For the last 20 years, we’ve worshipped the #deathcult of #neoliberalism, blind to the collapse unfolding around us. Every institution that promised to guide and protect us has failed. The ruling classes, in every hue of politics, have abandoned us. Our media and entertainment elites distract and distort. #NGOs, once trusted, have betrayed the very causes they claimed to champion. Academia and business alike have clutched at power, dithering while the world burns.
We face #climatechaos naked and disjointed — at war with ourselves and lost in consumerism. Yet, in this wreckage, there is a choice: step away from the #mainstreaming, let go of false promises, and dive into the #undercurrents. Compost the mess. Build anew.
The #makinghistory project is a seed for this rebuilding. It offers a way to reclaim our narratives, digitizing archives like the Campbell Family collection to preserve grassroots histories of resistance and hope. I use this as an example here. This is more than data collection — it’s a living, breathing ecosystem of collective memory.
Setting up the Application: Communities install the #makinghistory app on local machines or hosted instances, creating a decentralized network of storytellers.
Uploading Digital Files: Activists and archivists upload historical files, adding metadata and context.
Building a Community: By inviting family, affinity groups, and wider activist circles, the archive grows into a collaborative space, nurturing participation.
Interacting with Data: Users engage directly with the history, categorizing, tagging, and enriching it with new insights.
Storytelling Features: The enriched data flows into narratives, connecting seemingly isolated events into cohesive stories of struggle, solidarity, and change.
Public Sharing: These stories aren’t locked away — they’re shared openly, contributing to a global commons of knowledge.
Impact: In reclaiming history, people find inspiration and strength. Grassroots stories challenge the top-down narratives, showing that change comes not from a nasty few (elites) but from those who dare to dream and act.
The ‘Resistance Exhibition’ was started to extend this vision, turning physical spaces into participatory hubs where visitors become archivists and storytellers themselves.
This is not passive consumption. It’s collective action. It’s the compost from which new movements grow. It’s #makeinghistory — not as an abstract concept, but as a living, evolving reality. Let’s step away from the wreckage and start building something real.
Privatization is one of those words that has been thrown around a lot, usually accompanied by promises of efficiency, lower costs, and better services. But the reality is far grimmer, and people generally don’t understand why. What Is Privatization? It is simply when publicly owned industries or services are transferred to private companies. It usually happens under the pretence of cutting costs or driving innovation, but the underlying reason is always profit by extracting value from public goods by selling assets cheaply. Public infrastructure, built and maintained with taxpayer money, is sold off to private interests for far less than it’s worth. Then this is ongoing when privatized, companies monopolizing sectors, jack up prices, and pay workers as little as possible, all to maximize returns for shareholders.
We need to see that the ideology behind privatization is beyond profit. #Neoliberals say that public services are flawed because people might use them without paying directly (the “free rider” problem) or be forced to pay for services they don’t use (the “forced rider” problem). Privatization supposedly fixes this by turning everything into a transaction. But this ignores the complex nature of economies. Even if you never use public transport, you benefit from reduced traffic congestion. The same logic applies to healthcare, education, and other services that generate economy-wide benefits.
Privatization claims to improve efficiency through competition, but it’s less efficient. Yes, public services can be inefficient due to bureaucracy and mismanagement, but privatization builds inefficiency into the path because profit is a drain, shareholders demand returns, which means money is siphoned away rather than reinvested. Plus, splitting industries to create the illusion of competition reduces economies of scale and creates redundancies.
An example of this is Britain’s rail disaster, rail privatization is a textbook example of this failure. In the ’90s, British Rail was split into dozens of companies: some ran trains, others owned the tracks, and still more handled maintenance. This fragmented was designed to prevent trade unions from gaining too much power, but it created a logistical nightmare. The private company Railtrack, which inherited the infrastructure, cut corners to boost profits, leading to catastrophic accidents like the Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield crashes. In the end, Railtrack collapsed, and the government had to step in and take control through Network Rail. But train operations and rolling stock leasing remain privatized, meaning public subsidies prop up private profits while fares remain some of the highest in Europe.
