Everyone knows we are in a mess, but most people are too distracted to do anything to change this. Most of us keep on the dysfunctional path – scrolling, clicking, consuming – because the current mess we live in is incredibly skilled at hiding most consequences.
The environmental cost is buried under greenwashing. BP rebranded itself as “Beyond Petroleum.” Shell sponsors art galleries. Apple makes claims about “carbon-neutral” devices, then glues batteries shut to prevent repair. Meanwhile, rare earth extraction, e-waste, and fast fashion destroy ecosystems from Congo to Cambodia.
The labour cost is outsourced, invisibilized, atomized. Amazon warehouse workers urinate in bottles to keep pace with surveillance timers. Foxconn installs suicide nets around dorms. Uber calls drivers “partners” while avoiding all responsibility for their lives or livelihoods.
The mental health cost is reframed as personal failure. You’re anxious and burnt out? Must be your mindset. Try a mindfulness app. Maybe eat better. Maybe “grind smarter.” Meanwhile, the structure of your life, precarious work, information overload, climate dread, is never questioned.
The social collapse is blamed on the “irresponsible poor” or “divisive politics.” Communities are gutted by austerity, housing is hoarded by speculators, but you’re told it’s your neighbour’s fault, immigrants, the unemployed, the other political tribe. The system throws fuel on every fire, then lectures you on “civility.”
Every crisis becomes your problem, not the system’s. This is because the #deathcult we unconsciously worship doesn’t just produce stuff, it produces numbness, distraction, and above all, thoughtlessness, a never-ending now, stripped of memory and consequence.
And the moment you try to pull back the curtain? There’s a brand, an #NGO ready to sell you “resistance” too. It’s a system designed to make rebellion feel like a cloned lifestyle choice.
A t-shirt with a slogan.
A rainbow flag slapped on a weapons manufacturer.
A “climate justice” conference sponsored by Shell.
A new Netflix docuseries about the thing you’ll forget by next week.
#KISS resistance requires more than outrage, we don’t just need better tech or better politics, we need:
Better attention — to what's real and what's propaganda
Slower thinking — against the churn of hot takes and algorithms
Reclaimed time — stolen back from platform metrics and work schedules
Spaces for consequence — where the impacts of our actions (or inactions) are visible, shareable, accountable
That’s why #DIY infrastructure, the commons, and openness, matter. That’s why we are rebooting the #openweb, with the #4opens, with the #OMN, with peer-to-peer tools, and with each other. And we need to do this before thoughtlessness becomes all we have left in the #mainstreaming mess.
There are meany sides to the current mess, it’s worth looking at them. An example the #mainstreaming path of paywalls stacked on paywalls isn’t any real life, it’s a trap, which we need a way out. The wider picture in our everyday lives, we’ve come to accept the absurd:
You pay to eat food grown on land you don’t have access to,
Pay to sleep under a roof that someone profits from,
Pay to drink water privatized by corporations,
Pay to breathe because the air is poisoned by industries that sell you both the problem and the solution.
And if you miss a payment? Game over (inspired by). That is not a functioning economy, it’s not in any way freedom, it’s a hostage situation, where every basic human need is held behind a transactional barrier, and the meter is always running.
This #deathcult is late capitalism: an endless stack of paywalls enclosing what used to be public, shared, and free. It isn’t just about money, it’s about control, dependency, and isolation. It’s a system that need to engineer artificial scarcity, so a #nastyfew can profit while the many just try to survive.
But it wasn’t always like this, for most of human history, people lived within commons-based paths, where land was collectively stewarded, food was grown and shared within communities, tools and knowledge were passed down, not patented and governance was sometimes local and participatory.
The last 200 years of “common sense” capitalism is an enclosure of these commons, first the physical ones (land, water, food), and now the digital and social ones (communication, culture, identity). The #openweb, like the open land before it, is being digitally fenced off. Platform by platform. App by app. Cookie banner by paywall.
This enclosure now defines much of our tech infrastructure, in this #mainstreaming every scroll, click, and share is now mediated by profit-driven platforms. Even activism – once vibrant and messy – is being swallowed by slick interfaces and the same throttled feeds. Resistance is filtered, shadowbanned, deboosted, and pushed to monetize. And “our” #NGOs fighting platform power… are doing so on those same platforms.
It’s an absurdity, and worse: it’s a trap. We need alternatives, real ones. We’re not going to “ethics workshop” our way out of this. We need to rebuild the tools of everyday life – economically, digitally, socially – from the grassroots up.
Commons-based systems, let’s turn some “common sense” on it head, instead of private ownership: stewardship. Instead of scarcity: abundance through sharing. This is where projects, like The Open Media Network (#OMN) come in as a practical framework for grassroots media infrastructure:
Built on the #4opens: open data, source, standards, and governance.
