On the #openweb, we need to be clear about what serves us and what distracts us. There’s a growing tendency to blur the lines between what should be public and what should remain private, and this confusion weakens our social fabric.
At the core of any healthy communication ecosystem, we need two things: news and the personal. These are not the same. They serve different social functions, reflect different truths, and nurture different parts of our communities.
News is about truth-telling. It’s rooted in shared reality and collective witnessing — what Harold Innis might call the durable structures of “truth.”
The personal is about care and context. It’s about opinion, identity, emotional honesty. It builds relational trust — what we might frame as “careness.”We already have encrypted chat for private and group communication. That’s a separate, secure path, and while important, it’s not the same as what we need for a functioning #openweb. Obsessing over more privacy layers for things that should be either news or care-based expression is a distraction, a misdirection that can end in “perversion” rather than protection.
In open paths, the real work is in getting these paths right: Truth (news): Verifiable, public, shared. Careness (personal): Subjective, relational, shared in context. Private: Not hidden in fear, but chosen with intention, things you don’t yet feel safe sharing publicly, and that’s okay.
Then we have a different story of working in closed paths, I don’t talk about this here as it’s not native to the #openweb and a wider subject. How we express ourselves along these paths matters. If we confuse them, we break the signal-to-noise ratio that holds #openweb communities together. But if we learn to respect their distinct roles and values, we can build something meaningful, a space where truth, care, and privacy each have their place.
Let’s keep the balance. Let’s compost the noise, not the signal.
Discover more from Hamish Campbell
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
