How we push the world into this nasty mess

A musical interlude about the prats running the world

So how did we get into such a mess, one vile prat sells weapons to another vile prat so he can flatten a hospital being used by another vile prat, who then returns the favour by bombing the vile prat’s power grid. Then they both turn to the cameras and declare it’s all the other’s fault, while pointing fingers and shouting: “You’re the real vile prat here!”

Meanwhile, the rest of us, watching from behind #dotcons screens, trapped in algorithmic echo chambers, suffer the fallout, literally and figuratively, as these vile people continue their pushing pantomime of destruction. Whole cities vanish, people starve, oceans rise, and still, the prats keep prattling on.

Then there’s a whole swarm of quieter, vile prats. These are the ones in expensive suits who sit on boards and in parliaments, nodding sagely while doing absolutely nothing. Example? The arms trade with Saudi Arabia. The world watches Yemen bleed dry while the UK and US keep shipping weapons and shrugging. Another? The climate crisis, where oil companies, vile prats with shiny logos, knew the damage decades ago and simply paid the #mainstreaming to bury the evidence. Or look at Gaza. Or Sudan. Or Myanmar. Pick a conflict, you’ll find the same prats.

Our use of tech’s is core to this mess making: the #dotcons, surveillance platforms we call “social media” feed us these nasty prats daily, empowering them while disempowering us. And the #mainstreaming pundits, journalists, and influencers #fashernistas act like this is all normal, business as usual. They’re part of the problem. A bunch of vile prats, simply.

And because this feedback loop of prattery is normalized, people keep telling us this is how the world has to be. No alternatives. No resistance. Just sit down, shut up, and doom scroll. So here’s a humble ask: Don’t be a prat. Don’t excuse prats. Don’t promote prats. Start calling prats what they are. Vile prats.

How the world gets into this nasty mess, One vile prat supplies bombs to another vile prat so he can bomb another vile git, who then bombs the vile prat who bombed him. Then they keep being vile prats to each other and blaming each other and calling each other a vile prat for being a vile prat. And the rest of the world watches and suffers as these vile prats simply keep being vile prats. There are also many other vile prats who don’t speak up because one nasty vile prat, the biggest vile prat, has blackmail photos of them all being perverts, not in a good way.

Anyone #mainstreaming is pushing this mess. (Paraphrased from David Dayan)

An example of what happens in a nasty prat run world, to us.

And people think and act on this as normal behaver, this is why we are in such a mess, #KISS. The path out is to start composting, not feeding the mess. You don’t have to be perfect, just don’t be like everyone else, don’t be that person, thanks.

Some reading: https://steady.substack.com/p/when-incompetence-goes-to-war

The Mess We Make (Again… and again)

Can bureaucracies join the #Fediverse? Yes – with WordPress + ActivityPub

Let’s stop pretending every institution has to “go social” by building new habits, communities, and platforms from scratch. We already have a solid, simple tool that can bridge them from the #dotcons into the #Fediverse: WordPress + the ActivityPub plugin.

Institutions want control – That’s OK. Bureaucratic institutions, local councils, unions, media orgs, #NGOs, aren’t designed for fast, messy social interaction. They won’t control over moderation, messaging, and timelines. That’s how they work, the good news is that they don’t have to surrender that control to leave the exploitative corporate platforms.

There is a path to step sideways into the #openweb by using tools they already trust, #WordPress, plugging into the #Fediverse with a few small adjustments. Here is how this works:

Use WordPress as a public publishing hub, it already supports articles, media, comments, and user permissions. It’s familiar to thousands of comms and IT staff.
Install the ActivityPub plugin. This lets every post become a Fediverse-native object. Readers on Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica etc. can follow and share the content.
Keep moderation tight. Comments from the Fediverse can be held for review by default. Content inflows are closed, moderated, or opened based on trust levels.
Build distribution without chasing followers. The content flows outward. Others can quote, reply, remix – but the source stays under local control.

The alternative? Indie News, if not WordPress, the more adventures could host a dedicated Fediverse news instance (like a rebooted #IndymediaBack) or even set up a microblogging server using software like WriteFreely or Plume. These would support long-form or short-form posts, stay focused on the institution’s goals, avoid chasing engagement metrics from #dotcons. And again, comments and responses could be moderated or disabled, depending on needs. No spam tsunami. No culture wars. Just distribution and visibility – on native #openweb terms.

