The #NGO mess is hard blocking

People working inside non-profits often emphasize “mission” and “impact,” but we need to talk honestly about structure. Most non-profits are designed to be accountable to funders, boards, and regulatory frameworks – not to the communities they claim to serve. This isn’t necessarily about bad individuals; it’s about institutional design.

The form itself grew out of tax structures, philanthropy models, and governance systems that allow wealth and power to shape social agendas while appearing neutral and benevolent. Funding cycles define priorities. Reporting requirements shape language. Boards – often drawn from elitist networks – hold real decision-making power.

The result is predictable: social change is professionalized and risk-managed, radical ideas are softened into grant-friendly language. Projects learn to align upward toward funders rather than outward toward communities. Activism becomes administration.

If your mission statement contains radical goals, you are relying on the tolerance of a governance structure that can constrains and redirect those goals at any time. That tension is structural, not personal.

None of this means people inside NGOs don’t care, many do. But real change emerges outside institutional comfort zones: grassroots networks, commons-based organising, open processes, and messy collective experimentation.

Understanding this isn’t cynicism, it’s #KISS compost. Once we see the limits, we can build structures accountable to participants rather than patrons, and create space where transformation is actually possible.

So yes, we need to talk (again) about how parts of the #NGO world push HARD BLOCKING against native #openweb paths. This isn’t new; we’ve been having the same conversation for years. Yet here we are, watching the same behaviours repeat, only now amplified by #mainstreaming, increased funding, and institutional interference.

The antidote isn’t complicated: listen, think, and stop blocking. If the #NGO crowd could grasp this, we might build bridges instead of walls. What do we currently get? More #BLOCKING, more CONTROL, and a persistent refusal to engage with people already working on digital commons paths.

Take the #OMN approach: messy, leaky, human. If it’s not messy, it’s probably not real social change. “Messy” doesn’t mean technical chaos, it means social openness. The #KISS truth:

Social change is messy.
The best ideas leak, evolve, and adapt.
Social “security” framed as CONTROL to often becomes gatekeeping.

Lock everything down and you block creativity, trust, and progress. We need leaky systems where communication and data flow in ways that respond to community needs, especially when we don’t yet know what the community fully is.

The #geekproblem has spent years prioritizing CONTROL and SECURITY because social reality is treated as an engineering problem. But trust isn’t a technical feature, it’s a human process. CONTROL can create functioning systems; it rarely creates healthy societies.

Fear-based governance consistently fails. History shows that systems built primarily on CONTROL and FEAR eventually collapse under their own weight. If we repeat that pattern in the #Fediverse, we risk recreating the structures we claim to replace.

So who organizes the #Fediverse? For years there’s been tension between #DIY grassroots approaches and forms of #DoOcracy where those doing the work accumulate decision power. Meanwhile, the more native path – parallel communities cooperating (as explored in #OGB) – struggles to emerge because these models block each other. It’s a mess that needs composting.

The #twittermigration and ongoing #mainstreaming influx won’t magically fix this. Doing nothing is itself a form of blocking; refusing to change simply entrenches existing power structures.

Let’s keep this #KISS:

No dressing up old CONTROL structures in #fashernista clothing.
No gatekeeping disguised as governance.
No pretending fear and CONTROL will build a better society.

So what might unblock the path?

Stop treating the #Fediverse like a product, it’s a social movement.
Shift from CONTROL-based systems to TRUST-based ones: radical transparency and the #4opens.
Learn from past #mainstreaming mistakes instead of repeating them.
Support builders who understand social trust, not just software, but community.

The question is simple: are we building from CONTROL or from TRUST? One leads to stagnation; the other opens the possibility of a genuine alternative future.

Find out more about this

Challenging “liberal trolls” and #encryptionist blindness

Addressing liberal trolls and the #openweb tensions, the influx of users following the #X (#TwitterMigration) has highlighted tensions on the #openweb, particularly the behaviour of “liberal trolls.” Who advocates for performative inclusivity and impose hierarchical thinking, creating friction in existing working decentralized paths. Their inflowing presence derails conversations, inhibit grassroots growth, and introduce #mainstreaming patterns of control. So what can we do with this mess making:

Reframing the debate: 90% Open, 10% Closed offers a sorted balanced vision. It contrasts sharply with the #encryptionists’ damaging push for 90% closed, that prioritizes secrecy over collaboration. To mediate this mess, we need to promote openness as resilience to grow diversity. This “native” path has power, it resists co-optation by authoritarian forces, a core concern of #encryptionists. We need to highlight success stories, examples where openness has thrived, such as Mastodon’s ability to scale post-Twitter Migration with little compromise. Then build bridges to encourage conversations between open and closed proponents. Identify shared values, while challenging “common sense” that to often blocks any collaboration.

Combatting liberal troll dynamics that wield performative outrage and self-righteousness as tools for control, sidelining the “friction” of radical workin paths. To mitigate this deadening, we need community moderation with clear values, with moderation policies rooted in grassroots principles – collaboration, inclusion, and respect for dissent. A first step is to make these values explicit and widely understood. Empower the margins of radical communities to counterbalance dominant narratives. Ignore the noise, trolls thrive on attention, so strategic non-engagement, combined with clear policies, reduce their disruptive influence.