Designed to decentralize publishing, and return control to local communities.
Uses both client-server and P2P bridges for accessibility and resilience.
Encourages trust-based networks over extractive platforms.
OMN is not just theory, it’s active code, messy dev, and practical tools for people to tell their own stories, host their own content, and build alternative knowledge systems outside corporate media. These technologies make community hosting the default – not the exception. They reduce reliance on fragile or compromised #dotcons infrastructure. They’re imperfect, but they’re a step out of the enclosure.
The point isn’t just tech, It’s power, capitalism doesn’t only gate resources. It enforces relationships of power. That’s why rebuilding tech without addressing governance, ownership, and access won’t get us far. The #geekproblem is real: tech that nobody can use isn’t liberation, it’s just another dead-end.
The alternative? Keep it #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), prioritize social usability over technical elegance, build bridges, not silos, return to shared ownership and open processes. Capitalism is a hostage situation, but we can walk out the door – if we build the exit together.
You’re not powerless, and this isn’t about purity or escape. It’s about building real infrastructure for real life, so when the capitalist system keeps crumbling (as it will), we’re not left scrambling. We’ll already be living differently.
UPDATE the seed of this post was from a toot, but can’t find the original to link to due to the #UX of mastodon updating and no functioning search on my instance to find history, sorry, add in comments if you find the original. Updated
We recently had an extended and thoughtful discussion on signal between collaborators working on #IndymediaBack and #MakingHistory, an 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 only a technical issue, it’s political, and central to the success or failure of rebooting radical grassroots media within the #Fediverse.
The tension is about balancing the individual and the collective. In most current Fediverse platforms (like Mastodon or PeerTube), each user is an “actor” with their own inbox/outbox, mirroring the logic of the mainstream #socialweb where identity and expression are deeply individual. But for platforms rooted in collective publishing, such as a revived #Indymedia, this doesn’t map neatly.
“We are trying to balance individualism with collectivism. People already have all the individualism they can take, we need a structure to support the collective.”
That means maybe moving away from assuming every account needs to be a visible, subscribable actor. Working model: Per-instance actors first, a consensus is emerging around per-instance actors – e.g., the Newswire and Features flows of a local Indymedia site act as the primary publishable entities in the Fediverse. These represent the editorial collective’s curated output – not just anyone shouting into the void.
External trusted contributors (like info@hamishcampbell) would publish content from their own Fediverse accounts using hashtags like #oxfordindymedia, which the local Indymedia instance detects, vets, and republishes.
This brings three key benefits:
Curation over chaos – Stories don’t just flood in via hashtags; they’re filtered through trust relationships.
Permissioned federation – Only trusted flows (or untrusted but manually reviewed ones) are accepted. Hashtag spam is naturally blocked.
Maintaining editorial identity – Subscribing to an Indymedia instance means subscribing to its judgement, not just raw fire hose feeds.
Do we need per-user actors? Here’s where things get messy, and interesting, three models were debated:
Classic Fediverse model: Each user has their own actor. This supports full transparency and traceability of actions, but risks returning to individualist norms and opens the door to abuse or platform drift.
Invisible user accounts: Users exist internally for moderation or curation roles, but aren’t visible in the Fediverse as actors.
Controlled per-user actors: Users do have actors, but these are only used to publish activity logs, not posts. Think: “Editor X approved story Y”, useful for building transparency and trust within an open process.
Option 3 sits nicely with the principles of the #4opens, particularly open process and open governance as it provides a transparent audit trail without pushing users into the spotlight. #UX vs backend architecture, what becomes clear is that the user experience should foreground collective flows – Features, Newswire, Tags – while any per-user mechanics operate in the background, supporting moderation, traceability, or edge-case publishing. Whether those background accounts are #AP actors or not might depend on implementation details.
“It’s not about the actors per se - it’s about what shows up in the front-end #UX, and how we build trust in the process.”
Final considerations, networks like #IndymediaBack default to collective-first publishing, with user actor functionality off unless needed. #MakingHistory, by contrast, might enable user actor publishing to support mass collaborative storytelling. Both platforms rely on whitelist federation, meaning only trusted instances and users can feed directly into the editorial stream. Abuse prevention comes not just from code, but from the politics of moderation, curation, and shared norms.
We probably need per-user actors, but used sparingly and carefully.
We definitely need per-instance actors for trusted collective outputs.
Hashtags are a start, but the flow must be curated and accountable.
UX should put collectives front and centre, with user identity in the background.
This is a political choice, not just a technical one, and that’s a good thing.
Yes, I read the post. And yes, the despair is real. The #openweb is being bulldozed by #GenerativeAI like a forest clear-cut by machines driven not by any need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nastyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and literally dead-end. And yes, I too wonder if we’ll survive this, but as we say we have a path, and it’s not new, it’s simple, it’s human, and it’s working.
