Let’s do a brief breakdown of the core structural problems of centralized platforms and how they warp social interaction. This ties directly into the #geekproblem, #4opens, and the broader issues of #dotcons and digital feudalism. Key issues:
Centralization breeds #feudalism. One big virtual server means a few people have all the power while the rest are serfs.
“Ease of use” is often a lie. It just means the real costs are hidden, either pushed onto users (moderation, unpaid labour) or externalized (data exploitation, environmental costs).
Advertising poisons everything. It’s a moral hazard because platforms optimize for ad revenue, not people’s or community well-being, leading to manipulation and surveillance.
Moderation cannot be outsourced. Centralized platforms fail at moderation because they have to apply feudal control instead of organic, community-led governance.
As it’s used now, the algorithm is not your friend. It reinforces biases, kills discovery, and turns users into dopamine addicts, making them less able to engage meaningfully.
Buying influence kills real communities. When orgs and brands dominate a space, the authentic social fabric collapses.
The #openweb Alternative? The #4opens and #OMN offer a radically different path, where trust replaces control, decentralized, transparent networks let communities govern themselves. Organic discovery beats algorithms, instead of being trapped in echo chambers, people explore through human curation and paths.
The Fediverse is a step, but it’s still struggling with #geekproblem governance issues. The real challenge is breaking out of the social #postmodernist loop and building solid, trust-based, grassroots media and social spaces to shape the change challenge we need.
The #dotcons#mainstreaming internet is designed to pacify and extract, we need to build for resistance and renewal #KISS path is native #openweb
The #geekproblem locks us into hardcoded #feudalism, power structures baked into the code itself, with server admins as kings, users as serfs. To break this, we need to build trust-based paths first and let security emerge from that, rather than bolting it on after the fact. What actually needs to be secured?
The account → If the instance isn’t secure, the account isn’t either.
The activity feed → The flows need to be secured to prevent manipulation.
The credit (data attribution) → Maybe hashing media objects?
But rather than obsessing over client-server security, we accept that trust must be social, not just cryptographic. #4opens keeps security honest, openness exposes flaws so they can be fixed.
The #encryptionists problem, is that they act like encryption is the solution to everything, but in reality, most people’s security is already broken at the device level, old phones, proprietary blobs, built by #dotcons. If you encrypt your messages, but the recipient’s device is compromised, what’s the point?
Open vs Closed
Closed breeds monsters—plots happen in the dark, and truth is impossible to judge.
Open exposes monsters—they might still exist, but they can be tripped up and countered.
The #Fediverse, #OMN, and #openweb need messy, trust-based networks, not fantasies of absolute control. Security isn’t about paranoia, it’s about transparency. The takeaway, we can’t solve security in a world where most people’s devices and networks are already compromised. Instead of a head-in-the-sand approach, we embrace the mess, trust the process, and build open systems that expose threats instead of pretending to eliminate them #KISS
Yes, it’s a feedback loop, geeks build the infrastructure of our digital world, but their worldview is trapped inside that same infrastructure. The #geekproblem is the inability to step outside their own frame of reference, even when the failures of their approach are pointed out hundreds of times over a decade.
They think in technical solutions to social problems, and because those solutions look logical to them, they assume the problem is fixed, even when it clearly isn’t. Worse, they don’t understand why people reject their fixes, so they blame the users, not their own blind spots.
It pushes crossover left/right tech governance that lacks any grounding in real-world politics or social movements.
It gets stuck in endless debates where nothing ever changes, because geeks can’t see what’s outside their own mental models.
It defaults to #postmodernism, where everything is relative, nothing is real, and any attempt to define truth is dismissed as controlling “them”.
It refuses to accept accountability because the tools they build don’t support it.
Example of the #geekproblem? We have already pointed to #indymedia, where geek-led decisions undermined the very social movements the tech was supposed to support. And we see it today in Fediverse governance, where geeks cling to process without understanding power.
