How a Rainbow Gathering Comes Together

DRAFT:

Rainbow Gatherings are built without formal hierarchies, no leaders, no directors, no centralized control. Instead, they operate through decentralized, consensus-based processes, fueled by volunteerism, mutual respect, and the shared intention to live cooperatively, if only for a month.

The process begins with scouting. Experienced gatherers, often seasoned from many previous gatherings, set out with newer volunteers to find potential sites. They pore over topographic maps, consult satellite imagery, and listen to local tips. The ideal spot will be miles from the nearest road or buildings, offer clean and abundant water, spacious meadows for group use, dry deadwood for fuel, enough space for parking, and natural limitations to deter unwanted car traffic.

Once a site is chosen, a crafted “invite!” goes out, online, through mailing lists, and via handouts. This simple, slightly metaphorical, document contains everything from directions and maps to contact numbers and general guidelines. The first to arrive become Seed Camp, a small team that prepares the ground for everyone else. They locate and tap fresh springs, build composting latrines, begin the first communal kitchen, cut trails, identify the main meadow, and liaise with the burocracy, like the local forest service that turn up. Environmental impact is taken seriously, efforts like reseeding, erosion control, and wildlife stewardship are all part of the preparation.

From here, the Gathering blossoms. But it doesn’t run itself, talking circals, working groups, councils are the lifeblood of collective decision-making. Held in circles, often under the trees, anyone can speak, and decisions are reached through consensus rather than votes. A talking stick or stone helps maintain focus, and once a proposal has been shaped and discussed, someone may call for “consensus by silence.” If no one objects, the idea moves forward. If even one person feels strongly against it, the discussion resumes until mutual agreement is found. This process isn’t always fast, but it is deeply inclusive and egalitarian.

Focalizers emerge naturally. They’re not appointed or elected. They’re the ones who step up, coordinating tasks, helping new people plug in, and making sure things don’t fall through the cracks. Anyone can become a #focalizer simply by doing the work and inviting others to help. The ethic is clear: avoid burnout, share the load, and don’t hoard responsibility.

Daily coordination happens when it’s needed through camp wide councils, a practical forum where representatives from kitchens, water teams, medics, security, infrastructure, and more meet to share updates, solve problems, and allocate resources. Supplies come from the Magic Hat, the symbolic (and literal) hat passed around during shared meals to collect donations. These funds are stewarded, which means simple accounts for every transaction with full transparency. This ensures the community’s trust and keeps the focus on collective benefit.

Main kitchen is the logistical heart of the gathering, purchases bulk food and supplies with Magic Hat funds. Tea kitchens that contribute to the communal are given access to these resources. Main Supply folks ensure fairness. Donations and receipts are publicly tracked, reinforcing openness and preventing favouritism.

Roles and Responsibilities: Kitchens, Welcome Home, Shanti Sena

The main kitchens is the heartbeat of the Rainbow Gathering. Entirely volunteer-run, it provides sustenance and space for community. The kitchen is a micro-village: fires are built, pots bubble, veggies are chopped, and water is hauled, all in rhythm. Every aspect is designed to meet sanitation and environmental standards. Hand-washing stations are mandatory, food is kept off the ground and away from pests, and tools are disinfected regularly with bleach water.

Main Circle food must be vegetarian, though some periphery tea shops offer extras – like pancakes, chai, or “love soup.” Kitchens build washing systems with multiple stages: scrape, wash, rinse, disinfect. Compost pits for food scraps and greywater pits for liquid waste are maintained and used carefully to avoid polluting the forest and water courses. Fetching firewood and hauling water for a kitchen is one of the easiest ways for a newcomer to contribute and feel part of the #DIY community.

Welcome Home is the first human contact many have when arriving. It’s a place of warmth and orientation at the end of the car parking trail. Here, tired travellers are offered water, a snack, a kind word, and printed guidelines about the gathering’s values and customs. It’s a gentle bridge from the outside world into the communal space being created.

Then there’s Shanti Sena, the peacekeeping network that is everyone’s responsibility. There’s no official, hard, security team. Instead, when conflict, distress, or danger arises, anyone can call out “Shanti Sena!” and others respond, mediators and willing volunteers show up to listen, de-escalate, and support resolution. If a situation requires more assertive action, it’s still done with care, firm but nonviolent, protective rather than punitive.

Shanti Sena works best in communities where people know and care for each other. Camps often form into informal neighborhoods, where people look out for one another and communicate openly. The goal is always restoration, not exclusion. Conflict is a chance to grow, not a reason to punish.