Why this matters, many public institutions want to move away from Facebook and Twitter, but feel locked in. They know those platforms are toxic, yet all the people are there. But what if we stopped treating the #Fediverse like a chaotic free-for-all and started showing how it can also work for structured, “responsible” publishing? WordPress already has millions of users. The ActivityPub plugin is mature, maintained, and already working. All it takes is will, and a little guidance.

Benefits at a glance:

Maintain editorial control
Publish to a growing #openweb ecosystem
Avoid vendor lock-in and algorithmic censorship
Build real, direct relationships with communities
Help decentralize digital infrastructure for the public good

If an institution can run a blog, it can join the Fediverse. If it can post on Facebook, it can do better. Let’s stop waiting for perfect platforms and start using the tools we already have, WordPress is an underrated bridge from the bureaucratic world into a better, fairer, and more resilient #openweb path.

Why Doesn’t Every City Have a Fediverse Server?

This is a story of power, plain and simple

Over the last few years, we’ve been watching a familiar story unfold, we’ve seen repeat itself in radical spaces, tech movements, and grassroots networks for decades. It starts in the grassroots with “progressive” #fashernistas (yes, them) pushing themselves into the front to speak for “us.” They talk the talk of decentralisation, care, community, and #FOSS ethics. They wear all the right hashtags: #opensocialmedia, #Fediverse, #commons, #techforgood. But when you look at how power is actually exercised behind the scenes, it’s something else entirely. This is a story of power, plain and simple. Not in the dramatic “revolutionary” sense. But in the subtle creep of careerism, institutional capture, and “safe” social capital games that flatten the radical and uplifts the “palatable”.

Let’s take a few examples from the #activertypub world, first with the #SocialHub stagnation, this open space was originally created by the grassroots crew to shape the standards of the decentralised web, It was originally a commons, protocol-building and governance exploration space. So, what happened? The people now “leading” came from lifestyle #fashionista activism and wannabe NGO circuits, who in the end were all trying to be embedded in the institutional funding environments, or visiting from the safe academic bubble. And thus they brought with them the dogmas of safe spaces, of “emotional consensus,” “hidden affinity group governance,” and “(ex)inclusive dialogue”… that JUST SO happened to exclude the radical and messy paths that are actually native to the #openweb, the bad mess they then made, ended up only pushing the dogma of the #geekprolem as it was the ONLY path they could imagine controlling in a way that would not threaten the thin connection to the institutions they were feeding from. This behaviour so often slips into forms of parasitism, which is not a good thing at all.

Then we have the current #Fediverse outreach infrastructure capture, where we’ve seen the same class of actors attach themselves to the most visible projects – like Mastodon, ActivityPub standards, and now “Fediverse governance.” They secure seats on boards. They host conferences with glossy branding and friendly logos. They use these controlled spaces to then push out “code of conduct” documents and “safe space” branding… while closing and excluding the very messy native infrastructure of discussion and direction that is both native and needed.

Examples? #Mastodon’s GitHub, issue tracking, and moderation are all tightly controlled by a small clique around the project founder. Community voices are kinda tolerated at best, discarded at worst. The project is moving onto the #NGO path, no bad thing in its self, but with its years of pushing its own branding as THE Fediverse, it becomes a bad thing. In this, there is a very real debt of damage they need to pay back – as a part of a functioning gift economy – saying sorry and admitting mistakes would be a good first step.

Then we have the example of the #FediForum events, pushing into the space blindly, with zero historical context or any actual knowledge, to represent the #activertypub ecosystem. The problem is they paywalled, which lead “naturally” to increasingly gate keeping with #NGO commercial interests being pushed to the front to represent “us”. When the radical and experienced grassroots voices obviously don’t get involved, as they simply refuse to step over the paywall. This is an ongoing mess, that we do need to compost and not only with #fashionista outrage but with real working paths, we used to do this, but we can’t any more – why?

Over the last few years we have had proposals for genuine horizontal governance, that could have been used to shift this mess making and to actually shifts power outward – but these were labelled “too messy,” “too political,” or “not the right time.” This is not accidental, it is liberalism functioning as control – with a smile. So… what can we do? Let’s be clear: This is a power issue. It’s not about bad intentions. It’s about how power is used, and then abused, even in the so-called “horizontal” paths.

