS ARMY, millions of Brazilians, Black Twitter, and sex worker Twitter to the fediverses!

"Chris Messina's 2008 blog about the "open, social web" is a good reminder of how long companies with surveillance capitalism business models have been trying to push this as a brand. This post was written back when Messina was at Google, long before he started running a VC fund backed by Marc Andreessen and became an advisor to the Meta-funded Social Web Foundation. "Open Social" was at the time was a specification developed by Google, Ning (a company Andreessen had co-founded), MySpace and other social network companies.

Attempts to use "Open Social Web" as a synonym for "the Fediverse" erase the oppositional views that Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscom Abbing discuss in "The Fediverse as an Ongoing Critique of Openness" (in Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of F/LOSS) and Jamie Theophilus discusses in Closing the Door to Remain Open: The Politics of Openness and the Practices of Strategic Closure in the Fediverse. And "Open" often has the connotations that there shouldn't be protections against exploit anybody's data, and also that (since bigger is better) it's good to have Nazis and TERFs on the network.

Of course, many people who use the term "Open Social Web" to mean "the Fediverse and the ATmosphere" (and sometimes also RSS and/or Nostr) don't know this context. And maybe you didn't either, before you read this article ... but now you do!

Position statement

The use cases for alternative social networks – not controlled by techbro white supremacist CEO's working with their cronies in authoritarian governments – practically write themselves in today's world. Big tech's centralized social networks remain vital for activism and organizing (meet people where they are, and that's where they currently are), but alternative social networks also have a major role to play. And since big tech's centralized social networks are so hostile to activists – and to organizing – the Fediverse and the ATmosphere have great opportunities to appeal to people whose needs aren't getting met. But there are also major barriers; in the Fediverse, these include the racism, sexism, misogyny and other bigotries as well as the lack of anything to fill the niche of Facebook groups.

None of that's new; my slides from the October FediForum remain relevant.

What *is* new, though, is the way we've been leveraging Blacksky and pnw.zone and neuromatch.social and other fedi instances as part of real-life legislative activism here in Washington state – and soon (perhaps even by the time the un-workshop happens) on federal legislation like FISA reauthorization, KOSA, and other Bad Internet Bills.

We've had several valuable successes, and hopefully will be building on those, although there are also some real limitations. Of course these tactics will need to be adopted for other countries (and quite possibly even for other states) but there really is a lot to build on here.

If you're interested in following along between now and the un-workshop:

Notes

1 And indeed it was: https://veapdq.clicks.mlsend.com/ty/cl/eyJ2Ijoie1wiYVwiOjEyODgxNTAsXCJsXCI6MTc3NzY2NTY5OTg2NzU0MDY2LFwiclwiOjE3Nzc2NjU4MTY4MDQ3NDA3MX0iLCJzIjoiMmQ0ODdmYzkyMGRkYjU4NiJ9

2 Although for some reason they didn't think it was actually worth replying to my post that had tagged them – or even tagging me in their reply 🤣

3 I don't know much about events.com but in the 2024 press release from events.com announcing the "expansion of its Share Subscription Facility (“SSF”) with Global Emerging Markets (“GEM”), to $200 million," here's what their CEO says they'll do with the money:

"This funding will empower us to help more event organizers worldwide manage, market and monetize their event and help people around the world discover, interact and transact with unforgettable experiences — while gathering actionable data and revenue at scale.”

And in the "Helping events do business better section" on their about page has this gem:

"We support organizers in crafting unforgettable attendee moments, boosting efficiency and generating fresh revenue streams."

I hate to sound like a broken record, but this is exactly the opposite of the values of the Fediverse. Sure it's on brand for the "Open Social Web" ... but the event isn't called OSWForum!