It’s called the #Fediverse and the next step we need to take is “native” applications on this path like the #OMN – the Open Media Network – and it’s built from the bones and dreams of the old web: #4opens, #KISS principles, and trust-based, #DIY infrastructure. It’s a messy, human soup of tagged data and federated flows where people and content are commons by default, not walled gardens and extractive silos.
The magic? It’s not even in the tech (though that matters). It’s in the “common sense” at the core – Anything in, anything out – mediated by trust. Lossy? Yes. Redundant? Absolutely. But that’s a feature, not a bug, it’s what makes it resilient. The blinded #geekproblem keeps trying to engineer this out, but we need to compost that #techshit into something useful, working tools for real people, growing radical networks of care and change.
To those staring into the digital abyss and seeing only Ozymandias and decay, look sideways, the #Fediverse lives, the #openweb still works, and we are building new foundations from the compost of the old. We do not need to be swept along with the gray goo of #AI, we can simply not go there, and instead stay here and focus on the work that is needed.
“I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” –Percy Bysshe Shelley
And yes, I see it too, we’ve been holding back on our own power, hesitant. Maybe our despair is part of the mess we need to shake ourselves awake from. So I ask what positive path can we walk? What part of the #OMN can we all help compost, code, shape, or share?
Let’s rebuild the net with hands in the soil and eyes on the stars because the answer isn’t new, it’s what we’ve always done when things fall apart, we grow.
Q: People are angry about #AI scrapers and that this is exploiting everything for “free” – our art, our words, our data. But let’s be honest, we’ve spent the last 40 years gorging on “free” content online, music, games, video, writing, without paying for a thing unless forced to with a paywall. Yes. We block the ads, we hate the tracking, and we very rarely donate. So… with the idea that everything has to be paid for, are we really that different from the AI scraping machine?
A: The current “common sense” frames this as a moral issue, but it’s better seen as a systematic one. And that’s where people keep getting lost in talking about this.
We live in a society rooted in greed and extraction, that’s the baseline, it’s called capitalism, and for the last 40 years it’s been accelerated by the neoliberal #deathcult, where today “ethics” is bought in plastic tubs of organic yogurt at your local supermarket.
What grows out of this shit heap? #Stupidindividualism, people demanding everything for free while shouting about their personal rights to consume. They want to save the planet, but only with next-day delivery and zero commitment. Then you’ve got the #fashionistas – the “good people” who “perform” care while feeding the same destructive mess, not irony, the logic of the path we take.
No, I don’t want tracking ads. No, I don’t want my ideas and writing turned into #AI sludge. But I’m also not pretending this is a matter of “personal choice”, when we need to shout loudly and continually that it’s a system built to turn “creators” into social shit and call it innovation, when better to speak the truth and call it compost.
We don’t fix this by feeling guilty, we fix it by building something else. That’s what #OMN is for, that’s why #4opens matter. Public media, open processes, radical trust, of native #openweb paths, not just another polished platform for exploitation with feel good #UX
It’s not about blame, it’s about digging over the rot and planting something more real #KISS
A problem we’ve inherited from the last ten years of corporate social media, the #dotcons, is the toxic confusion of the personal and the public. Platforms like #Facebook and #Twitter blurred the lines between private conversation and public broadcasting, monetizing both as if they were the same. That mess wasn’t accidental; it was profitable.
Unfortunately, we’ve reproduced this mess on the #Fediverse without properly composting it first. What does that mean? We’ve taken this tangled, unhealthy paths and rebuilt them with new tools, many of them open-source, but we haven’t separated the core issues or composted the conceptual issue. As a result, we still see confusion around what content belongs in the public commons and what should stay private. People are still posting as if they’re in a private chat while standing on a soapbox, or trying to gate keep public news through private group dynamics.
The reality is: we already have a clear, simple solution.
The Fediverse is public. It is for public media, public conversation, news, projects, what we want to share with the world.
Encrypted chat apps (like Signal) are for private communication, what we want to keep between individuals or trusted groups.
This needs to be simple #KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid, but instead, we have well-meaning but unthinking devs and users trying to remix the worst of #dotcons culture, mushing together public and private spaces, throwing moderation at everything like it’s a catch-all fix, and muddying the waters of what these networks are actually for.
This is not innovation, it’s common crap behavior inherited from systems built to manipulate, monetize, and pacify us all. If we want more of real, trusted, meaningful media, we have to get back to basics: public news needs to be built on #4opens, and it needs to be created, distributed, and discussed in public spaces.
That’s why projects like #OMN (Open Media Network), #OGB (Open Governance Body), and the #indymediaback reboot matter. They offer paths where grassroots, trust-based publishing thrives again, outside #NGO capture and corporate control and enclosure.
With this change in mind, why the #Deathcult Hashtag?
