Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
The internet didn’t just accidentally become shit. Yes, the #dotcons are responsible for plenty of it: surveillance, advertising, addictive algorithms, platform lock-in, spam, fake reviews and the endless extraction of human attention. But focusing on a few companies misses the bigger story, that the mess is the outcome of decades of wider #deathcult worshipping political … Continue reading The #OMN and the fight against the #dotcons
For those of us who’ve spent the last twenty years working around alternative technology, grassroots media and activism, the hardest thing to watch has been how deeply the #dotcons have become embedded in the culture. We know the problems, we’ve been talking about surveillance, extraction, algorithmic manipulation, platform lock-in and the destruction of community for … Continue reading Living through twenty years of #dotcons addiction
A plebiscite (or simple poll) reduces complex questions to binary or multiple-choice outcomes decided by raw headcount. This works reasonably well for large nation-states were aggregating millions of preferences is practically necessary. But in small community groups – like a WhatsApp boating community – it undermines democratic values rather than express them, for several reasons. … Continue reading Why WhatsApp plebiscites, and #dotcons in general are a crude and negative democratic instrument
Every few months another AI company executive suggests that their latest Large Language Model possess values, ethics, judgement, emotions, or even a form of consciousness. The latest example is claims around Claude, where discussion has drifted toward the idea that the system possess “a functional version of emotions or feelings.” This is a good moment … Continue reading AI didn’t break the web. The dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume
Three years ago I was trying to explain something simple in language liberals might actually hear. They talk about “platform capitalism.” Fine. But I’ve been calling it the #dotcons for 20 years – because that’s what it is – a con. The last 30 years of tech hasn’t just drifted into this mess. It’s been … Continue reading The #dotcons, #mainstreaming, and Build to Walk Away
Today there are a lot of dishonest people – it’s become the default. Finding someone who is actually truthful is rare. So with this in mind, let’s stop being polite about this, what we’re living inside online right now isn’t “social media.” It’s a managed enclosure – a system designed to extract value, shape behaviour, … Continue reading Growing the #openweb – Notes for Composting the #dotcons (and growing an #OMN)
One of the quiet assumptions built into almost every #dotcons platform is that the user secretly wants to become a #techbro. Not literally, of course, but culturally. You are expected to optimise yourself by building your “personal brand” to track your metrics. Engage with algorithmic growth loops by understand platforms, feeds, APIs, monetisation tools, creator … Continue reading The #dotcons assume you want to be a techbro
Recently I’ve been doing media interviews – one mainstream piece for a #boatingeurope article coming out in traditional media, and another for the Cherwell student paper in Oxford focused more on biography. Both journalists said the same thing: “It was surprisingly hard to find information about you online.” Around the same time, a boater friend … Continue reading Disappearing from Search: A personal story about visibility, #dotcons, and the shrinking #openweb
Let’s be honest, we already lost metadata privacy. The #dotcons, the surveillance state, and the data brokers see everything. This isn’t a warning about what might happen, it’s the reality we live in today’s mess. In normal peoples lives every click, every message, every connection is tracked, logged, and monetised. There is no going back … Continue reading Privacy in the age of #Dotcons
In the USA #techshit mess, #OpenAI is busy wrapping itself in the stars and stripes, pushing the fantasy of “democratic AI” while the democracy fig leaf is withering. This isn’t democracy – it’s branding. It’s the normal Silicon Valley laundering greed through the American imperialism. The #nastyfew, Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Masayoshi Son, and the … Continue reading The #dotcons drained the VC swamp and now guzzle from the mainstream corporate socialism
Capitalism, especially in its late-stage #neoliberal form, has always had significant structural problems. In recent decades, these problems have been amplified and globalized through our lived society, I look here at the path of the digital platforms, what we call at the #OMN the #dotcons. The first thing to understand is these companies are not … Continue reading Criticisms of capitalism and its digital children, the #dotcons
Ten years ago, I posted photos of a police raid on a boat in Mile End Park to a local Facebook group. What followed was a storm of critique from fellow community members, particularly around privacy, ethics, and the nature of local news. That exchange came back through the memory algorithm on #failbook, it’s interesting … Continue reading What is journalism in a dotcons community space?