After 40 years of this mess making, the endgame, is that it doesn’t just fail on its promises, it makes things worse. It centralizes capital, encourages monopolies, and turns essential services into cash cows for the nasty few. Companies prioritize wealthy communities, rely on government bailouts, and pour money into executive salaries while neglecting public needs.
The truth is that public services, no matter how flawed, exist to serve people. Privatized services exist to serve shareholders. And until we break free from the grip of our worship of the #deathcult of neoliberal ideology, we’ll keep paying more for worse services, while the nasty rich fuck wits keep getting richer. It’s past time to rethink privatization, not as a necessary evil but as a failed experiment in greed. Let’s start talking about this, please.
With each passing day, we’re witnessing the acceleration of the global far-right resurgence, a modern incarnation of #fascism, adapted to our time. This neofascism wears the mask of democracy, claiming legitimacy through hollow elections, while quietly dismantling political freedoms. It thrives on the wreckage of #neoliberalism and the crises it has unleashed, feeding on fear, resentment, and social breakdown.
The growing number of neofascist regimes may lack the overt paramilitary displays of the past, but their violence is no less real. It simmers beneath the surface, ready to erupt when needed. And unlike the old fascism’s obsession with state control, this new version embraces the worst of #neoliberalism, surrendering public welfare to private greed, while doubling down on nationalism, racism, and hostility to any form of collective liberation.
With escalating #climatechaos and systemic collapse, this is not just a political threat but an existential one. These forces are accelerating our collective destruction, blocking meaningful environmental action, and fuelling division at precisely the moment we need solidarity.
So where is the path out of this mess? By composting the crisis and reclaiming the #openweb. The answer isn’t found in bunkers or prepper fantasies, survival in the face of collapse requires cooperation, not isolation. And it certainly won’t come from the #dotcons or the #NGO complex, which are too entangled with the systems they claim to resist.
We need to build a grassroots counterforce, grounded in the principles of the #4opens, to cultivate digital and physical spaces of resistance. The #openweb offers us a framework for doing this, a messy, imperfect garden where we can plant alternatives and nurture them with care. But it only grows if people use it. We need joined-up thinking, not the fractured, piecemeal approach of the #fashernista crowd. We need people to commit to using and building tools outside the corporate silos, even when it’s inconvenient. Because every click, every post, every conversation shapes the landscape we inhabit.
Don’t ask, just do it, please don’t wait for permission or perfect conditions. Pick up a shovel and start composting the current mess. Rebuild local networks, create spaces for collective storytelling, and amplify voices that push back against #neofascist narratives. Use tools like the #OMN to link these efforts together into a larger ecosystem of resistance.
The neofascist wave may be rising, but history shows us that these forces can be stopped, not by isolated individuals, but by collective movements. The seeds of the future are already in our hands. The question is whether we have the courage to plant them.
The #dotcons have turned web searches into a cesspit of algorithm-driven propaganda. What was a tool for discovery and connection is now a tightly controlled funnel, pushing people towards preordained narratives and commercialized echo chambers. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Google, the go-to gatekeeper of information, where what you find is shaped not by the richness of human knowledge, but by whatever serves the interests of those with power and capital.
This isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a crisis for public knowledge and collective memory. When dissenting views, grassroots history, and alternative voices are buried under layers of #SEO spam, ad-driven results, and opaque censorship, we lose the ability to shape any understanding of the world. So what’s the plan to step outside this mess?
Build and use the #openweb to actively shift our habits to support platforms and projects built on the #4opens principles — open source, open data, open process, and open standards. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one path to reclaiming these collective narratives, by creating decentralized, community-driven archives where stories are curated by people, not algorithms.
With the #dotcons shift to #AI in everything, resisting this algorithmic trap is key, that the more people understand how these systems blind us, the less power they have. Building native #4opens tech is a first step, then teaching media literacy, running workshops on the dangers of algorithmic control, and spreading knowledge about decentralized alternatives can gradually chip away at the illusion of choice presented by the #closedweb paths.
#Rewild the digital commons, the web was meant to be a messy, vibrant ecosystem, not a manicured, walled garden. We need to plant seeds in neglected corners of the internet, build hyperlocal networks, and use peer-to-peer tech to share knowledge directly. The more we create and share outside the #dotcons, the harder it becomes for them to control the narrative.