Addressing the #geekproblem blocking, a resistance to radical ideas and community-focused solutions, creating unspoken barriers to progress in tech spaces. We need strategies to overcome, by making tech accessible to non-geeks with user-friendly with intuitive experiences to diminish the gatekeeping power of overly technical #UX. Distributed leadership encourages non-hierarchical, collective decision-making to prevent a few individuals from exerting outsized influence over grassroots tech projects. Education and outreach is needed to equip newcomers with the tools and knowledge to navigate #openweb spaces, reducing reliance on the blocking geek-centric paths.

Resisting destructive cult paths, #NGO-driven power grabs and “cult-like” behaviour. This is done by seeding decentralized power structures to encourage healthy conflict and normalize constructive disagreements as part of openweb culture. To reduce the potential for groupthink and “common sense” authoritarian tendencies. We need to recognize and resist co-optation by staying vigilant against efforts to co-opt grassroots movements for institutional and corporate interests.

We need proactive strategies to building radical resilience, to mediate the blocking energy and empower radical tech. Creating paths for experimentation, this might include enclaves where radical ideas can be tested without suppression and co-optation. Foster allyship by building alliances between radical movements and pragmatic reformers to amplify shared goals. Challenge “Common Sense” imposition of “practical” solutions that dilute grassroots paths and values. Embrace creative, “mad and bad” ideas to disrupt this status quo blocking.

In conclusion, the path of the #openweb depends on striking a balance between openness and security, grassroots experimentation and mainstream scalability, decentralization and coordination. The paths we need is to active mediate the mess brought into our spaces by liberal trolls, encryptionist ideologies, and the #geekproblem. If we do this we can create a more resilient digital ecosystem that we need in the era of #climatechaos and social brake down.

Currently, we have too much prat energy on these paths, so a bit of composting is needed.

A story about outreach

The #openweb has become an integral part of our daily lives, with almost every aspect of our existence now touched by it. However, over the years, concerns have grown about the centralized nature of the internet and the power politics this creates. The rise of social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google has brought this issue to the fore. These platforms, #dotcons, are centralized and controlled by a handful of powerful corporations, which poses a significant threat to user privacy and freedom of expression.

In response to this, a disparate group of committed libertarian “cats” from the Fediverse community decided to take #directaction to promote decentralized and #openweb models of the Fediverse to the European Union (#EU). The Fediverse is a collection of decentralized social networking platforms that use the ActivityPub protocol to interconnect with each other.

The Fediverse crew participated in EU events, conferences, engaged with policy-makers. They explained the benefits of decentralized and autonomous models of the #openweb and how they can shape a more humane online world. As a result, a minority of people in the #EU became interested in these technologies and began to adopt them in a soft rollout of “official” instances.

The huge growth of Mastodon, one of the most popular social networking platforms in the Fediverse, due to the #Twittermigration attracted a diverse and vibrant community of users from across the EU and the world. This growth helped to validate the importance of decentralized internet and its potential to shape a more humane world.

From this seed, today, ActivityPub, Fediverse, and Mastodon continue to grow to becoming important players in the EU’s efforts to promote a more humane internet. The unspoken grassroots outreach and community-building efforts by the #Fediverse “cats” have empowered us, and helped to shift the EU closer to being what they say they are.

The story of the mouse and the elephant making friends is a reminder that even the most Eurocratic and ossified institutions can embrace radical grassroots movements. The Fediverse “cats” have shown that by working together, we can be a part of the change we would like to see. The #openweb is a powerful tool, and it is up to us to use it.

In conclusion, the efforts of the Fediverse community to promote decentralized and autonomous models of the internet in the EU have been successful. Our outreach and advocacy have helped to shift the EU closer to promoting a more humane internet, and the growth of platforms such as Mastodon has validated the importance of these models. This change and challenge is up to us., please don’t step back and let “them” take over shaping this path.

Story about our EU outreach

Mastodon is a free, #4opens, decentralized microblogging platform that is part of the #Fediverse.

The outreach of these technologies to the European Union started as a way to promote alternative models of the internet that were more inclusive, equitable, and empowering for users. The EU was seen as a natural fit due to its commitment to promoting human rights, privacy, and data protection online.

The outreach effort focused on raising awareness of the benefits of decentralized and #openweb models of the internet and how these technologies could be used to create a more equitable and sustainable “native” European online environment. The libertarian “cats” of the #fediverse participating in EU-sponsored events, such as hackathons and tech conferences, as well as engaging with policy-makers and stakeholders through direct outreach and advocacy campaigns.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/search?expanded=true&q=EU+workshop

NEED a hashtag link to this outreach.

As the outreach effort continued, a minority of people in the #EU became interested in these technologies and began to adopt them in a soft rollout of “official” services. The Fediverse and Mastodon rapidly grew in popularity due to the #twittermigration, attracting a diverse and vibrant community of users from across the EU. This growth helped to validate the importance of decentralized and autonomous European model of the internet.

Today, ActivityPub, Fediverse, and Mastodon continue to be important players in the EU’s efforts to promote a more decentralized and autonomous internet. Through continued grassroots outreach and community-building efforts, these technologies can empower users and citizens to create a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable online environment for all.

UPDATE: the cats who made this happen scattered and the fallow up did not happen.