In this decentralized fabric – kitchens, welcome crews, peacekeeping, talking circals, councils, supply lines, and consensus – a temporary village or town takes form. It is imperfect, often messy, but also deeply alive. A cooperative organism woven from shared intent and mutual aid.

And when the gathering ends, it all disappears, leave-no-trace, like it never happened. But for those who participated, something lasting remains: the memory of what people can create together, without bosses or blueprints, when they trust the process and each other.

The Fediverse Is Social Tech Built by People Who Don’t Understand Community

We dig. Turn over the old soil. Question assumptions. Get honest about what’s working and what’s not. We plant. Build in the open. Share power. Let go of fear. We grow. Not towards scaling up, but spreading out, resilient, diverse, interconnected.

The Fediverse could still be a true commons. But we need to build it as one, together. Right now? Our thinking and common sense is building fenced off little kingdoms, each with its own rules, its own etiquette, and its own moderators-turned-monarchs. We wave our “federation” flags proudly, but let’s be honest, most of these flags are stitched from the same cloth: control, hierarchy, and a quiet hostility to anything really different.

Let’s stop pretending, the community side of the Fediverse is a mess. The instance as a community, was a good idea, but it never worked, the was no code that was needed to build the links that mattered, no mod tools, nothing. And it’s not a mystery why – it was built by the #geekproblem and marketed with white #PR lies. The developers who shaped this space were (and mostly still are) people who don’t understand, or worse, actively dislike, messy human social dynamics. They wanted control, moderation as containment, not mediation, identity as code, not culture.

This isn’t to blame them personally, many were doing their best. But structurally, the Fediverse was always going to build this current mess when it grew out of narrow foundations:

Built by people who think consensus means “do what I say.”

Designed in back rooms, then announced as done.

Sold as decentralised, while consolidating power around key projects.

Promoted with “diversity” stickers, while real diversity was culturly blocked or ignored.

No surprise the result is growing to be alienating, slow-moving, and hard to trust for actual social communities. So the question now is: how do we fix this? Here is my idea where to start:

Acknowledge the rot. No more polishing turds. Let’s call things what they are.

Shift governance from control to trust.The #OGB model exists to empower native communities, not gatekeepers.

Build openly. Work in the open. Use the #4opens.Transparency is the only path back to legitimacy.

Stop begging for NGO scraps. The #OMN is about building outside their logic. If they want in, they come on our terms.

Compost the techshit, but keep the compost. Acknowledge failures. Learn from them. Don’t drag them forward for brand reasons.

The Fediverse can still be a commons – but now we need to build it as one. Right now, we’re mostly fencing off little kingdoms, waving our “federation” flags. We’ve seen where this leads. It’s time to dig, plant, and grow something different.

Let’s look at this same issue from a different view, at the individual scale, self-hosting is pushed by the #geekproblem as the golden path to “being in control of my data.” But in reality, that’s a comforting illusion – like saying, “I grow a vegetable garden to be in control of my food.”

Yes, having a garden is valuable. It connects you with the land, the seasons, the rhythm of growth. But:

You can’t grow everything you need — rice, flour, salt, coffee?

You’re one bad season away from failure — drought, pests, illness, burnout.

It’s time-consuming, and often inefficient to go it alone — especially if you’re just trying to feed one household.

The same is true for self-hosting. Sure, it can be a great learning experience. You can run your own Mastodon instance, email server, or Nextcloud. You might feel a sense of autonomy and pride, “I’m off the cloud!”.

But, you’re now your own sysadmin, responsible 24/7. Security patches? Backups? Downtime? You’re one bug or hard drive crash away from losing everything, no safety net. If you’re DDoSed or targeted, you’re alone in the storm. Most people don’t know how to balance security and useablierty of their systems, and the risk of leaks or exploits is real.

This doesn’t mean “don’t self-host.” Like gardening, it’s a good and meaningful thing. But it’s not meaningful and sufficient for control or resilience. And the more we pretend it is, the more we set people up to fail.

The solution? We need to balance collectivizing resilience. Just like with food, we need shared kitchens, food co-ops, and community gardens – not just individual allotments. For digital infrastructure, we need to balance working #OMN mobile #p2p bridging to:

Small community-run servers with shared responsibility (like tech collectives or co-ops).

Federated services that respect autonomy and provide mutual aid.

Redundant backups across trusted peers, not just one node.

Tools designed for social trust, not corporate extraction or lonely geek heroism.

Because real control over data isn’t about having a castle with a moat. It’s about living in a village where the roads are open, the wells are shared, and people have your back when things go wrong. Resilience and transparency cannot be achieved in isolation.