Create and nurture alternative search tools, we used to run an instance of #Searx which is #metasearch tool which works outside the algorithm as much as possible. But we had to shut this down due to lack of support, this lack of support is a real continuing issue we urgently need to overcome, we need users, contributors, and champions to increase usage of these tools and promote their development to build the infrastructure for an alternative discovery layer that can bypass the #dotcons.
Just do it, don’t wait for permission or a perfect alternative to emerge. Start archiving, writing, and sharing now. Build your own small-scale #4opens projects and connect them to others. The #OMN isn’t some grand centralized solution, it’s a framework for thousands of messy, local, independent nodes, each adding to a larger network of people-powered knowledge. This is a shovel-ready project. We don’t need to beg the #dotcons to change, and we certainly don’t need to play by their rules. Let’s get our hands dirty, compost the rotting remains of the algorithmic web, and start cultivating a truly human-centred internet again.
In the swirling chaos of the digital landscape, it’s easy to feel lost. The #Fediverse, should be a beacon of hope for a decentralized, community-driven internet, but as always is facing an onslaught of push back and pressures from every direction. The #dotcons loom large, #NGO agendas quietly co-opt grassroots energy, and the #encryptionists lash out with SPAM money to drown out critique. It’s messy, but mess is where compost comes from, and compost is where new life grows.
Pick up a shovel, start composting, it’s time to stop waiting for permission. Don’t ask, just do it, start composting the wreckage of the current paths. Plant seeds of your own lived life and nurture the social gardens with your care. Build spaces where people connect, share, and create outside the control of the #dotcons corporate platforms and the clumsy grasp of the old traditional top down institutions.
So, where is the positive in this mess? I’d look to the healthy fragments of the #openweb path that still exists. Projects that embody the #4opens offer the seeds of something better. But these projects won’t survive on hope alone. They need care, attention, and participation. Use them or lose them. If we don’t actively engage, they’ll wither, and the digital paths will continue its slide into centralized control and the new #mainstreaming creeping authoritarianism.
The #ecryptionists, clinging to their fantasies of rugged individualism, would have you believe that the solution lies in isolation, in bunkers, in hoards of digital currency, in cutting ties with the social fabric. But survival, whether against digital authoritarianism or the unfolding #climatecatastrophe, will come from cooperation and collective resilience, not isolation. Even in the face of disaster, thriving requires community.
Beyond the ingroup, we can’t rebuild the #openweb if we only talk to ourselves. The term “Fediverse” is a great example of this, it makes sense to those inside the space but means little to those outside it. #Openweb is a better, more intuitive term. It’s positive, clear, and easy to contrast against the negative: the #closedweb of the #dotcons. Mastodon is a #4opens project of the openweb; Facebook is a closedweb project. Simple, direct, and powerful framing that cuts through the noise.
With the hard shift to the right, we’re standing on a knife’s edge. #Climatechange, economic instability, and accelerating automation are pushing us toward a future of disruption. But disruption doesn’t have to mean collapse, it can mean transformation. The work we do now to build and maintain #openweb projects lays the foundation for the communities that weather the coming storms.
The Fediverse, for all its narrow flaws, shows that alternatives are possible. The challenge now is to grow beyond this first step. To dig deeper, plant wider, and build an ecosystem that can sustain itself long term. We need to constantly think outside the ingroup, to bridge divides, and to invite people in. It’s hard work. But so is everything worth doing. And if we get it right, we just might cultivate a future where common humanity, not capital, shapes the digital world.
Rediscovering the Open Web: Why We Need Joined-Up Thinking with #4opens
The internet wasn’t always like this. Before the rise of #dotcons, we had a flourishing landscape of community-driven sites and platforms, built on openness, collaboration, and trust. Yet today, much of what we do online is controlled by #dotcons, closed, profit-driven systems designed to capture and commodify every interaction. It doesn’t have to be this way — but to break free, we need to think and act differently.
The #4opens offer a practical path back to the #openweb. They guide us towards building space that is open in source, data, process, and standards. This isn’t just tech jargon; it’s about creating online spaces that work for people rather than exploiting them.