The #4opens exposes these problems, but geeks still can’t see them. Why? Because openness forces social accountability, and geek culture resists that. The way forward? We need diverse voices in digital spaces, not just geek monocultures. The Fediverse, #OMN, and other #openweb projects need balance, geeks build the tools, but they shouldn’t be the ones defining the social governance of those tools.
So yeah, go round in circles with geeks all you want, but until they acknowledge there’s a problem, nothing changes. Instead of fighting them, we should be building outside their bubble, bringing in people who have some understanding of social processes, and making the #geekproblem a public discussion.
Because if they won’t see the problem, we’ll just have to work around them somehow, ideas please?
We do need strong metaphors, gardens, compost, pollination, is all about creating ecosystems of hope, rather than rigid, industrialized movements that always collapse under their own weight. Instead of chasing the big factory model of change, we need 100s of small, interconnected projects, cross-pollinating, sharing what works and what doesn’t.
The straitjacket of fear is real, and the left has been caught in it too, chasing purity, reacting rather than acting, and often forgetting to build. Memory holes swallow past successes, leaving us to reinvent the wheel over and over.
We need librarians, historians, and grassroots media makers, not just to archive, but to crystallize past wins into living, usable knowledge. This is how we compost failure into growth, instead of repeating mistakes.
Right-wing ideologies are based on fear.
Left-wing ideologies hope.
This is why grassroots media matters. The #OMN, #indymediaback, and radical digital commons aren’t just about publishing, they’re about seeding, nurturing, and spreading a counter-narrative of hope and action.
Let’s get the bees buzzing, and not just in isolated hives, but across a network of thriving gardens.
For the ones who can’t follow metaphors – let’s try lots of small left projects and document what dose and does not work.
Much of academia post-1990s is just a shadow of the #deathcult, stripped of radicalism and repackaged into careerist, bureaucratic loops. It became another self-referential path, detached from real world struggles. The privatization of knowledge through paywalled journals, corporate funding, and NGO capture made sure of this.
The same thing happened with #FOSS and #opensource, once about radical openness, it was watered down when organizing shifted to closed chat systems and corporate-friendly platforms. We lost the #openprocess that made early public archives powerful.
Then you have, Modern Art, once revolutionary, was quickly absorbed into the cultural arm of the #deathcult, turning radical expression into a commodity for the #nastyfew. It’s the same cycle over and over:
A movement starts as a real challenge to power.
It gains momentum.
Power co-opts it, waters it down, and sells it back to us.
People will keep doing stupid things, that’s inevitable. The job is to call it out, push better paths, and make sure they don’t repeat the same mistakes. It’s not glamorous, and it won’t get you applause, but that’s how real social change works.
The cat meowing, the #fashionistas, whether intentionally or not, keep blocking the left’s paths by turning everything into aesthetics and performance rather than actual power-building. They chase whatever is trending, constantly rebrand, and ultimately reinforce the #mainstreaming forces they claim to resist.
Meanwhile, the right organizes, funds, and builds real infrastructure, they don’t waste time on purity politics and endless internal fights. That’s why they keep winning.
So what do we do?
Stop trend-hopping, we need long-term strategies, not just momentary viral moments.
Build real alternatives, tech, media, organizing spaces that serve movements, not just “woke” branding.
Own our narratives, not get trapped in the spectacle of liberal discourse and right-wing outrage cycles.
Get our hands dirty, shovel through the #techshit, compost the failures, and grow something real.
This is about taking control back, not only reacting to the crises the nasty few push us to manufacture. Radical media, the #openweb, grassroots organizing, these are the things that cut through the noise and shift power back to where it belongs.
The #4opens act as a foundation to hold back the tide of the post-truth world, they enforce transparency, accountability, and community control. Without them, everything drifts into manipulation, closed power structures, and co-option by #dotcons.
It’s a chicken-and-egg issue because we need social trust and active participation to maintain the #4opens, but those same values are constantly eroded by the #mainstreaming forces of the #deathcult.