It’s a social problem, and we need to bring social solutions, built with care, trust, and collective #DIY responsibility. What too meany people push is “common sense” #stupidindividualism that is so obviously prat’ish behaviour, let’s step away from this mess making, please.

We Don’t Need More Liberal Techno-Utopianism

Why Most Fediverse Codebases Are Languishing

Do you ever stop and wonder, really wonder, why most of the codebases outside #Mastodon are languishing? It’s not a technical issue. It’s not “a lack of funding” (though that’s what they love to talk about). It’s not even about network effects, not really. It’s because they’re all following Mastodon’s lead, straight into the #NGO world.

This is a path paved in smiles and slow death. A warm bath of grant cycles, diversity reports, and performative panels. On this dead-end, the goal isn’t to grow, challenge, or change. The goal is to survive, to be tolerated, within existing institutional structures.

Let’s be honest: this is such an obviously pointless and self-defeating direction that it’s stunning more people aren’t calling it out. Why is it pointless? Because in the #NGO world, success isn’t the point. The hierarchy already has its chosen project. It has its darling. And surprise surprise – that’s Mastodon.

Everyone else is there to tick the diversity box. You’re the “alternatives” that prove there’s choice, even if there isn’t. You’re invited to speak, but not to decide. You’re encouraged to exist, but only if you don’t matter.

So these projects stall, not because they’re bad ideas, or bad code, or have no community.
But because they’ve internalized powerlessness, shaped by institutions that reward conformity and punish genuine independence.

Here’s the bitter truth: If you want your project to thrive, you have to stop only begging at the gates of the palace. You have to stop only trying to be included, you have to also build outside their logic. That’s what the #OGB (Open Governance Body) is about, not building consensus at the top, building trust at the roots.

That’s what the #OMN is about, a web of native projects, not another hierarchy with a different brand. We don’t need to only “be taken seriously” by NGOs. We really need to #KISS build governance that works without them. And what we don’t need is more performative panels, we need compost, shovels, and seeds. Let #Mastodon be the flagship, in the long term, it’s likely to drift into irrelevance, or rot into compromise. Let the rest of us get on with building the working path.

You don’t have to only attack problems, you can also build round them and leave them to decay, then shovel over the mess to compost, the problem we face now is that we need a shovel, a first step is to build that #OMN

Some strategies to mediate the #blocking mess in a way that stays true to the #4opens:

1. Compost the Conflict. Don’t try to avoid the mess – use it.

Acknowledge blocking as an emotional reaction to risk/fear/powerlessness.

Create safe compost heaps where disagreements can break down slowly (forums, slow chat, moderated conversations).

Let things rot before replanting — time is part of the process.

Tools:

Slow-fed moderation queues

Forkable discussion

Bridge-building protocols

2. Build Friction Where It Helps. Instead of forcing “smooth consensus,” engineer positive friction.

Let friction surface hidden assumptions early, but contain it constructively.

For example, structured disagreements (Yes/And).

Use #4opens to keep the process visible and trustworthy.

Tactic: “This disagreement stays open – until it breaks something or blooms something.”

3. Create Walkable Paths Around Blockers. If someone/some group blocks – don’t go through them, go around them.

Design with pluralism and forking paths as core strengths.

Accept divergence — allow others to fork rather than forcing them to bend.

Metaphor: Every open path has forks. We need more people walking, fewer people standing still yelling.

4. Bridge the ‘Trust Gap’ with Small, Lived Examples. Many people block because they don’t trust the process – they feel tricked, ignored, or co-opted.

Rebuild trust through visible, small-scale functioning examples — real communities doing real things with the #4opens.

Highlight stories where governance and code worked together.

Stay humble: don’t oversell the vision; show, don’t tell.

5. Normalize Changing Your Mind. Most blocking happens because people are afraid of losing face, status, or being co-opted.

Create spaces where changing your mind is not shameful — it’s rewarded.

Public “reconsideration threads,” “I changed my view” badges, etc.

Use organic intellectuals who model doubt and curiosity, not just certainty.

Reframe the debate using values: trust vs. fear, openness vs. control, native vs. extractive.

You don’t solve #blocking by trying to make everyone agree, you solve it by making space for disagreement to stay open and generative – not as a problem, but as part of the compost from which better paths grow.

Signal, Noise, and the Mess of #Mainstreaming

“Because controversy equals attention and attention equals brand recognition.” LINK

Yes, an interesting thread on advertising. But let’s add to this view in wider paths:

Mainstreaming controversy = attention.

Alt controversy = #blocking, by ignoring.