The trap of piecemeal solutions, too often, attempts to rebuild the #openweb get stuck in the #fashernista trap: chasing trendy but fragmented fixes that fail to address the root problems. A federated app here, a new protocol there, while each piece might be valuable, without joined-up thinking, they scatter energy and slow momentum. We need to step back, see the bigger picture, and work together to build a truly interconnected path.
We don’t need permission to start. The tools, ideas, and history are already here. Current platforms like Mastodon and initiatives like the #OMN (Open Media Network) show what’s possible. But it takes more than just using the tools, it takes sharing the vision. If you’re reading this, consider it a nudge: start conversations, share resources, and bring people onto the path. Dig into the posts at hamishcampbell.com for more background, and share the posts widely. Every shared link, every discussion, and every new node in the network helps.
Basic activism in the digital age is about reclaiming the internet to refuse to accept the current mess as inevitable and to actively choose better paths. By advocating for the #4opens, supporting decentralized platforms, and consciously stepping away from the #dotcons, we become a small part of the solution. The future web can be cooperative, empowering, and deeply human, but only if we build it that way. So grab a metaphorical shovel, help compost the tech junk, and start planting the seeds of something better.
Over the last week you can see it in real time, Trump meeting world leaders, the handshakes, the staged press moments, the ass sniffing, barely concealed jockeying for position. But beneath the surface, we need to see that something bigger is cracking apart. The last 40 years of #neoliberalism, cold, calculating #realpolitik path is collapsing. The alliances of the nasty few we took as fixed are shifting, not because of thoughtful, progressive change but because of the hard shove of a global rightward lurch.
The world shaped by the #deathcult of neoliberalism is disintegrating, but don’t mistake this for liberation. The old deathcult is simply being replaced by a new mask, this is history repeating, not a new start. What was once masked in the language of freedom, democracy, and human rights is shedding its disguise, revealing a rawer, more brutal face to the same pessimistic human paths.
One of the most dangerous elements of this shift is the ideological bait-and-switch. The old liberal order for the last 40 years had co-opted the language of the right, with neo imperialism of the new world order. Now, the emerging #fascist path is playing the same game in reverse, adopting the language of the left to push far-right outcomes. Talking about peace, authoritarians wrapping themselves in ‘anti-colonial’ rhetoric, hard-right demagogues claiming to fight for the ‘working class’ while gutting social safety nets, and far-right online communities using ‘free speech’ and “safety” to silence dissent. This ideological camouflage is not a glitch; it’s a feature. It confuses opposition, fractures movements, and traps the #mainstreaming in endless cycles of reaction and outrage. It’s a survival mechanism for the #deathcult, a shapeshifting strategy, to ensure it evolves unchallenged.
For those of us working on projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN) that push for a genuine #openweb, this is the landscape we need to navigate. The answer isn’t to retreat or try to ‘purify’ movements from infiltration, that feeds the cycle. Instead, we need to cultivate resilience and clarity. Recognize the patterns, understand the language games, and keep building decentralized, trust-based networks that can weather the storm, both in the media and practically with onrushing #climatechaos.
The shift in both cases is happening whether we like it or not. The question is, do we use the compost of the old world to feed the roots of something new, or do we let the poison linger in the soil? It’s time to get out the shovels.
Let’s face it — activism and counter-culture are packed with “insane” people. And thank the gods for that. It’s what makes movements exciting, dynamic, and, most importantly, effective. But like compost, too much of the wrong stuff makes the pile stink. Balance is everything. So, let’s look at this: what causes a movement to stagnate, fail, or bloom into a riotous field of wildflowers?
The Rot (or: Why Your Movement Smells Bad)
NGO’ists: These bureaucratic barnacles latch onto everything, molding it into whatever’s fundable and fashionably bland. They hoard resources, fill minds with paperwork, and slowly suffocate radical energy. They’re like termites with business cards.
Encryptionists: Paranoid fuckists who turn usability into a sin and sell fantasies of invulnerability. They preach security like a cult, but the reality is half-baked systems no one can use and a movement too scared to talk to itself.
Traditional Media Panderers: Useful in small doses, but quickly start reshaping the movement to fit mainstream narratives. Before you know it, your radical campaign against fossil fuels is being sold as a quirky “green lifestyle choice.”
