People are social animals. We need each other — offline and online. Yet our social needs have been weaponised against us by Big Tech social media. Democratic values are under pressure, discourse is polarised, interactions are gamified, and communication is shaped and influenced by algorithms. The well-known Big Tech social media platforms have become hotbeds of disinformation and hate speech, firmly in the grip of the billionaire broligarchy and their own interests and ideologies. This needs to stop.
The good news: we gave Big Tech this power and we can take it away. Not by becoming digital hermits, but by building our own Open Social Web. By fostering social interactions built on open-source technology, open standards, and democratic governance structures, we can create — and are already creating — infrastructures of communication and care, rather than exploitation and greed.
This unconference is an open invitation to discuss, connect, and forge relationships across cultures, protocol borders, and technology implementations. We welcome the people hosting and maintaining infrastructures, ATProto open standards advocates, Matrix protocol tinkerers, ActivityPub entrepreneurs, the Mastodon stampede, and Fediverse citizens alike. Anyone working on — or wanting to work on — the Open Social Web is very welcome.