The first thing we have to do is recognise the smell of #NGO-style liberalism that so easily hides itself in good intentions, grants, DEI language, and “process.” But it then ends up:

Disempowering community autonomy
Replacing radical potential with “professionalism”
Marginalising away activists and messy real-world projects
Recreating the same vertical hierarchies, just with better “open” branding

Composting this mess is needed to break the cycle:

Build and back native projects. The only way to push back against capture is to grow infrastructure from within our communities, like: #OMN (Open Media Network) #OGB (Open Governance Body). These must be trust-based, not credential-based. That means supporting those doing the work without demanding they translate it into pointless and most importantly powerless NGO-speak to be taken seriously.
Use the #4opens as a filter, this simple social retelling of #FOSS is designed precisely to push out the 95% of #techshit and focus energy on projects with: Open source Open data Open standards Open governance. Apply these consistently, and the parasite class will struggle to keep and find a foothold.
Push for messy, lived governance, stop waiting for perfect systems. We need to prototype imperfect, transparent, accountable governance now. It should be: Based on trust, not rules-lawyering Driven by use, not representation Grounded in solidarity, not status
Refuse the “leader class”, just because someone has a title, a grant, or a #dotcons following, doesn’t mean they speak for us. Call out the unaccountable influence. Politely or not. Let’s not let careerists write our futures.:

The Fediverse path could be the most important #openweb reboot of the commons of this decade. But it will only be that if we keep it rooted in social power, not polished #PR and #NGO mess. We don’t need new kings. We need more gardeners, to work together to compost the piles of #techshit and keep the space open and safe.

I think when our #fahernistas say to us “what have we done, please be nice to us, you’re not welcoming.” We need to reply: Am happy to be nice #KISS, just stop being a prat in this space please.

It’s really simple, please stop being (an often nasty) prat.

The Mess We Make (Again… and again)

NGIFORUM2025 is timidly touching sense

It’s good to see events like #NGIFORUM2025 as it’s trying to be on the path of the #Fediverse and the wider #openweb reboot which are real forces for social good, messy, hopeful, and grounded in decades of grassroots digital culture, which we do need to support. BUT we also need to speak honestly, as these spaces are not healthy by default.

Too often, they are co-opted by #NGO and institutional actors who bring with them a dangerous kind of “common sense”, what I’ve long described as the parasite class. We see this clearly at #NGIFORUM and similar #NGO events. Despite the energy and good intentions, the dominant framing is stuck in a narrow, #neoliberal logic:

More funding for shiny #techfixes.
Token gestures to social issues.
Endless discussion about scalability, compliance, branding, and “the market.”
Panels where “on-topic” needs reality-checking and “off-topic” is often the path to sense.

This is not the #openweb native path, and what we need is more shovels and composting, to grow the real grassroots native paths, with open projects from the messy soil of lived social experience. Not more polished “innovation theatre.” And crucially: we need to bring activism back into these spaces – not as token #fashernista crap, but as lived, rooted practice. We need to embed activist tech into the core of these events, not leave it in the hallway as is the current norm.

Because let’s be honest, too much of what’s being showcased is just more #techshit to compost. Take the role of NGI funding (Next Generation Internet): It could be a powerful tool to fund the future of a people-powered web. But right now? It’s structured to reward isolated hard tech with narrow deliverables, and punish anything messy, social, or disruptive. That’s upside-down.

The development side of open-source should be anti-commercial – in its process, not necessarily in its usage. That means public funding should support the huge social layer that keeps FOSS and #openweb projects alive:

Community organising.
UX design from lived needs, not compliance charts.
Onboarding and trust-building.
Accessibility work.
Documenting process for reuse and remix.

But currently these parts are entirely unfunded, and that is pushing us into the arms of the parasite class’s of all types. We are walking backward into the future, again, projects without people, users, and support are dead projects. No matter how elegant the codebase is.

One thing that the event brings up is that we need to shift policy, national governments and #EU to actively intervene in the monopolies running the current internet. Both mobile and fixed-line networks need to be opened up to allow for grassroots, peer-to-peer, and local hosting paths to flourish. The current centralised infrastructure is a block to the native #openweb, and we can’t “build better” on broken foundations.

The also needs to be a cultural shift, to unblock the #geekproblem. This is not a call-out – it’s a call-in. The feedback is there, i’ve personally been working on this issue for over a decade, what we’ve seen is a cycle: Working in a small way… failing in a big way… repeating.

It’s not personal, it is structural. And we can do better, if we compost the fear of doing things differently. A practical example, we need more points that are currently deemed “off-topic.”
Because what’s “on-topic” in these spaces is just branding and polite theatre. And that’s exactly how the #dotcons rose to dominance in the first place.

We are at risk of simply recreating their culture in softer tones. Let’s not do that. Let’s take a breath and reflect on what we’re actually building, it’s not a rhetorical question. This is not abstract.