Horizontal Dotcom’ists: Desperate to ride the movement into start-up glory. If they build with the #4opens, great. If not, they’re a distraction at best and a flaming wreck at worst when people actually try to use their half-built platforms.
Insecure and Nasty Lifestylists: Attracted to successful grassroots projects like flies to rot. They thrive on internal drama and are fed by the media panderers. Enough of them and your movement eats itself alive.
Hidden Careerists: Often competent and useful — until they start networking with the NGO’ists and media grifters to build personal brands instead of movements.
Paranoid Fuckwits: The paranoid glue of grassroots campaigns. In small doses, they help keep things tight. But let them accumulate in leadership, and the infighting becomes an art form.
Dogmatic Liberals: Lovely people, but the human equivalent of wet blankets. They block anything genuinely disruptive because it makes them uncomfortable, ensuring nothing truly radical gets off the ground.
The Bloom (or: Why the Garden Still Grows)
Hands-off NGO’s: The quiet good ones. They funnel resources without sucking the life out of movements. A rare species, but precious.
User-Focused KISS Peer2Peer’ists: The heroes fighting uphill to (re)boot the #openweb with simple, human-centered tools. They understand that people need tech they can actually use, not just theorize about.
Traditional Media Outreaches: The rare media people who amplify grassroots work without distorting it to fit mainstream appetites. They build bridges, not cages.
Horizontal Dotcoms (Done Right): Working on open, federated sustainability instead of chasing VC cash. They build tools for the movement, not to sell the movement.
Healthy Lifestylists: Learning to balance intense campaigning with actual human joy. Letting go of burnout culture and building connected, grounded lives.
Open Careerists: Using the movement to bootstrap themselves — but carrying open values like a Trojan horse into the belly of institutions. Someone has to infiltrate the beast.
Secure Organising Crews: Understanding that collective security is a shared responsibility. Keeping things calm, focused, and handling offline realities without spiraling into paranoia.
Liberal Liberals: The ones who bring just enough common sense to stop things from exploding, but not so much that they kill the spark.
The Chaotic Harmony
Activism is inherently messy, and that’s its strength. The magic happens in the balancing act. A movement with too many paranoid fuckwits or NGO’ists collapses under its own weight. But a movement with a little bit of everything — the wild-eyed dreamers, the practical builders, the media-savvy storytellers, and the steady hands keeping it all together — can actually change the world.
Because, at the end of the day, movements grow like compost. You need some rot. You need some shit. But you also need people willing to shovel through it, plant seeds, and tend the garden. And maybe, just maybe, you need to be a little bit mad to stick around long enough to see it bloom.
In activism and grassroots media, you inevitably face an ongoing, unpleasant truth: when pushing against #mainstreaming and the inertia of the #deathcult, bad faith comes at you like a storm. Your best, and often only, defence is to hold onto your good faith. But good faith alone isn’t enough, we need shared tools to compost the rot, turn the muck of broken movements and failed tech utopias into fertile soil where new paths can grow.
That’s where the Open Media Network comes in. The #OMN isn’t just another pointless tech project, it’s a living, breathing attempt to bridge the gap between technology and society, providing a trust-path, decentralized platform built with the #4opens. It doesn’t try to solve problems from above but empowers people to build, moderate, and nurture their own grassroots networks, to shape and reshape flows of information. It’s about composting the old, failed models, not replicating them.
The divide we need to bridge is pragmatism vs. social understanding. Too often, conversations around tech and social change get stuck in a loop. On one side, pragmatists push for immediate, concrete solutions, get the app working, ship the code, solve the surface problem. On the other, social thinkers argue that tech is inherently social, that ignoring the human context just perpetuates the mess.
Take #ActivityPub, a powerful protocol, but without a grounding in human trust networks, it risks recreating the problems of centralized social media. Or the rise of decentralized platforms flooded with reactionary and far-right content, a direct result of ignoring the need for human, community-driven democratic moderation and governance paths.
The #OMN is outside this loop. It acknowledges the pragmatism of building functional tools while insisting that those tools be shaped by, and in service of, grassroots communities. The five core functions shape simple tools, complex outcomes. The OMN is built on five core functions, deliberately minimal to avoid tech bloat and keep the focus on human networks:
Publish: Share objects (text, images, links) into a stream.
