The goal of FOCI is to bring together researchers, implementers, and activists working in the area of internet freedom. We recognize that control over online speech has become inherently interdisciplinary, so that studying these problems often involves adopting a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective. We aim to catalyze new research directions and in-depth discussions concerning free and open communications on the internet by providing a space for work that might not fit at conventional computer science measurement and security conferences. We particularly encourage early-stage research or extensions on previously published research.

The goal of FOCI is to bring together researchers, implementers, and activists working in the area of Internet freedom. We recognize that control over online speech has become inherently interdisciplinary, so that studying these problems often involves adopting a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective. We aim to catalyze new research directions and in-depth discussions concerning free and open communications on the internet by providing a space for work that might not fit at conventional computer science measurement and security conferences. We particularly encourage early-stage research or extensions to previously published research.

FOCI papers will be available online at https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/. All works are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0). Authors retain the copyright of their work and may distribute and reuse the contents as they wish.

There will be two FOCI issues this year:

Issue 1: Accepted papers and talks will be presented at an online-only event

Issue 2: Accepted papers and talks will be presented at an in-person event

Dates and deadlines for both issues/events are as follows:

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Topics

We welcome studies on all aspects of digital speech control. Below are some examples of topics that we consider definitely relevant to FOCI, however we encourage community members to interpret this list broadly and feel free to submit works not specifically listed here.

• Surveillance: e.g., analyses of corporate or government surveillance; anonymity systems that aim to protect users from surveillance; societal impacts of surveillance
• Censorship: e.g., the measurement or evaluation of Internet censorship; tools or systems that circumvent censorship; ethics or risks towards users in the research of censorship measurement or circumvention
• Content moderation systems: e.g., analyses of tools employed by social media
• Disinformation and misinformation online: e.g., analyses of digital propaganda; social media trends
• Press freedom: e.g., deployment of tools to protect whistleblowers; analysis of government or corporate repression of the press
• Intellectual Property: e.g., right to repair; analyses of copyright/patent law

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What to Submit

We welcome the submission of papers containing the following type of content:

• Research papers: Research papers should have a clearly stated methodology including a hypothesis and experiments and/or analysis designed to prove or disprove the hypothesis.
• Position papers: Position papers, particularly those that critique past work, should present detailed solutions, either proposed or implemented.
• Experience papers: Experience papers should recount experiences (e.g., from experiments or deployments) and should highlight takeaways and lessons learned that might help researchers, implementers, or deployers of internet freedom tools in the future.
• Preliminary Work Papers: Preliminary work papers should describe interesting and new ideas and early results, and we expect that such works-in-progress papers may eventually be extended as full papers for publication at a conference.

For all submissions, the program committee will give greater weight to papers that lend themselves to interactive discussion among workshop attendees.

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Submission Instructions

We offer a variety of paper length options. Submitters may choose the option that best fits their submission:

• Extended Abstract: Submissions must be no longer than two pages. Extended abstracts should be fully put together and convince the reader that the author would give an exciting presentation at the workshop. Successful extended abstract submissions have previously been or have included research proposals. Submitted abstracts must be prefaced with “Extended Abstract: ” in the title.
• Short Paper: Submissions must be no longer than four pages. Short papers should provide enough context and background for the reader to understand the contribution. We envision that short papers will be preliminary work or extended work papers, but this is not a hard requirement.
• Long Paper: Submissions must be no longer than eight pages. We envision that long papers will be the more traditional research paper, but this is not a hard requirement.

The page length limits for all submissions do not include references and appendices. Authors should use the PoPETs template. There is no need to fill in the values in the Copyright and Issue info sections of the .tex file for submission.

The review process will be double-blind; all submissions should be anonymized so as not to reveal the authors names or affiliations during the review process. All anonymized papers must be submitted in PDF format via the submission form. Please do not email submissions.

To submit, please visit https://foci25.hotcrp.com.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions.

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Code of Conduct

The Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) community strives to foster a space for rigorous, challenging intellectual exploration that is at the same time open, inclusive and diverse. We urge FOCI participants to engage with one another encouragingly and constructively, and especially encourage participants to interact with those whose viewpoints, research interests, cultural backgrounds, or experiences may be unfamiliar to them or outside their comfort zone.
The organizers expect that anyone participating in FOCI will—at minimum—treat others with respect for their dignity and autonomy. Correspondingly, behavior that violates these principles will not be tolerated, and may include consequences up to and including expulsion from FOCI. Anyone who feels threatened or harassed while participating in FOCI should not hesitate to reach out to the FOCI chairs and can expect that any concerns shared will be taken seriously and handled with both discretion and dispatch. The current FOCI chairs are Tariq Elahi and Jeffrey Knockel.

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