Because if we keep defaulting to #neoliberal “common sense,” if we ignore the reality of climate collapse, digital authoritarianism, and infrastructure lock-in, then we’re just dancing around the edges of a very real #deathcult.

Let’s do the real work, let’s dig, plant, compost, and build trust. Let’s reclaim the tools and shape the #openweb around care, not control. Because anything less? It is just another empty panel on a sinking ship.

“All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.”
— Oscar Wilde

#Fediverse #OMN #4opens #commonsnotplatforms #mutualaid #socialroots #trustnotcontrol #KISS #NGIFORUM2025 #NGIforum #nlnet

The future depends on us using the power we still have

The #openweb holds a quiet kind of power – messy, distributed, human. But I keep wondering: are people now too afraid to use that power? The sad truth is, many always were. Power isn’t something most of us are raised to understand, let alone wield collectively. For decades, we’ve been taught to outsource it, to institutions, to markets, to influencers. But the cracks are everywhere now, and there’s no more room to pretend.

What we’re facing isn’t theoretical, the hard right is not just consolidating power, they’re weaponizing it. They’ve successfully atomized progressive movements, through culture wars, #AI manipulation, and economic precarity, they’ve made sure many can’t even think collectively, let alone act.

And where is this leading? Let’s be blunt. They are on track to kill billions of people and vast swathes of nature over the next 100 years. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s baked into the political economy of climate collapse, border militarization, and resurgent fascism. #XR and other movements have been sounding the alarm for years, but the line just keeps going straight… into oblivion.

And yet… There is still hope. Hope doesn’t mean passive optimism, it means seeing that the little power we still have matters. That using it, no matter how small or local or chaotic, is the path.

When we build on the #openweb instead of feeding the #dotcons, that’s power.
When we organize locally, build mutual aid, and share resources without gatekeepers, that’s power.
When we link, when we write, when we resist the urge to block and shame and instead connect and amplify, that’s power.

None of this is perfect, it’s not about purity, it’s about action. And that action doesn’t need to scale overnight. It just needs to grow, slow, messy, rooted. Because here’s the thing the right knows and the left forgets: Power isn’t given. It’s taken, built, and – at best – shared.

So let’s stop waiting for permission, stop fearing the imperfections. The future depends on us using the power we still have – to make more.

Let’s grow it, seed by seed.

It’s becoming a problem

It’s becoming a problem. When people start asking, “Is @_elena the first genuine superstar of the Fediverse?” – we should all pause. This isn’t idle praise, it’s the reproduction of celebrity culture, liberal imperialism, and vertical hierarchy in a space that explicitly set out to reject those structures.

Have you ever thought – just for a moment – that this might be the completely WRONG path for a horizontal network like the #Fediverse? Yes, we need mess. Yes, we need experimentation. But this? This is #mainstreaming in its most seductive form, a soft power grab, hiding behind friendly faces and growing marketing gloss.

Both #pubconf2025 and #fediforum, and the people who attend them, are becoming a showroom for this liberal capture, promoting star-making and platforming over community process and open governance. It’s a mirror of the conference-industrial complex, repackaged for the #dotcons-weary.

We’ve seen this before: #NGOs turned movements into funding funnels. Influencers replaced organizers. Polite panels replaced fourm-level solidarity. It’s been happening here the last few years. But we do need to remember, the Fediverse isn’t a playground for fame, it’s a commons, to distribute power – not concentrate it. We don’t need to unthinkingly push people down the superstars’ path. We need peers, comrades, care, conflict resolution, and actual shared infrastructure.

So let’s be honest, if you’re pushing “the first superstar of the Fediverse,” you’re not pushing decentralization, you’re pushing brand culture, mainstreaming logic, and attention economies repackaged for liberal feels.

That’s not radical. That’s not native, it’s not what we came here to build. Let’s compost this celebrity logic before it roots too deep. Let’s stay messy, collaborative, and resist the temptation to crown anyone. Because if we don’t? We’re just rebuilding the same old pyramids – with slightly alt avatars.

Let’s look at the more #mainstreaming #dotcons path. The not-so-subtle message we need to remember on social media: Dictators hate to be ignored. Especially on their “special days” – birthdays, elections, court appearances, or orchestrated spectacles. These moments are designed to dominate the media cycle and, by extension, the social media algorithms.