This mainstreaming/alt mess making is not about real disagreement or dynamic ideas. It’s about channelling noise that flatters the existing structures and silences anything genuinely alternative. This isn’t controversy, it’s signal-to-noise warfare. And right now, the noise is winning.

Let’s be blunt. On the subject of this site, nearly every so-called “alternative” tech event funded or structured by #NGO culture is riddled with parasites – projects more interested in their next grant or their place at the conference table than building anything outside the status quo. They’re not evil – just placated, softly herding us back into the polite cages we were trying to escape.

They block by doing nothing, block by talking too much, block by looking away when real change knocks. They block by turning real signal into noise.

The actual energy, the radical possibility, is elsewhere. The #OGB (Open Governance Body) is designed with this in mind: not to convince the already-compromised, but to build something permissionless and let it loose. Let people feel the value, or not. No “hard” hand-holding, no pre-approval, no gatekeepers.

It’s a #KISS project: Keep It Simple, Stupid. We’re building for the people up shit creek without a paddle, not the people arguing about paddle aesthetics on a conference panel. We don’t need more “controversy” to win attention in the #NGO #PR-sphere. We need real signal, real builds, real grassroots governance to share power.

And yes, we do have a problem with apathy and Laissez-faire “common sense” that lets this cycle repeat. So let’s stop waiting for the right moment or the perfect audience. We build with this problem in mind. We design #DIY structures that can work in the real mess.

Trust is the foundation of moderation in decentralised networks like the #OMN

In the world of decentralised, peer-to-peer, and federated networks, from the Fediverse to grassroots projects like the #OMN, moderation works differently. It’s not a matter of top-down control or terms-of-service written by #process lawyers. Instead, the basic unit of moderation is trust – and this shifts everything.

Yes, we need practical moderation tools – blocking, filtering, reporting, curation – the whole established toolkit. But more importantly, we need to root these tools in a tech shaped culture of care, responsibility, and openness. This is where the #4opens come in:

Open data
Open source
Open standards
Open process

These aren’t #FOSS buzzwords, they’re guides to building (tech) trust in messy, real-world communities. In this path, you don’t have many hard “rights” in the liberal legalistic sense, there’s no authority swooping in to save you. Instead, you build #DIY community “safety” through the act of creating and sustaining relationships of trust. You find people. You then build a crew to join or establish norms and commoning practices.

This isn’t a call to abandon boundaries, it’s the opposite. You draw your boundaries with others and work to hold those, with #4opens bridges in place. You don’t demand control over others, you build spaces that work for you and find ways to federate, connect, and mediate with others doing the same. Your rights are your relationships. Your safety is your crew. Your power is your network.

This is the #KISS path – Keep It Simple, Stupid – agen, not in a naive way, but in a native way. It’s the opposite of the bureaucratic, compliance-obsessed, legal control systems of the #dotcons and the #NGO gatekeepers. Those are alien models people keep trying to drag into our “alternative” spaces and paths. And every time we do, we replicate the very systems we claim to oppose.

A #mainstreming view on this

We don’t need more frictionless tech platforms with “Trust & Safety” departments that answer to advertisers and #PR teams. We need open communities of care, rooted in shared values, transparency, and mutual responsibility. On this path its about working to compost the mess and growing something else.

This is how moderation works in a decentralised network, not by pretending we’re neutral, but by showing up with care and accountability. It’s messier, more human, and it works, when we let it.

On this path, we need a reboot of the #Indymediaback Infrastructure. As a core to reboot the radical media commons. Bring back trust based publishing, peer moderation, and local focus Why? Because #mainstreamin media isn’t neutral – it mainstreams the crisis while making resistance invisible. We need native alternatives.

Why #NGO and fluffy #openweb tech events should include radical real grassroots projects

If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.”
It’s “I just write the code.”
It’s “We’re neutral tools.”
It’s “Let’s keep politics out of it.”

This isn’t just naivety, it’s a deep, culturally reinforced avoidance of responsibility. And it’s one of the key reasons why even alternative tech replicates the same failures and power structures as the mainstream.

Worse, this behaviour is too often mainstreamed in the alt-tech spaces themselves, turned into best practice by #NGO people who should know better. It becomes active #blocking of any progress on alternative paths. New governance? Too political. Radical accountability? Too messy. Grassroots involvement? Too slow. Let’s just build it and hope for the best.

We can’t afford this any more, in the midst of #climatechaos, rising authoritarianism, and the enclosure of digital commons, building better tools without building better relationships, better communities, and better politics is a dead-end.