The #OMN is crucial because it builds digital commons as a form of social technology. It’s not just about the tech, it’s about the relationships, trust networks, and shared values that make it work. Once we have this space, what we do with it is up to us, but it has to be grounded in real, radical alternatives, not just another tech silo.
That’s where the rebooted #indymedia project comes in. It’s built on the #PGA hallmarks, which means it’s explicitly anti-capitalist, decentralized, and activist-driven. It can’t function within the corporate media sphere, so it has to exist in a #TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone)—a liberated, self-organized space outside of state and market control.
Wikipedia gives a decent artsy take on #TAZ, but in practice, it’s about creating spaces where radical alternatives can actually live and grow. #PGA is the backbone, an old grassroot global framework for direct action and real-world resistance.
The key is building trust-based networks that aren’t easily co-opted. If we don’t do this, the cycle repeats: good projects get absorbed, neutralized, or just fade into irrelevance.
The #NGO crew can be poison, not because they’re bad people, but because of how social structures and agendas shape behaviour. For the social health of the #openweb, we need to be mindful of what we take in. Just like in nature, some things are toxic in large doses. “Nice” doesn’t always mean “good.” There’s no contradiction here.
But remember, shit makes good compost! Instead of just being cynical, let’s grow something better from this mess. A healthy #openweb world is still possible.
The Real Problem, is that too many people have been stuck in the #dotcons feedback loop for too long, lazy consumption feeding corporate control, which in turn dulls critical thinking, making people even more dependent. The illusion of #mainstreaming “ethical” alternatives all reinforce this cycle.
This post isn’t aimed at anyone in particular, but if you feel called out… well, maybe think about why.
Q: Why does this matter?
Because right now, #fashernistas (trend-chasers) and their projects are flooding into the #openweb space. Some of these projects are good, but many are just recreating the #geekproblem, building things that look different on the surface but are more #techshit repeating the same mistakes.
We use the #4opens as a litmus test for these projects:
Open Data – Who controls it?
Open Source – Can it be independently verified and improved?
Open Process – Who gets to decide?
Open Standards – Can it be freely networked and flows built upon?
If we don’t actively promote and support real alternatives, people will just step to more of the next “ethically marketed” #dotcons. If we don’t do #PR, they will, and they have far bigger budgets.
Q: What’s the deal with #hashtags, they empower people to break out of controlled algorithms.
Click a hashtag → See real conversations outside your curated bubble.
Follow a hashtag → Keep up with a movement, not just what a platform wants you to see.
Use hashtags → Help build DIY, horizontal networks that weaken centralized control.
Simple truth: Hashtags can be used to give you more power, and take power away from the algorithmic walls of the #geekproblem and #dotcons. They help connect ideas, people, and actions outside #mainstreaming corporate control.
Not using them? That’s fine, but why actively reject something that makes change easier? Social transformation isn’t painless, but it’s doable. A simple first step is to just start using shared social hashtags, and when you get pushback, stick with it.
Nobody said social change was easy.
The #mainstreaming progressive are finally moving to what I have been saying in the hashtag story. They are talking about the #blocking of left paths by our #fashionisters, we do need to work at shovelling this mess to grow the seeds we need for change and challenge.
I’ve been part of the #Fediverse since its earliest days, helping to build it from the ground up. The #OMN ran five instances for the first four years, supporting communities as they explored decentralized social spaces. I’ve organized events, facilitated discussions, and continuously worked to nurture the Fediverse’s growth as a living example of what the #openweb can be. You can explore more about this journey here.
My involvement in grassroots media and open technology stretches back to the birth of the web itself. I was part of the early internet experiments that challenged #mainstreaming narratives and built alternative channels for expression and connection. Projects like Undercurrents, the UK’s radical video collective, pushed past and back against corporate media control, documenting grassroots struggles and amplifying unheard voices for change and challenge.
From there, we launched #Ruffcuts, distributing activist films on copyleft free to distribute CD-R’s long before YouTube or streaming platforms existed. Soon after, #Indymedia emerged as a global decentralized federated media network, proving that open publishing and collective moderation could empower movements worldwide. This work eventually evolved into #visionOntv, an early attempt to build a peer-to-peer video distribution network, harnessing the power of collective storytelling to counter the corporate narratives.