They thrive on attention, and whether that attention is praise or outrage, it fuels their visibility and power. Here’s the social tech they exploit:

When you doomscroll their face, the algorithm sees interest.
When you post disgust, the algorithm sees engagement.
When you argue with trolls, you’re boosting the signal of the original post.
When you call them names, it still centres them.

That’s the #dotcons feedback loop, engagement is king, and dictators know how to play that game. Let’s break this circle, on these days, do something different:

Share stories of local mutual aid.
Link to historical context that exposes the long game of these power grabs.
Boost voices that decentralize attention, not concentrate it.
Post about books, direct action, food sovereignty, climate organizing, and tools for collective autonomy.
Highlight grassroots projects like #OMN, which are building sustainable, decentralized alternatives.

This is how we take the air out of #mainstreaming fires. Starve the algorithm and feed the resistance. Focus on things that actually matter, remember: not engaging is a strategy. Ignore the circus. Build the commons.

#KISS

Why does any of this matter?

Because power matters, and power is never given – it’s taken, built, and at its best, shared. That’s why we care. That’s why the #Fediverse matters.

Let’s rewind: Private property wasn’t born from reason or consensus. It came from someone with a club drawing a line in the sand and saying:

“Cross this, and I’ll kill you.”

That’s the origin of power in the current #mainstreaming paths – violence, enclosure, and exclusion. This is not the foundation of the #Fediverse.

The Fediverse flows from a different source, built in open, social webs, where the lines we draw are “blowing in the wind.” Yes, a lot of people don’t get this. That’s why they try to jam it back into old models: branding, control, platforms, “governance,” and “best practices.” They want order. They want power they can hold.

But here’s the thing, There is such a thing as society, and we need to build tools that reflect this, not deny it. The beauty, and challenge, of the #Fediverse is that there is no central governance.
And that’s a good thing. Because it means we aren’t trapped by legacy systems of control. We don’t have to fit into the broken economies and top-down paths that dominate the “real” outside world.

The Fediverse was born from the “cats” of libertarianism and anarchism (without the [O]). And in this space, we have the radical opportunity to build different, native paths, based in trust, mutual aid, and the #4opens. But to keep building this, we have to compost the mess pushing: People pushing “common sense” corporate-style governance are part of the problem, they want to tame the wild, they want hierarchy where there should be networks, they want control where we need flow.

To be native to the Fediverse, we have to stop importing “common sense” control systems. Instead, we must use code – and culture – to build native #openweb society. Tools that empower. Processes that are messy, open, federated, and yes, hard to define. Organizing for community empowerment need to embed anti “common sense” in the same way the Fediverse is anti-enclosure. Because if we forget this… We don’t build a better web, we just recreate the old one with new colours. Let’s not just repeat history, let’s not draw new hard lines in the sand with the same threat of old clubs. A step away from this is to build bridges, not borders.

It would be helpful to talk about the industrial-scale air freshener being sprayed to mask the stench of collapse. An example, while Gaza burns and genocide unfolds in real time, too many on the soft left are busy sniffing their own ideological mess.

“Oh, but they used a plane once…”

“Oh, that project isn’t perfect, so let’s not support it at all…”

“Oh, their anti-Nazi message is just a header image. That’s clearly useless propaganda…”

This is troll logic. This is #psyop brainrot, it’s weaponized idealism used to undermine action.

“Sure, they’re doing good - but not perfect. So discredit, disengage, demoralize.”

It’s the tactic troll farms use on the #dotcons to feed manipulative, because it appeals to insecure egos and a culture soaked in #stupidindividualism, where the look of moral “purity” is more important than building power, solidarity, or impact.

And too many fall for it, because they don’t see it for what it is: A feedback loop that leads nowhere. A stalling tactic. A demobilizer. It’s not accidental, it’s designed to stop us acting.
It’s strategic passivity masquerading as moral high ground.

“Don’t link to that, it’s not flawless.”
“Don’t share that resource, the font is ugly.”
“Don’t support that campaign, they once took a selfie on a plane.”

Are you serious? While people are being murdered by states, you’re sniffing out aesthetic imperfections? Here’s #KISS:

Nobody wins by demanding perfection.

Nobody builds movements by tearing down every action.

Nobody helps anyone by blocking solidarity and smearing efforts.

We need to focus attention, not fragment it. We need to act in coalitions, not purity circles, we need to smell the rot, not cover it with ideological air freshener. Because this isn’t a game, it is about #powerpolatics, and how it’s wielded or lost. And while you troll your own side for imaginary infractions, the fascists are laughing – and organizing.

Please, please try and STOP being a prat, thanks.