This is the core of the #geekproblem, and if we’re serious about anything more than shiny toys, it’s something we must talk about at our conferences, meetups, and hackathons. Let’s stop pretending code is apolitical, let’s start with this: tech is social, or it is very likely more wortless #tecshit.

Let’s be blunt, “inclusive” tech/#NGO events talk about change but don’t platform the people doing the hard, messy work of building this path. This is a real problem, rooted in comfort, control, and careerism.

Radical grassroots projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN) exist precisely to challenge the #mainstreaming mess, not to dress it up. We aren’t here to repeat feel-good slogans and deliver polished #PR. We’re here to offer lived solutions grounded in the #4opens and decades of collective, hands-dirty work.

So why should OMN and similar voices be invited in?

We speak from the grassroots, not the conference stage.
We build tools that people have historically used, not just write funding proposals about.
We hold space for #DIY, for #p2p, for real change, not only the reform theatre.

If your event doesn’t include these voices, like almost all of them, it’s the #mainstreaming problem of locking out knowledge, networks, and resistance, which the events #PR claims to support. This clearly makes the people involved into hypocrites.

On a positive, #KISS, this doesn’t need to be a fight, let’s make events better together. Can you imagine real dialogue between grassroots builders and NGO funders? Imagine shared workshops where friction leads to function, messy, honest space that acknowledges power dynamics – and really then starts to do something about this mess.

Want a better event?

Put grassroots groups on the stage, not just in the audience.

Pay people for their time — especially those working outside institutions.

Focus on practice, not just policy.

Drop the gatekeeping.

Build open process into your event — make your own structure accountable to the #4opens.

But, remember, we aren’t going just to play nice, to be seen, we’ll come to compost the status quo, and plant something that might actually grow. Let’s try and maybe do this right, please.

The #nastyfew in the era of #climatechaos and social breakdown

In this accelerating collapse – where #climatechaos spirals and #neoliberalism guts the very idea of society – we urgently need to confront a painful truth: it’s simple, the #nastyfew are a parasite class. And that this class feeds on the very foundations of well-being, survival, and joy that the majority of the global population desperately needs. They are the ones who keep the engines of destruction humming, not out of necessity, but out of greed and fear of irrelevance. These people and their institutions flourish precisely because most of us are lost in the distractions of #mainstreaming and false hopes of reform.

The big picture is Capitalism’s global predation – Zooming out, this is the capitalist class – those who own, hoard, and manipulate the resources, labour, and attention of billions. They weaponise economics, push debt, drive resource wars, and now greenwash their way through #climatecollapse while investing in bunkers and surveillance. They bankroll right-wing populism and push for austerity, while lobby for tax cuts as profits soar.

The close-up: People you might know, zoom in, and things get messier. This parasitic drive isn’t only held by billionaire industrialists. In many cases, it’s people close to us, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes not. These are the minor functionaries of capital, the wannabe gatekeepers, and the careerists who believe that “playing the game” will protect them from collapse.

In tech, it is clearer, parasites wearing hoodies. The Bitcoin Bros: Obsessively libertarian, they fetishise decentralisation while promoting hyper-individualist economics that mirrors the worst of Wall Street. They talk about freedom but build systems of exclusion, greed, and extraction. If you spend your energy pushing #crypto as liberation while ignoring ecological and social costs, you are enabling the parasite class – and likely dreaming of becoming one.

The #mainstreaming talking about this “inside” issue

#Dotcons Executives: The Zuckerbergs, Bezoses, and Musks of the world are obvious examples. But look further down the food chain: the startup bros who pivot endlessly looking for #VC buyouts, the marketing execs who gut communities for ad metrics, the devs who code endless optimisations to squeeze more value out of users. If your business model depends on surveillance, addiction and enclosure, you’re the problem.

The careerist #NGO tech elitists: Yes, even the “good” sector can be captured. NGO professionals who endlessly hold conferences and produce whitepapers while blocking actual grassroots projects. They take seats at tables designed to exclude the people doing real, messy, transformative work. They don’t oppose the #nastyfew; they stabilise their control.

So what do we do? First, see clearly, name the parasitism. Understand that systems don’t just fail; they are designed to benefit the few and contain the many. Second, build bridges away from this mess – rooted in the #4opens: open data, open source, open process, and open standards. This is the beginning of composting the parasite class. Third, support native projects: not the VC-funded copies or the corporate-friendly NGOs, but the messy, local, collaborative tools and networks that build resilience and joy from the ground up. Projects like #IndymediaBack, #OMN, and others pushing against the tide are places to start.

Because in the end, the parasite class only exists as long as we feed it.