After campaigning agonist climate change for 20 years I bought a lifeboat (an apt metaphor) to sail through Europe with #Boatingeurope, I connected with diverse communities, sharing media tools and spreading the message of #DIY media. These projects were all part of the same thread, a continuous push to create #DIY spaces where people can connect, collaborate, and tell their own stories without #mainstreaming gatekeepers.
The history of the Fediverse carries valuable lessons from these past experiments: the tension between decentralization and fragmentation, the struggle to balance grassroots governance against the creeping influence of #mainstreaming commercialization, and the ongoing need to keep human connection and community at the centre of technology.
By learning from the past, we cultivate a more resilient, cooperative, and truly #openweb path, one that resists the extractive logic of the #dotcons and embraces collective action and care. The path ahead isn’t easy, but the roots we’ve already planted run deep. Let’s keep growing, composting the mess, and building the future we need. 🌱
In a world where digital activism is all surveilled, we need to understand better the balance between open and closed security. If you’re doing anything politically sensitive or “#spiky,” the safest option is to organize offline. Government analysts, corporate spies, and bad actors easily map connections inside the #dotcons and gather intel through the #openweb.
The challenge is that, while secure communication tools exist, relying on them requires an almost impossible level of tech literacy and trust. Maybe 0.001% of people can confidently lock down their systems, but the remaining 99.99% can’t, or won’t. And even for the most tech-savvy, there’s always the risk of compromised firmware, backdoors, or people error.
Historically, the danger isn’t just theoretical. Police spies have infiltrated activist circles for decades, as detailed in resources like Police Spies Out of Lives. Activists who relied on #closedsecurity were often devastated when trusted comrades turned out to be state agents, the real-world equivalent of someone copying and pasting your encrypted chat to their handlers. Worse still, for every state spy, there are likely ten corporate or private agency spies, each with their own motivations.
From a social point of view the #geekproblem path to perfect privacy is an illusion. So where does that leave us? The truth is, there’s no hard tech fix to human social networking. Tools can help, but social solutions are much more vital. If you are on the #fluffy path or only on the edge of #spiky, working openly and embracing the #4opens model can mitigate harm by removing secrecy as a vulnerability. If there are few secrets to steal, spies lose much of their power.
At the same time, digital skills are essential. People, especially current generations, are organizing online, and the line between online and offline is non-existent to them. Telling them to “just organize offline” will likely get you a dismissive “OK boomer” in response. But just with the police spy history, there will be a cost to people who dismiss this history, we do need to understand better both the possibilities and the risks.
The goal, then, isn’t to choose between open or closed security, but to build a hybrid path. Use the #openweb to find each other and share public information. Use secure tools for truly private discussions, but with the awareness that no tool is socially foolproof. And most importantly, build strong social bonds and resilient offline communities, because, in the end, trust is the only real valuable security layer we have.
Let’s embrace the mess, recognize the dangers, and navigate this landscape with care.
#mainstreaming#liberalism has lost its way. For the past 20 years, many self-described liberals have spewed out bilge water disguised as “common sense.” But when pressure mounts, they reveal themselves as dogmatic and intolerant, almost as if they aren’t truly liberal at all.
How did we end up in this mess? The #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the rise of #dotcons shaped the dominant version of “common sense,” warping it away from collective care and into something narrow and self-destructive. It’s worth reflecting on this if we want to reclaim a liberal liberalism, rooted in genuine openness and social good.
In practice, we can compost this mess by focusing on #nothingnew paths. Two longstanding cultural projects already embody this, working in non-federated ways for over a century. Now, we can add technical federation to the mix, building on 5+ years of #ActivityPub rollout.
This gives us two powerful, #openweb-native paths forward:
Grassroots #DIY culture — Local, self-organized, and messy, but thriving outside corporate control.