When we block thinking, it’s pratish #dotcons behaviour

We’re living through a cultural shift. The #Fediverse, the #openweb, and grassroots tech projects like #OMN were born to challenge the values of the corporate web, not to reproduce them.
But what are we doing instead? We’re seeing people attacked simply for linking to context and history. Linking is native to the open web. Attacking people for linking? That’s native to #dotcons. Take this example: When we post links to hamishcampbell.com, a site with over 20 years of radical media history, no tracking, no ads, no monetization, some people respond with hostility. Instead of engaging, they block, slur, and accuse.

Why? Because the link was shared on a #dotcons platform? Because it challenges their gatekeeping norms? It’s absurd. The truth is simple: #KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
This site is part of a long history of grassroots movements. No one is selling anything. No one is farming clicks. Yet bitter, shrinking cliques still push to block it. That kind of behaviour? It’s at best compost – something to shovel through as we grow better soil.

If you don’t get why this matters, start here: Why linking on the open web matters. Not linking is a dangerous cultural regression. The act of linking is a kind of mutual aid: it’s memory, solidarity, and a way to keep the commons visible. When you attack people for linking, you’re actively damaging the infrastructure we need to resist the #deathcult of #neoliberal capitalism.

Here’s another angle worth reading: CrimethInc on mutual aid vs. charity. Mutual aid is not charity. Linking is not self-promotion. These are fundamental ideas. The #Fediverse is built on these values, it thrives when people share freely. But when we import #blocking behaviour and #dotcons paranoia, we replace trust with fear. We end up with closed circles, bad vibes, and petty gatekeeping.

This is not how we build shared infrastructure. This is not how we win. So please: Let’s stop slurring people for sharing knowledge. Let’s stop policing links with fear. Let’s link more, think more, and rebuild grassroots, networked culture rooted in trust, not control. Because without this? We’re just another branded platform, with nicer avatars and the same old decay underneath.

The Fediverse is opening, but there is a cost

With the #Fediverse gaining increasing #mainstreaming attention, we’re entering a familiar cycle, an influx of well-funded #NGO-branded projects trying to “fix” the #openweb by reshaping it in their own narrowing and to often blinded paths.

Take this year’s #chatteringclass event, #FediForum. Alongside breathless praise, last year, for #Threads joining the #opensocialweb space, we’re seeing the launch of shiny new tools: #BonfireSocial, #Channelorg, #Bounce. That promise innovation and ecosystem growth, but look closer, and you’ll see the #NGO pattern: branding over substance, silos in disguise, and a creeping return of the mini #dotcons under new, friendlier wrappers.

Let’s take Channel.org, On the surface, it looks like a #mainstreaming version of the #OMN project #indymediaback – community news channels, a grassroots publishing model, maybe even respectful federation. But scratch that surface and the cracks show quickly:

The default feeds are anaemic #NGO fodder
The orgs list reads like a who’s who of liberal foundations, with the usual hidden gatekeeping logic behind the scenes.
And it’s yet another “pay or pray” model: either be a professional #NGO or get nudged out.

In short, it’s likely just more #techshit to compost. A well-polished box built to contain, not empower. A place where “participation” is narrow and boring. This isn’t to say there’s zero value. There will be overlap with what we’re doing in the #OMN and #indymediaback spaces. But experience tells us, these projects rarely cooperate. They prefer to rebuild from scratch, with branding and compliance hardcoded. They see networks as products to manage, not native cultures to nurture. In the end they sell out, it happens.

And the result? A growing layer of parasites attaching themselves to the living Fediverse. That familiar smell of funding cycles, strategy decks, and locked-down roadmaps. We’ve seen this before. We know where it leads. The real question isn’t what’s new? It’s what’s native?

We don’t need a branded reboot of the same paths, what we do need is more funded and sustainable grounded, messy, radically open alternatives. Ones with deep roots in social movement history, not just nice UX. Ones that resist capture, and refuse in the end to turn community into product.

That’s the path we’re on, if the NGO track wants to build parallel paths, fine. Just don’t expect us to be polite about this mess making, we’ve already walked that road too many times. Live and let live, compost #techshit and build real alternatives #KISS

You know your getting big when parasites like this start to attach… salt and branding irons come to mind.