Let’s stop, please.

Frictionlessness is a Poisoned Fantasy – an #OMN Reflection

In our current mess of a world, one of capitalism’s illusions is the promise of #frictionlessness, that everything should just work, that all interactions should be smooth, efficient, and untroubled. In tech this is the logic of the #dotcons, keeping the “users” engaged, never give them time to think, and above all don’t let the real world get in the way of the pipeline between their attention and your profit.

This has infected the #geekproblem deeply. In software culture, especially, friction is seen as a flaw to be eradicated. You get endless talk about seamless UX, microservices glued together with endless APIs, “AI” interfaces that complete your thoughts before you’ve had them. But in this drive for “smoothness”, we erase the very stuff that makes us human. Friction isn’t a bug, it’s the thing that matters.

We in the #OMN path think differently, humanistically, friction is where we bump up against each other, where ideas collide, where something has to be negotiated, not assumed. It’s where care, conflict, and collective learning live. Real life and community requires discussion. It forces mutual understanding. It invites shared responsibility. Not only that, but it’s slower – yes. Messier – absolutely. But in that mess, something native grows.

This is the fundamental difference between a society built for people and one built for control. A people-based network has thick edges, blurry boundaries, and rough interfaces, you feel each other. A control-based network is sterile. Optimized. Soulless.

This is what the #deathcult calls “progress”, the drive to strip the world of friction so that each of us can float through our own private consumerist delusion, never encountering anything real. Currently you feel this in the emerging cult of “AI as Everything Machine”, the idea that you’ll never need to interact with anyone ever again. Need something? Ask the machine. It won’t argue, won’t misunderstand, won’t push back. It’ll stroke your ego and reinforce your (their) worldview. It’s like having a compliant servant with no wages, no needs – and no truth.

We are encouraged to see this as liberation. But it’s so obviously the opposite. It’s a deepening of the loneliness machine. This is what happens when we build networks to eliminate community. No neighbours to disagree with, no comrades to compromise with, no community to be accountable to. Just you, “your” machine, and your carefully filtered feed, all controlled by the “invisible” #nastyfew in a feedback loop of isolation.

But, simply put, the real world doesn’t work like that, it is messy. The river floods. The server crashes. The refugee needs a place to sleep. The boat needs fixing. Your project needs people who don’t agree on everything, but care enough to stay and work it out. This is the world the #OMN needs to be built for.

Humanism is not removing friction, it’s mediating it. Friction can hurt, but it also brings growth. It’s how we learn, we feel our need for each other. And yes, how we fight, but also how we forgive.

If we’re serious about challenging the broken paths we’ve been led down – from #neoliberal isolation to techno-dystopian escape – we need to stop chasing the dream of #stupidindividualism, and start building networks that build communities of interest, that touch back. That remind us we’re not alone and push back, gently, when we try in our misery to float away.

Because only in activism – in tension, in movement, in shared resistance – can we build anything real #KISS

W3C How this fits into #OMN the Shared Origins and Intentions

Let’s look at this from a prospective, both the W3C statement and the #OMN recognize that the early web was built with open sharing, decentralization, and public good in mind. The #W3C calls for a web “respectful of all participants,” which aligns with the #OMN goal of building an open media infrastructure based on the #4opens: open data, open source, open standards, and open process.

Where this W3C #mainstreamin alt path falls short (and why #OMN matters). The W3C vision speaks of “taking responsibility” and “addressing the impact of our work” through technical standards, but in reality, the current web’s architecture has been co-opted by centralized, profit-driven platforms (#dotcons) that dominate communication and content flow.

In reaction to this, the #OMN is grounded in the reality that technical fixes alone won’t solve these social problems, we need working activist cultures, grassroots governance, and federated media networks to actively challenge #mainstreaming and #deathcult values.

What #OMN brings is a social layer: W3C focuses on technology and ethics at the standards level. The #OMN focuses on the cultural and organizational infrastructure needed to build, sustain, and govern alternative media networks.

Scaling what worked: The W3C admits we’ve lost the “openness” to misinformation and data abuse. The #OMN is about bringing back what worked (e.g., early Indymedia, radical tech collectives) and scaling it using tools like #ActivityPub and the #fediverse.

Compost and regenerate: The W3C wants reform from within. The #OMN recognizes the need to compost the #techshit, grow anew, and create autonomous, federated spaces where community processes are native, not retrofitted.

A positive reboot (from within the #openweb), where the W3C gives us a narrative frame. The #OMN gives us a path to act. We can reclaim the web not only through better standards, but through working, lived alternatives – composting what failed, and growing based on what we know works.