Technical federation — Interconnected systems designed to distribute power and ownership.
Both of these paths lead somewhere meaningful:
#indymediaback (part of the #OMN project) to rebuild radical grassroots media.
#OGB (based on #EU outreach on #socialhub) to create open, federated governance.
These aren’t pointless projects, they’re a chance to break free from the suffocating grip of the #deathcult and build something resilient, human, and actually free.
Shall we pick up the shovels and start composting? 🌱
In a #4opens project like the #Fediverse, this article’s framing makes no sense as a native view of the #openweb. The data exists in a commons — and while you could apply a #CC licence and try to enforce it. In the end, #4opens is just that, #opendata. But as the article highlights, there are real issues in understanding how open systems intersect with state and corporate surveillance.
Fediverse & Mass Surveillance — A research article breaks down how the Fediverse presents both challenges and opportunities for state surveillance.
🔗 Read the research
"Non-centralized social media appears to be undergoing a 'Killer Hype Cycle,' where users dissatisfied with centralized platforms flock to alternatives like Mastodon. But with this influx comes an increase in publicly available data for researchers, corporations, and state agents alike."
Corporations mine federated media for profit.
State agencies catalog user data for tracking and control.
This is a reminder that you are doing anything #spiky political it’s much better to organise off the internet as government analysts easily search and map connections between people across the #openweb as much as they already do more directly through the #dotcons
This isn’t a #ecryptionist call to lock down the #Fediverse, that would be beyond stupid, but a reminder that openness requires awareness and collective defence. A truly #openweb using the #4opens needs to face these threats head-on, with social solutions and federated resilience at the core of its path and design.
On a positive note, in some ways the progressive world of technology has transformed our lives, making things easier, enhancing our, health and well-being. Yet, within this change and challenge: the sustainable management of digital data. In the era of rapid technological advancement, addressing lifelong data redundancy, storage, and preservation is needed, especially as decentralized systems reshape the way we share and store information.
Recent discussions have highlighted the complexities of data management, particularly within peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and federated platforms. While self-hosting data offers autonomy, it remains a niche path accessible to only a small fraction of people. To truly democratize data storage and distribution, we need alternative solutions like “blackbox” #P2P on community-run federated servers that balance people and community control with collective responsibility.
The challenge of redundancy, is a critical hurdle, we are yet to solve. People need simple ways to maintain multiple copies of their data, while selectively choose what subsets of others’ data to store, and integrate these choices seamlessly. A hybrid approach combining #P2P and client-server models would offer the best of both worlds, allowing people to control their data while ensuring resilience and availability across the wider “commons” network.
Managing the data lifecycle, these solutions require clear mechanisms for data retention, filtering, and lifecycle management. Defining how data is preserved, what subsets are stored, and when data can expire is crucial for balancing sustainability with functionality. Lossy processes can be acceptable, even desirable, as long as we establish thoughtful guidelines to maintain system integrity.
The growing volume of high-definition media intensifies the storage burden, making efficient data management even more pressing. One practical solution could be transferring files at lower resolutions within P2P networks, with archiving high-resolution versions locally. Similarly, client-server setups could store original data on servers while buffering lighter versions on clients, reducing server load without sacrificing accessibility.
The role of institutions and collective responsibility to preserve valuable content. Projects like the Internet Archive offer centralized backups, but decentralized systems need a reimagining of traditional backup strategies. With a social solution grounded in collective responsibility, where communities and institutions share the task of safeguarding data, this would mitigate the risk of loss and create a more resilient network.
For a decentralised sustainable digital future, the intersection of technological and social, makes it clear that we must rethink how we manage data. By seeding hybrid architectures, growing community-driven autonomy, and promoting collective care, we navigate the complexities of digital preservation.
With the current state of much of our tech, we need to do better in the #activertypub, #Fediverse, and #openweb reboot. Projects like #makeinghistory from the #OMN outline how we can pave the way. It’s time to pick up the shovels, there’s a lot of composting to do. And perhaps it’s time to revive the term #openweb, because that’s exactly what the #Fediverse is: a reboot of the internet’s original promise.