Subscribe: Follow streams from people, groups, hashtags, etc.
Moderate: Push/pull content, express preferences, and comment.
Rollback: Remove untrusted historical content from your flow.
Edit: Adjust data and metadata on content you have access to.
These simple actions, combined with human moderation, allow complex ecosystems to grow organically. You can shape your information flow, curate trustworthy content, and build collective knowledge, all while being able to remove what doesn’t serve the communities.
The crew needed is good faith in action, a crew committed to holding good faith, even in the face of bad faith pushback. People willing to pick up shovels, get dirty, and start composting. This isn’t about idealism; it’s about grounded action, learning from past projects like #indymedia and #Fediverse experiments, using what worked, and discarding what didn’t.
What is need:
Builders: Coders who understand that tech is just a tool, not a solution.
Moderators: People who know the value of careful curation and trust networks.
Storytellers: Those who can document, explain, and inspire others to walk the paths.
Bridge-builders: Activists who can connect different communities and facilitate cooperation.
This work isn’t glamorous. It won’t get you VC funding or a keynote at a tech conference. But it will lay the groundwork for something real, a decentralized, people-powered network where communities control their own narratives and relationships.
The future is a wild garden, not a walled garden. This path is a chance to build the #DIY, grassroots semantic web we’ve been dreaming of. Not another monoculture tech project, but a resilient forest of interconnected communities, each shaping its space while being part of a larger whole. It’s not about “scaling” in the #mainstreaming capitalist sense, but about growing deep roots and wild branches.
By supporting this we invest in people who reclaim digital experiences, where information is nurtured and composted into new possibilities, and where bad faith can be met not just with good faith, but with networks strong enough to withstand and outgrow the rot.
Join the paths. Let’s build this together. It’s time to start shovelling.
It’s like watching the same old weeds sprout up in the cracks, clinging to the illusion of control. But yeah, every bit of rot turns to soil eventually — as long as we keep digging, the roots of something real can break through. Time to turn the pile!
Most people I interact with are buried deep in the rot they’ve helped create, the path out is hard, but not impossible. The composting metaphor holds — rot can become soil, but only if it’s turned, exposed to air, and given time to break down. The stench lingers, though, and the deeper the decay, the harder it is to face.
Forgiveness can be a catalyst, but only if it’s rooted in understanding, not avoidance. Too often, movements try to “move on” without actually dealing with the decay, which just locks the dysfunction into place. Real forgiveness isn’t about forgetting or excusing — it’s about acknowledging the harm, holding people accountable to growth, and making space for them to rebuild trust through action.
With the #OMN the key is to create intentional processes for airing out the rot. Spaces where people can lay out what went wrong, where the worst of the mess can be named and examined without immediately collapsing into blame. This is a form of collective composting — deliberately breaking things down so they don’t keep contaminating the roots of future growth.
For paths that avoid recreating the mess, we might need, truth-telling circles: Spaces for people to name harms, acknowledge mistakes, and speak honestly about the dynamics that led to failure. Restorative action, not just words: Forgiveness should be paired with tangible action — people need ways to rebuild trust through collective work. Memory gardens: Digital or physical archives that document past failures and successes, so the same mistakes don’t get repeated. Rhythmic cycles of reflection: Movements need to regularly pause, look back, and compost what’s no longer serving the collective purpose.
Sun, light, and fertile soil come from this messy work of turning over the past and allowing time and care to transform it. The #openweb is a part of this, especially if we build systems and paths that prioritize collective memory and iterative growth over constant reinvention and erasure.
What do you think? Could structured cycles of composting and reflection help our movements breathe again? Or is the rot too deep, and we need to burn things down to clear space for new life?
Too often, I find myself in conversations that revolve around the intersection of technology and social issues, with one view emphasizing the importance of practical solutions to real-world problems, while the other highlights the underlying social dynamics that shape the technological landscapes these “solutions” are supposed to be addressing.
The Pragmatists, prioritizes immediate, tangible solutions. For example, when discussing the digital divide, they might advocate for creating cheaper, more accessible devices or building community Wi-Fi networks. They’ll focus on the logistics: what technology stack is best, what protocols to use, and how quickly the network can be deployed.