We need bridging, if the W3C and groups like them are serious about rebuilding a humane web, then the #OMN path as much to offer:

A bridge to activist governance.
A working example of the Ethical Web Principles being practiced socially, not just technically.
A push for native, grassroots agency, not just safeguards built by the same #NGO centralizers who failed the first time.

Let’s do better, yes, but let’s also be native, that’s what the #OMN is about.

A thread on a different project on the same subject, “Open Source and Open Standards nerds like me ought to know by now that the protocol is the least compelling thing about a service. Who cares if your home is built using only Stallman-blessed tools, when the walls are full of rats?” https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-never-going-back-to-matrix

Dig, Plant, Grow. Compost the #Techshit. Repeat

This post is talking in the sense of structure rather than individual experience. Let’s be honest, much of the so-called “alternative” tech scene is still stuck. Yes, we fled the #dotcons for something better, but ended up with copies of the same broken models. The #Fediverse, with all its potential, is still as often dominated by “mainstreaming meta” chat (“Twitter refugees incoming!”) or conspiracy-laden, #fashionista rabbit holes. It’s little wonder that even the nerdy privacy crowd struggles to find meaningful content or community. And no, shouting “fuck the system!” isn’t enough.

If we’re serious about systemic change, we need to do much more. The question is not if people will come, some always will, the real challenge is what they’ll find when they get here. Right now? It’s messy, insular, and missing the tools people need to use for change and challenge, let alone feel at home. We must move beyond building clones of corporate platforms and start composting the path that got us here.

This is why we need a reboot, not from scratch, but from memory. Projects like #indymediaback aim to reclaim 20+ years of working grassroots media practice. With tools like #ActivityPub we now have scalable tech that can bring those old social processes – based on #4opens (open code, open data, open governance, open standards) – into the present. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is such a path: combining the solid tech foundations with the radical social methods that we know worked (but didn’t scale).

To move at all, we must change and challenge the toxic norms of the #mainstreaming #deathcult, and yes, this means building real alternative identities and spaces that don’t live in the shadow of big tech. Being “alternative” used to mean something, and it can again, if we stop ONLY copying the mainstream and instead focus on nurturing something more strongly rooted and real.

This isn’t about being purist, #FOSS and Open Source already works in this way, the #OMN just brings this path to media and community infrastructure. It’s not utopian, it’s compost. And yes, that means dealing with hard questions, including our own funding. Let’s stop pretending we’re neutral when we’re not. Let’s build from honesty. It’s time to dig, plant, grow, and repeat.

#OMN #4opens #indymediaback #openweb #fediverse #techshit #KISS #NGO #deathcult #mainstreaming #altmedia #DIY

NOTE: the comments below are a useful example of #stupidindividualism, and remember this hashtag is about social groups and their #blocking of social thinking. The history matters, flaming is not a useful response.

Fixing Protest Camp Problems, and the Backlashes That Follow

Originally published 28/10/13

It’s important to remember, everyone at protest camps is a volunteer. No one is being paid to do the hard work that keeps these spaces running.

When I arrived at Balcombe, the antifracking camp, the tech setup was a disaster. All the camp’s power came from draining 12V car batteries, charged at sympathetic locals’ homes, then brought back to the camp. This was repeated daily, with batteries quickly destroyed in the process. Ironically, the system meant we were running the protest camp on fossil fuels.

I like a challenge, so I set about fixing it. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just messy. After half a day of scrounging and assembling, by evening I had a functioning solar setup that could reliably charge two phones, indefinitely, as long as the sun was shining. It was a small start, but it showed how we could scale to power the whole camp sustainably.

The next morning, I got out of bed to plug in some phones, only to find my work ripped apart overnight. People had raided the system for components to power the party camp’s music. The battery was flattened and ruined. So, it turns out the real problem wasn’t technical, it was social.

The camp was full of capable people, but many had backed out. Why? Because they’d experienced variations of this same problem before, nothing could be built, nothing would last, everything was transitory and broken.

Tackling the social mess, the first issue was the presence of a few absolute loons. These people weren’t just chaotic, they actively blocked any attempt to build lasting infrastructure. The solution? Push them out. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t gentle. In both cases, it was emotionally intense.

One was mediated out by sharing gear so he could set up his own space elsewhere. The second, when confronted, left of his own accord and took his stuff with him. Harsh, maybe, but necessary. After they left, the camp could finally begin to function.

