Frankly™ is an open source video platform for small-group dialogue and deliberation at scale.
Our vision is to build a world where the practice of constructive dialogue is the norm—where diverse perspectives catalyze innovative solutions, rather than deepen societal divides. To realize this vision, we’re not only developing the platform ourselves but also open-sourcing its code, to enable a global community to expand and adapt this framework.
The project is operated within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. It is co-developed with Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, Deliberations.us and Equal Citizens.
Meet our team
Lawrence Lessig
Director
Samantha Shireman
Product Manager
Matt Marino
Sr. UX Designer
Johnny Richardson
Sr. Software Engineer
Mike Willems
Sr. Software Engineer
Matthew Clarke
Sr. Software Engineer
Neeti Sivakumar
UX Designer
Craig Newfield
Frankly Fellow
Anne Steele
Community Manager
Casey Gilbert
Research Assistant
Supported by
Project Liberty
Andrew Carnegie Foundation
Plurality Institute
Frankly in the field
More than 75 organizations have joined the Frankly closed beta, running everything from small classroom conversations to national events. Here are three use cases we’d like to highlight.
Schenectady Civic Dialogue
Change.org and Mayor McCarthy asked Schenectady residents what would help their city thrive. Hundreds of residents shared ideas and voted on them, and food access emerged as a priority across groups. On September 30, 2026, nearly 100 residents met online to deliberate on 17 policy options. Their recommendations went to the mayor, city staff, and City Council.
Learn more: Schenectady Civic Dialogue
Report: Schenectady Final Report
AllSides National Roundtable on Political Violence
On November 6, 2025, AllSides brought together 637 participants from across the political spectrum for 90-minute small-group conversations about political violence. Pre- and post-event surveys measured how attitudes on political violence, pluralism, and personal agency changed.
Learn more: AllSides Roundtables
The Forum
The Forum helps residents of New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina identify issues that at least 70% of them agree on, then advance those issues through their state legislatures. Phase 2 of the process, in which participants matched across perspectives evaluate proposed solutions together in online video deliberation, ran on Frankly in all three states.
Learn more: The Forum
How Frankly came to be
Frankly builds on code from a proprietary platform developed by Ben Turtel and Danny Franklin of Lightning Rod Labs. That platform supported dialogue, civic engagement, and deliberation events run by America Talks, Deliberations.us, AllSides, Living Room Conversations, Listen First Project, Unify America, and more.
Harvard acquired the code in 2024, and the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center incubated Frankly. We announced the platform in September 2024 at Beyond Discourse Dumpster Fires and released it as open source in April 2025. The Berkman Klein Center stewards Frankly today.
“Having infrastructure, like Frankly, that allows you to integrate these opportunities at scale is the kind of magnitude shift that we need…”
Matthew Bryne
Senior Director of Deliberation, Unify America
What people are saying
By having integrated conversation guides, by having gestures and ways to say, ‘oh, somebody should have a chance to speak more, somebody should speak less’…(Frankly is) doing that in very nuanced, careful ways…enables us to lean into the better part of ourselves and really listen to each other and really have meaningful conversations, even and especially across differences.
John Gable
(CEO & Co-Founder, AllSides)
The most beautiful thing about [Frankly] is that there’s a time bound agenda…really keeps people on track, makes sure valuable exchanges are happening and allows for really productive dialogue.
Justin Simpkins
(Founder, The Conversation Company)
Having infrastructure, like Frankly, that allows you to integrate these opportunities at scale is the kind of magnitude shift that we need to address the size of the problem.
Matthew Bryne
(Senior Director of Deliberation,
Unify America)
FAQs
What does it cost?
The hosted platform is free during the closed beta. We’re committed to keeping an accessible free tier permanently. We plan to charge based on scale and for certain premium features.
Why not just use Zoom?
Zoom, Google Meet, and other standard video conferencing platforms are built for one-to-many events where someone is sharing out to an audience. Frankly is built for participatory events where people need to reason together, solve a problem, or connect across difference in a structured way.
Frankly matches participants into balanced breakout groups, embeds discussion prompts directly in each room so groups stay on track without a facilitator in every breakout, and gives people tools to submit and vote on ideas so the session produces output you can act on. With standard video conferencing tools you get random grouping, no shared structure across rooms, and nothing synthesized afterward.
Is Frankly an AI platform?
No. Frankly is a human-first video platform for structured dialogue and group decision-making. Inside the platform, AI is used for transcription (when enabled) and will be used in planned features such as live captions, live translation, and the agenda builder. Facilitation features such Smart Matching and the Talk Timer use mathematical algorithms, not AI.
Our approach to AI follows the principle in DemocracyNext’s Deliberative Muscles & AI: AI should leave participants and facilitators more capable of deliberating, and the work of deliberation should stay with them. The paper cites the Frankly agenda builder as an example of AI that supports facilitators. Any AI features we add will follow the same principle.
Some organizations work with sensemaking partners who use their own AI tools to analyze event data. Those tools run outside Frankly.
Can I self-host?
Yes. Frankly is open source under the AGPL, so you can run your own instance. Setup instructions are in the documentation.
How can I get involved?
There are a few ways:
- Join the Friends of Frankly. Friends of Frankly volunteers help stress test the platform, try out new features, and share feedback through surveys. Members also get invitations to community events.
- Get updates. Subscribe to the Berkman Klein Center newsletter and select Deliberations updates.
- Contribute code. Frankly is open source. Start here to find out how to contribute.