They see critiques of the capitalist underpinnings of tech as a distraction. For instance, they might argue that worrying about Big Tech’s dominance is less important than simply getting people online, even if it means relying on Google or Facebook infrastructure in the short term. The goal is to solve the immediate problem, even if the long-term implications reinforce existing systems of control.
The Social Critics, contends that technology cannot be meaningfully separated from the social systems it emerges from. They argue that simply handing out cheap devices or relying on corporate infrastructure entrenches dependency and undermines community sovereignty. For example, they might point to the rise of open-source projects that eventually get swallowed by venture capital, losing their grassroots values in the process (#dotcons).
They argue that unless we address the systemic issues, like how profit-driven models shape the design of platforms, any immediate “solution” is likely to reinforce the problem. Take social media moderation: a pragmatist might suggest better algorithms, while a social critic would argue that the underlying problem is the ad-driven engagement path itself.
The #GeekProblem is a barrier, the divide between these groups often solidifies into this mess making. Pragmatists, especially in tech spaces, dismiss social critique as impractical or irrelevant, reinforcing an insular culture that privileges technical expertise over lived experience. This dismissal is a form of #blocking, preventing collective growth and deeper problem-solving.
Breaking the cycle, to move past this, we need to blend the perspectives. For example, community mesh networks can be built with both pragmatic goals (connecting people) and social considerations (using #4opens practices to maintain local control). The technology itself can be a tool for social empowerment, but only if the builders acknowledge and address the social dimensions.
Projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN) bridge this gap, grounding tech development in community needs while keeping processes transparent and participatory. This balance helps compost the mess, turning the tension between pragmatism and social critique into fertile ground for true change. We don’t have to choose between immediate action and long-term systemic change, the key is holding both. Let’s stop getting stuck in the mess and start growing something real.
Let’s look at what makes sense: it’s about collective dynamics, not individual blame. The focus is on mapping the social landscape, understanding the patterns of dysfunction, and then figuring out how to break through those blockages. The idea of switching between #spiky and #fluffy approaches as needed is powerful, rejecting rigid ideology in favour of practical, responsive action.
Making the #blocking visible is essential. So much of the stagnation in #openweb and activist spaces comes from hidden blockages, unspoken fears, entrenched power dynamics, and the quiet creep of #mainstreaming logic. By pushing these things into the light, we can compost them, rather than letting them fester underground.
The balance, using history as a guide, leaning on what’s worked before, but staying flexible enough to shift tactics, should feel like the only sustainable way forward. If we only do #fluffy, we get captured by the #NGO mindset. If we only do #spiky, we burn out or implode. But if we consciously weave both together, we might actually build the resilience we need to grow new paths through the wreckage.
It’s almost like we need a cultural practice of “tending the compost”, regularly sifting through the mess, pulling out useful bits, and turning it over so new life can emerge. And maybe that practice itself could be a form of governance for grassroots networks, an ongoing, collective process of sense-making and recalibration.
What do you think? Can this idea of “compost tending” as a cyclical, community-driven process be something we intentionally build into the fabric of #openweb projects?
The new #mainstreaming right-wing crew has become adept at hijacking the language of liberation and twisting it for control. They steal words like “freedom,” “community,” and “resilience,” stripping them of their radical roots and turning them into tools for reactionary agendas. Meanwhile, the left, caught in cycles of internal purity politics and endless critique, fractures itself, leaving a vacuum the right eagerly fills.
It is a mess, but messes can be composted. The key is to strip away the parasitic layers, the influencers, the NGOs, the careerists who feed off this while subverting collective growth. These actors “thrive” on propping up a fragile sense of self, this messy path feeds division and spectacle, not solidarity. And as the mental health crisis worsens under #climatechaos and late-stage capitalism, people grasp for identity and belonging in the most toxic places.
We need radical care as well as radical action. The parasite class is fuelled by a deep void, a lack of purpose, a craving for significance. If we don’t build healthier collectives, people will keep falling into the black holes of conspiracy and #mainstreaming cultish thinking. The #openweb can be a sanctuary, a place to grow shared meaning, but only if we consciously design it to prioritize human connection over endless noise.