Governance, the mess of AI tech-fix paths

Seminar Reflection: Philosophy, AI, and Innovation – Week 6
Topic: AI Deliberation at Scale
Speakers: Chris Summerfield (Oxford & AI Safety Institute), MH Tessler (Google DeepMind)
Key texts: Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (excerpt) and Summerfield et al., “AI Can Help Humans Find Common Ground in Democratic Deliberation”

This seminar focus is on scaling democratic deliberation via AI. The example proposal is the #HabermasMachine a test projects to facilitate large-scale consensus using #LLMs (Large Language Models). The framing, unsurprisingly, is drawn from the elitist tech sector – Google DeepMind and Oxford – with a focus on “safety” and “moderation” over human messiness and agency.

The problem we face is that this #techshit path might work, but for who is the question, what kind of “public sphere” is this #AI recreating, and who holds the power to shape it? These are strongly top-down, technocratic proposals, rooted in a narrow utilitarian logic. The underlying assumption is that human decision-making is flawed and must be mediated, and ultimately managed, by algorithmic systems. Consensus is determined not through lived human to human dialogue or, as I like to say – mess, but through an AI that quietly nudges discussions to centrist consensuses.

There is no meaningful eye-to-eye group interaction in this project, no room for DIY, #bottom up agency. Participants become data points in a system that claims to “listen,” but acts through elitist mediation. It is consensus without community, and safety without solidarity. What’s missing is the power of mess, the presenter ignores this central question: Can we build messy, human-scale deliberation that doesn’t rely on top-down interventions?

Projects like this are not grassroots governance, rather it’s governance-by-black-box, mainstreaming by design, the incentive model is telling: ideas that align with the status quo or dominant narratives are rewarded with more money. Consensus is guided not by grassroots engagement or dissenting voices, but by what the algorithm (and its funders) consider “productive.” This is the quiet suffocating hand of #mainstreaming, cloaked in neutral code.

#TechFixes paths like this are about stability at all costs, yet we live in a time when stability is the problem, with #ClimateChaos threatening billions, the demand is for transformation, not moderation.

This is AI as intermediary, not a facilitator of the commons paths we need. Transparency? Not here, no one knows how the #AI reaches consensus. The models are proprietary, the tweaks are political, and the outcomes are mediated by those already in power. The system becomes an unaccountable broker, not of truth, but of what power is willing to hear.

We need to be wary of any system that claims to represent us without us being meaningfully involved. This is a curated spectacle of consensus, delivered by machines, funded by corporations, and mediated by invisible hands. What we need is human to human projects like the #OGB, not tech managed consensus. This #mainstreaming path isn’t compost. It’s simply more #techshit to be composted, mess is a feature, not a bug.

In the #OMN (Open Media Network), we explore paths rooted in trust, openness, and peer-to-peer process. Not asking for power to listen, but taking space to act. We compost the mess; we don’t pretend it can be sanitized by top-down coding.

#Oxford #AI #techshit #dotcons

The story: power, truth, and walking the fun path

Our powerlessness feeds our desire to hate. This is not a personal failing – it’s a social design flaw. A path built on alienation and distraction will always funnel frustration into polarisation. That’s why the controversy-driven algorithms of the #dotcons (corporate social media platforms) are not just annoying, but actively harmful. They feed on our despair, and we, often unknowingly, feed on the drama they serve back to us.

It’s a closed loop of spectacle and spite, profitable to the #nastyfew but corrosive to us, the meany. An extractive business model built on social breakdown. And yet, many of us know this. So why do we stay? Because stepping away from this mess is hard. It takes more than wishful thinking. It takes movement. Not only that, but it takes organising. It takes the kind of networked activism and lived alternatives the Open Media Network (#OMN) has been building and trying to seed for the last ten years

Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us.

Truth isn’t declared, it’s built. #Postmodernism taught us that truth is slippery. That’s fine, but in the hands of #mainstreaming culture, that slipperiness has become a tool of endless distraction and decay. People say things like they are true because they feel true. They build tech platforms because they believe in them. They sell movements as brands because it looks like change. But let’s be honest: wishing something into truth does not make it true.

What makes things true is collective struggle, shared purpose, and concrete acts of solidarity. A load of social work, grounded activism, and careful trust-building make something true. This is the hard path, but it’s also the only one worth walking, and when we do it together with joy it’s the happy path.

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big.

The #geekproblem, again, is too often a part of this mess. Writing code is seen as a kind of truth declaration. “Look, it runs! So it must be real!” But a thing that compiles is not the same as a thing that lives. Tech without community is a corpse. For anything to matter, you need people. And to keep people, you need some rough-and-ready PR. You need actual engagement. You need trust, time, and probably a bit of music and food too. We can’t engineer our way out of this crisis. We have to organise our way out.

