Skip to content

Outreach Roadmap Scenarios

  • Version: v2023.Q2

About

This document outlines the outreach strategy for Onion Services adoption and usage.

Improve online guides on Onion Service deployment (on community portal)

  • Here: https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/setup/
  • Currently we have the following guide on the community portal which lays out steps for deploying Onion Services: https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/setup/
  • We also guide people who wish to "onionize" their website to Alec Muffet's EOTK repository on GitHub.
  • We need to review and improve the first guide to ensure it's comprehensive and easy to follow.
  • This guide is also only available in English, Russian, and Turkish. There's an opportunity to invest in localization.

Highlight benefits of Onion Services (on community portal)

  • Here: https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/talk/
  • Above page needs to be elaborated to highlight all arguments for promoting Onion Services.
  • Tor is useful especially in places where it is banned / more difficult to use.
  • Onion Services as a mean to push content online, not just access.

Publish training resources (on community portal)

  • Here: https://community.torproject.org/training/resources/
  • We already published one general training resource introducing Onion Services very broadly.
  • We aim to build more resources to support training for those wishing to deploy Onion Services, as well as those who're maintaining them.
  • We also need to cater to user groups of Onion Services, highlighting the benefits of Onion Services for different contexts.

Deliver training and broaden onion support

  • Supporting media organizations with deploying Onion Services.
  • Build conversations with organizations that are already expressing a need for secure and private browsing and information sharing alternatives.
  • Training about Tor and Onion Services (high level understanding).
  • Work to communicate the benefits of Onion Services and frame these benefits based on the specific audience needs.
  • The training resources should be accompanied by on-demand training sessions (or awareness sessions).
  • Sessions should be made available for both service operators and users of Onion Services.
  • Make it known that we provide onion support: anyone from civil society who wishes to deploy an onion service or onionize their website can reach out.
  • We need to ask ourselves: how can Onion Services be useful and relevant in different contexts.
  • Offering an user an onion service address is protecting them.

Run campaigns

  • Onion/Tor = Web 4.
  • Brainstorm campaigns around Onion Services, similar to how #MoreOnionsPorFavor which encouraged the adoption of Onion-Location.
  • Reaching out to groups and organizations that we believe can benefit from deploying Onion Services.
  • But all this depends on what the future (near or far) of Onion Services will look like: will Onion Services become a norm (e.g. how the web has moved to HTTPS) or mainly reserved for specific use cases (e.g. whistleblowing, file sharing)?
  • Online campaigns talking about onions, their features.
  • A shift in the discourse: gathering arguments for promoting the technology: anonymity is only one of many interesting Onion Service properties.
  • Onion Services 20th Anniversary Campaign? We could think about some "anniversary media campaign" along the year, considering things happening like PoW protection, ACME for Onions etc.
  • Changing the narrative around Onion Services going beyond anonymity (e.g. less hijackable / tamperable).
  • The more Human Rights organizations adopting, the easier is shifting the discourse to the "good" stuff.

Resources

Existing discussions

This section contain references on some existing research to improve Onion Services adoption from the outreach perspective.