An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
Looking back on the activist groups I’ve been part of over the past few decades, I find myself drawn to the messy business of memory. Not nostalgia – something more grounded. A desire to trace the arc of what happened, why it happened, and what it meant, both personally and politically. But here’s the thing, … Continue reading Trying to Remember: A Personal Reflection on Activist Histories and Memory Holes
The #fashionistas are coming https://yewtu.be/embed/u_Lxkt50xOg? It’s time to become more real before this inflow swamps our “native” reboot, if we let them they will consume it and shit it out as more mess. To mediate this shit storm, it’s time to act, please, feel free to repost these web posts, thanks. To understand where the … Continue reading Rise and Fall of Grassroots #OpenWeb
I would start to say, with care, that #Mastodon is now heading in the wrong direction. Not because it’s inherently bad, or malicious, or “captured” in some conspiratorial sense. But because it’s become too dominant, tipping the scales far away from the diversity and messiness that a healthy #Fediverse needs. This isn’t about blame, it’s … Continue reading The problem of too big, Mastodon
We recently had an extended and thoughtful discussion on signal between collaborators working on #IndymediaBack and #MakingHistory, a key issue emerged: how should we structure “actors” (ActivityPub identities) in a network where the focus is collective action, not individual performance? This question isn’t just technical. It’s political, and central to the success or failure of … Continue reading Actors, Power, and Collective Publishing: Rethinking Fediverse Architecture for Grassroots Media
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 … Continue reading Can bureaucracies join the #Fediverse? Yes – with WordPress + ActivityPub
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 … Continue reading The Fediverse is opening, but there is a cost
In the sprouting landscape of #openweb infrastructure, it’s not just code that gets ignored, it’s the possibility of change itself. Projects like #makeinghistory, part of the wider Open Media Network (#OMN), aren’t asking for much. They’re not flashy. They’re not political in the #mainstreaming sense. They just quietly build the back-end tools that allow people … Continue reading The wall of funding silence
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 … Continue reading The story: power, truth, and walking the fun path
We live inside and meany of us under a system for 200 years, global capitalism, where value is determined not by care, connection, or any collective well-being, but by market logic. If something is not valued in that narrow logic, it is treated as waste. This means that if you don’t actively value the alternatives … Continue reading The Mess – If You Don’t Value Things, You Destroy Them
#Musk is a useful example of the #nastyfew: wealthy technocrats wrapping themselves in the cloak of progress while undermining the foundations of any, let alone a just future. These stories and narratives about innovation are a high-tech rebrand of green capitalism, a slick façade masking the same old decaying systems of extraction, inequality, and authoritarianism. … Continue reading Stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives
We need to keep highlighting an old but still urgent tension: the intersection of technology and social change. In this too often unspoken divide, one side leans heavily on practical, technical problem-solving. They want working code, functioning systems, and tangible results, not abstract debates. To them, critiques about capitalism shaping code sound like distractions from … Continue reading The #OMN isn’t just about media, it’s about building the social soil
We need to talk about a circler familiar mess: when movements that are open, non-hierarchical, and anti-authoritarian end up recreating the problems they set out to escape. This is the “dogma of anti-dogma”, and you see it everywhere, the example I am using here is in groups like the Rainbow Gatherings. The Rainbow Gatherings have … Continue reading The #OMN View – The Dogma of Anti-Dogma: Rainbow Gatherings