I wonder: how do we create spaces where broken people can heal, rather than becoming weapons of the right? Can we build digital commons that feel like home, where people can work through their pain without being consumed by it, collective care and unwinding the knots of individual trauma is a #fluff part of activism. What do you think? Is it possible to compost the mess and nurture the people tangled within it? Or do we need a more fire-and-brimstone approach to burn away the rot, I start to only half joke.
The invisible core of the struggle. The way online spaces, especially in decentralized networks like the #Fediverse, handle conflict is tangled up in this tension between safety and open debate. The #fluffy vs. #spiky debate, between care-driven, consensus-seeking approaches and more confrontational, radical tactics, has always been part of activist culture. Trying to erase that debate in the name of safety is simply sterilizing the very dynamism that fuels real change.
If we strip out the “debate” part, we’re left with a hollow shell, a fragile, performative “safe space” that can’t actually withstand the pressures of the real world. But if we lean too far into spiky confrontation without care, we lose people who could grow into stronger comrades. It’s a balancing act, and yes, the co-option of “safety” by both NGO logic and reactionary forces has made this even more toxic.
The “parasite class” is obviously seen being taken out of context is a perfect example of this mess, people react to language without digging into the underlying idea. The real question is whether we can metabolize within the chaos, compost the mess and care for the people lost in it, instead of just cutting them off. The #openweb needs friction to evolve, but it also needs trust to survive. There is a strong need to resist the impulse to sanitize the #openweb into submission. The #ActivityPub space, growing from the #fluffy side, has an embedded bias toward conflict avoidance, but that can be dangerous, because it leaves the system vulnerable to slow, creeping co-option. Safety shouldn’t mean silencing necessary struggles.
The consensus should be this: safety is built through collective care, not the absence of conflict. The #openweb should be a space where people can disagree loudly without fear of exile, where the friction of ideas sharpens the collective purpose, and where care is an active, ongoing process, not a bureaucratic rule set.
#Fashionistas chase status and spectacle over substance, co-opting real radical movements for aesthetics. They turn collective struggles into performative gestures, feeding the #mainstreaming cycle. This poisons the roots of change, turning compost into toxic waste, energy that could grow new things instead feeds the system they claim to resist.
Why is the #geekproblem such a strong #blocking force? This is rooted in control, a deterministic mindset that values code over culture. It manifests as gatekeeping, with geeks wielding tech knowledge as a shield rather than a tool for collective liberation. This blocks change because it alienates people who don’t fit the mould, and it stalls projects in endless technical debates instead of action.
How can #mainstreaming be pushed into something positive? Mainstreaming doesn’t have to be a death sentence if it’s grows from radical roots. The problem is the loss of direction when movements get diluted to fit nasty #mainstream tastes. A useful path is that mainstream visibility can amplify voices, but this needs active balancing by autonomous, decentralized structures. Maybe think of it like a Trojan horse, to smuggle radical ideas into the #mainstream under the cover of familiarity.
How do we thread this through the needle of #stupidindividualism that fractures collective power, by reducing everything to personal choice and consumption. The cultural byproduct of the #deathcult, a refusal to see beyond the self, traps people in cycles of isolation and powerlessness. The path out of this mess is through rekindling collectivism trust. People fall into individualism because they don’t trust collective paths. Start small, with local networks and federated communities. Show that collective paths are possible, and that it feels better than isolation. Remind people they are part of something bigger, not as a sacrifice of self, but as an expansion of it.
What path can we take on the #openweb? A path that embraces the compost. Let’s not seek purity or perfection, but instead nurture the rotting, chaotic soil of what we already have. The #OMN and #4opens lay the groundwork with radical transparency, federated trust networks. Build with messy activism, celebrate imperfection. Let failure teach and shape the next iteration. Radical inclusion, breaks down tech barriers and actively bring people in. Trust over control, decentralize, federate, and resist the temptation to police.
The #openweb can be the seedbed of a new culture, if we accept that growth is messy, slow, and unpredictable. The path isn’t linear, it’s a tangle of roots, branching and intertwining. But that’s the beauty of it. What do you think? Do we need more practical tools, or is it more about mindset shifts?