The #Lifecult vs. the #Deathcult. What we’re up against isn’t just bad ideas, it’s a worship of stability, spectacle, and control, the illusion of movement through aesthetic alone, no real challenge to the dominant system. It feels warm. It promises safety. But it leaves no room for difference, contradiction, or rebellion, this is inside both “cult”.

It requires less mental effort to condemn than to think

This is why we don’t need worship, we need practical action. Change and challenge are not side effects of our projects – they are the sharp point. We don’t do this work to be liked, we do it because there is no other way to make things true. And if we do this together, it becomes fun and meaningful – we create social “truth”.

Working with the #Eurocrats (and other impossible people). Let’s talk about the institutions. The #EU. Local governments. #NGOs. Big tech “allies.” They are hopelessly incompetent when it comes to grassroots tech and progressive social change. But here’s the thing, they will not go away on their own. If we don’t push, the right-wing will step in and push harder. That’s mess is already happening.

Revolution is but thought carried into action.

So we take the harder path, we show up, try to guide. We keep the door open even when it slams in our face. And yes, it’s exhausting. We’ve tried to work with #mainstreaming people. Many are unbelievably vile, and worst of all, they have no idea they’re behaving badly. They don’t see their role in the decay. They don’t see the crisis, because the spectacle of control makes everything look fine.

But we see it, and we are not powerless, refusing the mess is about rebuilding the commons. Yes, the current #mainstreaming is a mess. A deep, systemic, soul-grinding mess. But we should not put up with it. That’s what #OMN is for. That’s what projects like #indymediaback, #OGB (Open Governance Body), and the broader #openweb movement are trying to hold space for.

We don’t need more hype. We need slow, messy, grounded work:

Listen more than we preach.
Read each other’s code, politics, and history before rewriting.
Talk about our failures honestly.
Grow media and networks that are native to community, not layered on top like #dotcons digital colonialism.
Build up our own cultures of care and collaboration in the #openweb to replace the dying ones.

This is fun, not a strategy of purity or perfection, it’s a strategy of survival, and even joy.
Ideas? Responses? This is not a closed story, it’s a beginning. If you’re reading this and feeling the weight of it, good. That’s where we start from. But let’s not stop there. Come build, talk, and argue. Come plant seeds, come help make the mess into compost.

All the quotes are from Emma Goldman

Telegram messaging app is dieing

Telegram partnering with Elon’s #AI to distribute #Grok inside chats is a clear line crossed. This matters because private data ≠ training fodder, bringing Grok (or any #LLM) into messaging apps opens the door to pervasive data harvesting and normalization of surveillance.

This is an example of platform drift: Telegram was always sketchy (proprietary, central control, opaque funding), but this is active betrayal of its user base, especially those in repressive regions who relied on it.

Any #LLM like Grok in chats = always-on observer: Even if “optional,” it becomes a trojan horse for ambient monitoring and a normalization vector for AI-injected communication.

“Would be better if we had not spent 20 years building our lives and societies around them first.”

That’s the #openweb lesson in a sentence, that the #dotcons will kill themselves. This is what we mean by “use and abuse” of these platforms which have been driven by centralization, adtech, and data extraction, that they inevitably destroy the trust that made them popular. It’s entropy baked into their #DNA. As Doctorow calls this #enshitification, the tragedy is how much time, emotion, and culture we invested in them – only to have to scramble for alternatives once they inevitably betray us.

What to do now, first step, remove data from your account then delete telegram app, not just for principle, but for your own safety. Move to alternatives – #Signal for encrypted, centralized messaging (trusted but closed server). There are other more #geekproblem options in the #FOSS world but like #XMPP, #RetroShare, or good old email+GPG can work too, but they can be isolating, so stick to #signal if you’re at all #mainstreaming.

Then the second step, build parallel #4opens paths by supporting and develop alt infrastructure like the #Fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.), #OMN (Open Media Network – decentralized media), XMPP and #p2p-first protocols, #DAT/#Hypercore, #IPFS, or #Nostr etc.

Yeah, things will get worse before they get better, what we’re seeing now is the terminal phase of the #dotcons era. These companies are devouring themselves and will eventually collapse under the weight of their contradictions. The question is, will we have built anything to replace them?

If not, authoritarian tech (like Elon’s empire) fills the void. That’s why we rebuild the “native” #openweb, even if it’s slow, messy, and underground. That’s why projects like #OMN and #Fediverse matter. If you’re reading this, you’re early to the rebuild, welcome, let’s do better this time.