A small view of steps we need

I normally talk and work on big issues, let’s look for a moment at smaller steps. To make a big change, we need to start with practical paths (everyday grassroots & do-able). A personal short step is to detox one feed, not your life. Pick one algorithmic platform and shrink usage: unfollow, mute, or temporarily uninstall the app. Replace 15–30 minutes of scrolling with one intentional action by using replacement tools (not perfect, but better).

• Try ActivityPub/Fediverse clients (Mastodon, PixelFed, PeerTube), RSS readers, or small community forums. Start with reading, not posting – build habit.

• Curate your attention, subscribe to a few human-edited newsletters, local news, or blogs (#RSS). Teach friends how to set up an RSS reader or follow a small subject blog.

• Practice media hygiene, verify before sharing. Pause, check one source, ask “who benefits if this spreads?” Be boringly sceptical.

• Vote with time and money, support small creators directly (tips, buys, memberships) and donate to independent projects like community news sites, local papers, or tech co-ops.

• Community & organising moves, host local “show-and-tell” sessions. 1 hour: show alternatives, how to use RSS/Mastodon/PeerTube, and why they matter. Bring tea.

• Build small trust circles, start a group that publishes a single short community bulletin or podcast – keep it non-algorithmic and share by link.

• Make open culture visible, put simple “we’re #openweb-friendly” stickers/links in local cafés, libraries, community boards. Make it easy to find one another.

• Teach the next person, each person teaches one other person how to escape one algorithmic trap – then they teach another. Tiny chain.

• Tech & product-level tactics (simple, not spectacular). Run a tiny, friendly instance. Local gatherings or collectives host a low-cost Mastodon/PeerTube instance with clear moderation and a friendly onboarding doc. Promote link-first publishing.

• Encourage people to put content on a simple blog (or even a shared public wiki document) and share links rather than rely on feeds.

• Use interoperable standards. Favours tech that uses open protocols, so people can migrate and mix services without being trapped.

• Policy, campaigns & pressure. Demand transparency. Pressure institutions (schools, libraries, local councils) to publish simple rules about algorithmic tools and offer alternatives.

• Support regulatory fights that protect attention. Back campaigns that limit manipulative design (dark patterns, endless feeds) and push for algorithmic audits. Amplify worker voices. Support platform workers and former moderators who expose harms – they are crucial allies.

What positive outcomes do we want? (clear, concrete). Less algorithmic amplification of fear. Fewer engineered outrage cascades in our local networks. Resilient, localised media ecology. Lots of small, trusted outlets (indymedia, community radio, blogs) that aren’t driven by ad-engagement. Restored civic trust & shared facts. Communities that can act together because they share a baseline of reality.

Shared infrastructure under community control. Instances, archives, and services run by people and collectives, not opaque ad corporations. More empathy in circulation. Content that rewards kindness and care rather than outrage.

This matters because if we don’t act, the future is already written by the #dotcons. Their algorithms don’t just reflect society, they shape it – twisting attention into fear, isolating people in bubbles of paranoia, and feeding the hard right until cruelty looks normal. This isn’t an accident; it’s the business model.

Every minute we spend scrolling through their poisoned feeds, we’re training ourselves to be more divided, more hopeless, more powerless. That’s their plan: keep us distracted, keep us arguing, keep us consuming, while the world burns and the billionaires laugh at us.

We don’t have the luxury of despair. Walking away from the #openweb and our own traditions of collective action left a vacuum, and the hard right rushed in. They stole our language of freedom, community, and even rebellion, and twisted it into authoritarian poison. That’s on us. We fucked up.

Now we fix it. The alternative is watching the world sink into algorithmic fascism, where cruelty is the currency of attention. The positive outcome is right in front of us: small, messy, grassroots networks where kindness and solidarity are amplified instead of hate. The #OMN, the #4opens, the trust-based paths we already know work.

We compost the #techshit because what grows out of it is hope, and without hope we’re already lost.