Let’s keep it #KISS and focused, the future depends on it.
A. It sounds like you’ve got a detailed plan — good luck in your work!
Q. As I outline in my posts, our work isn’t going anywhere because the grassroots have been hollowed out. My focus now is to build bridges to the #mainstreaming in an effort to make compost to refill the grassroots soil. What I argue for, in a practical sense, is that we’ve already spent 20 years working in alternative paths, and this approach likely still works.
We have a rare opportunity with the current bridging of the #openweb back to mainstream through #ActivityPub. This moment is crucial, and it would be a disaster to squander it, especially in an era defined by #climatechaos and the global hard shift to the right. Please keep this in mind when organizing events for the #SocialWebFoundation (#SWF). The bridges we build now shape the future.
Q. If our worlds keep getting smaller, we risk losing the very alternatives that could save us. Do you think some of them understood what I just said?
A. Absolutely they do. They just don’t give a rat’s patootie. They ran the numbers. A human extinction event is unlikely. Forecasts indicate that the remaining resources will support them and their progeny at their existing levels of luxury in perpetuity. The rest of us can just go take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut.
I don’t have the focus or energy any more to push these projects into being so the next step is to abstract them into the ideas and flows then put them out there for the next generation, I am happy to mentor, have an expedition boat to convert #boatingeurope thinking about writing a book to sum up the content of this site, and the 40 years of history, process, and development that has shaped it.
One of the biggest tensions in the fight to build an alternative, sustainable future is the relationship between mainstream resources and grassroots projects. The reality is STARK: grassroots movements need resources to survive and thrive, yet the very act of receiving funding, if they can access it at all, drags them into the suffocating grip of #mainstreaming culture, where the radical edges that make them valuable are dulled and destroyed. So, how can conscious mainstream actors support grassroots movements without killing the radical energy that creates the value in the first place.
The answer lies in sharing resources in non-mainstreaming ways, a difficult leap for many, but an essential one. The only people who can truly be useful in sustaining #openweb paths are those willing to break free from the entrenched habits of top-down control, endless bureaucracy, and the need to polish everything into marketable, bite-sized pieces.
What does non-mainstreaming support look like?
Unconditional Funding: Grassroots projects need funding without strings attached. Too often, funding comes with requirements that reshape the project itself, turning radical experimentation into pointless palatable, measurable outputs. True support means trusting grassroots communities to know what they need and allowing them to allocate resources nimbly. #TRUST#opencollective
Trust-Based Relationships: A “native” healthier approach is to build long-term relationships with grassroots groups, listening to their needs and responding in an organic, flexible way. #TRUST#OMN
Decentralized Decision-Making: Bottom-up governance models. Funding should flow to collectives, not charismatic individuals or figureheads building careers #KISS#OGB
Infrastructure, Not Ownership: A path that might work, rather than buying influence, mainstream actors can provide infrastructure, hosting, bandwidth, servers, physical spaces, without attempting to control the projects using them. Think of it as building bridges, not fences. #Fediverse instances
Amplify, Don’t Absorb: Mainstream platforms and institutions need to amplify grassroots voices without assimilating them. This means using their reach to highlight native radical projects but stepping back to let those projects speak for themselves. No need to repackage the message, people can handle raw, messy reality. #indymediaback
Why this bridge building matters, the current mainstream is crumbling under the weight of its contradictions. As #climatechaos accelerates, as #neoliberalism fails to deliver anything but more suffering, people will look for alternatives. But if those alternatives are already swallowed and sanitized by the current mainstream, hope dims. Grassroots movements are the seedbeds of real change, they hold the living knowledge of how to build differently.
Keeping the bridge in place isn’t an act of charity; it’s a #KISS survival strategy. The future will grow from the compost of the old world, and those willing to step off the conveyor belt of #mainstreaming and into the rich, chaotic soil of grassroots experimentation will be the ones who help plant the seeds.