The “commons” problem, the second issue, was more subtle but probably created even more resentment: equipment and resources were treated as a free-for-all. Everything was “held in common,” which meant anyone could use gear however they wanted, and they did. Batteries were destroyed, cables fried, expensive equipment thrown into a growing pile of broken tech.

The solution? Gently focus control, we set up a tech tent and simply sat there, every day, asking people what they needed and why. No outright “no’s,” just a filtering process. It worked, tech requests slowed, and we regained stability. But behind the scenes, it built up quiet resentment from the “crew” who were used to unaccountable access and immediate replacements at the camp’s expense.

What followed, after the transition, the tech space became… boring. It worked. Phones charged. Laptops powered. Media and legal teams did their jobs. People even checked their Facebook.

And yet, success bred silence. The loons were gone, but the resentment lingered. And sure enough, the backlash eventually came, just not in the way you’d expect. But this is another story…

This reflection is about more than batteries and solar panels. It’s about the fragility of collective space, and how real sustainability is social before it’s technical. We need to defend space from dysfunction, as much as build within it.

Fixing protest camps means navigating both power systems and power dynamics. And if you don’t balance both, you’ll be back to chaos by morning.

What does mainstreaming do?

#mainstreaming narrows the field of imagination and excludes non-conforming ideas that could offer real solutions to systemic crises. Mainstreaming smooths the rough edges of society. It normalizes hierarchy, filters dissent, and packages politics into manageable narratives. It’s how radical demands are turned into reforms, then paperwork, then slogans, then forgotten.

Absorbing opposition into bureaucracy (e.g., NGOs, dead end consultancy)

Rewarding compromise and incrementalism, as blocking

Silencing or caricaturing grassroots resistance, as common sense

Making real alternatives seem "unrealistic", in the end

This is why grassroots #DIY matters as a counterbalance. On this path, Anarchism is not just rebellion or chaos, it is a living tradition of thinking and organizing that keeps real change alive when mainstreaming works to bury it.

Direct democracy, In a world of managed participation and elitist mediation, anarchism says: decide together, act together. It reminds us of grassroots power that doesn’t flow through institutions but grows in assemblies, co-ops, camps, and communities.
Mutual aid and cooperation, where mainstream narratives focus on competition, profit, and security through control, anarchism champions care, solidarity, and trust-based networks—a needed cultural shift to navigate crisis and collapse.
Decentralization of power, in the face of #dotcons, technocracy, and corporate-state collusion, anarchism is a map toward decentralization and autonomy. It’s the logic behind federated systems, commons governance, and resilient localism.
Critique of state power, mainstreaming always ends up strengthening state structures, even when it claims to oppose them. Anarchism pulls back the curtain on the violence and coercion baked into “order”, whether in border regimes, policing, or “benevolent” welfare systems.

Cultural compost: “We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism.” at its best this isn’t an identity, it’s a provocation, a composting force that keeps movements from hardening into systems of control.

This is why balance is key, without radical, un-mainstreamed perspectives, the so-called “left” drifts into hollow #NGO work, tech utopianism, or sanitized liberalism. The #openweb becomes a product instead of a commons, movements become brands, justice becomes PR. Balancing #mainstreaming means, keeping the imagination alive, creating space for alternatives and building systems that don’t replicate domination

In practice, projects like the #OMN and #4opens are examples of this balance: using basic tech to empower trust, not control. They are rooted in values without needing any label, community autonomy, voluntary association, transparent processes.

To reboot the #openweb, we need the cultural DNA of anarchism, without necessarily the costume. We need people unafraid to challenge power, even when everyone else says, “play nice, get the grant, follow the roadmap.” So yes, we need anarchism, not as a lifestyle, but as a counterweight, a cultural inoculation against decay to challenge the centre from the edge.

And we need to compost the rest.

The mess we make trying to move away from the mainstream…

“Doing the same thing in the same context and expecting different results is one of the clinical definitions of insanity.” 😄

This is the core of the #mainstreaming problem. Our hashtags try to name it: #stupidindividualism #deathcult #dotcons #nothingnew in that we repeat the same patterns, inside the same systems, and wonder why nothing changes.

The truth is, we’ve already solved many of these problems. From grassroots media to consensus decision-making, from tech co-ops to decentralized organizing, we had working solutions. What we lacked was a way to scale them without breaking them. That was always the sticking point. But the irony: the activist culture that once created these solutions has eroded, just as the tech finally caught up, the tech is ready, it’s the culture missing. This is the mess we’re in.

It’s about social trust, human-scale processes, messy cooperation, and doing things differently, this time with tools that match our values, not bury them. Let’s stop acting insane, let’s try something new, built from something old, let’s get biblical 😉