People often ask why I use the hashtag #deathcult so much. It’s provocative, yes, but it’s not just for shock value. It’s a term that names the dominant ideology of the last 40 years: #neoliberalism. An ideology so pervasive that most people can’t even see it any more, even while it’s actively eroding the very values they claim to be upholding.
You see this when a liberal proudly buys “organic” yogurt at Safeway while supporting systems that are destroying the planet. That’s not just irony, that’s the entire logic of the deathcult. It’s the normalization of destruction wrapped in “ethical” branding. And no, it’s not just the yogurt, that’s just the joke. It’s everything: our phones, our work, our schools, our activism.
If you can’t find a part of your life untouched by the deathcult, it’s because it has touched everything. That’s why the hashtag exists: to make people uncomfortable. Because without that discomfort, we won’t challenge the roots of the system we’re all still living inside.
This movement isn’t about reinventing wheels, it’s about returning to native paths. The public internet worked before, let’s compost the #techshit by usefully separating the public from the private, and rebuild the “native” path on clear, #4opens foundations.
We can do better, we already know how, let’s stop pretending we don’t.
The #makinghistory project is a decentralized, open-source archiving and storytelling network designed to preserve and amplify grassroots histories. It’s founded on the idea that history isn’t written by the winners – it’s made by those who resist, build, and care. We seed this network using digitized collections like the CampbellFamily archive, the project invites communities to reclaim their narratives through shared, federated #DIY instances. This isn’t just another data repository – it’s a living, breathing ecosystem where collective memory is gathered, enriched, and kept accessible for future generations and social movements.
The application functions as a community-installable tool that allows anyone to host their own archive node. These nodes, whether local or remote, connect into a wider peer-to-peer network of storytellers, archivists, and activists. Core features include uploading and organizing digital files, enriching metadata flows, to link material to broader narratives using human-created tags and annotations. The platform follows a participation-first path, encouraging affinity groups to contribute not just data, but context, weaving a rich web of interlinked histories.
But #makinghistory goes further than archiving. It’s a space for collaborative storytelling, publishing, and public exhibition. Its narrative layer draws from the archive to trace connections between people, places, and events, transforming scattered fragments into stories of solidarity, resistance, and change. These outputs feed both digital commons and real-world installations like the Resistance Exhibition, where history is brought to life in public, participatory spaces. This is the infrastructure for radical memory work, a composting system for movement knowledge.
Implement a single-column interface that lists objects (text, image, link).
Set up two test instances that can post and sync objects between them.
Default view lists objects by most recent. Super simple.
Phase 2: Hashtag Columns
Add support for hashtag-based columns (inspired by Mastodon’s Tweetdeck interface).
Reuse and adapt existing open-source implementations where possible.
Phase 3: Story Objects
Introduce a new “Story” object that composes and links existing media objects, with added narrative context.
These stories are published through collective/community accounts (discussion needed on access/trust models).
Phase 4: Federation & Flows
Begin mapping and testing how edits, hashtags, comments, and objects flow across federated instances.
Align this with the #OMN trust model and the work from the #indymediaback reboot (estimated 90% overlap).
User Interfaces
Desktop: Use a Tweetdeck-style interface, similar to Mastodon’s current layout.
Mobile: Build a simplified UI with a single-column scroll. Objects open fullscreen with sideways swiping (like Tusky for Mastodon).
Every Object
Has edit capabilities (if user has login/auth).
Editable hashtags.
Comment threads.
All changes sync across instances via federation/trust flows (option 4).
The current test interface and images will need refreshing, as they’re based on early-stage mockups. But the concept remains: keep the interface minimal, usable, and focused on narrative composting. This project is both infrastructure and imagination, grounded in the old but reaching toward the new.
These images need an update as they were based on the dev work from back in the day. This is the very basic interface for testing. The mobile user facing interface is a flick sideways basic interface.
At the core of the #makinghistory infrastructure lies the Open Media Network (#OMN) – a trust-based, human-moderated, #4opens project that offers a decentralized, federated database shared across peers. What makes the OMN unique isn’t just what it does – but what it refuses to do. Rather than chasing complexity or abstract “AI-powered” solutions, the OMN focuses on simplicity and social cohesion, using technology to support and grow human networks. Its structure is purposefully minimal, with only five essential functions:
These core functions are: Publish (to share a story as an object into a stream); Subscribe (to people, pages, groups, or subjects); Moderate (to express trust or disapproval by pushing or pulling content); Rollback (to remove content from your stream based on trust flows); and Edit (to collaboratively change metadata across federated nodes where you’re authenticated). This framework serves as the back-end engine for building a grassroots, DIY semantic web. The front-end can take many forms: city-based or subject-specific sites like a modern reboot of Indymedia, regional storytelling platforms, or thematic archives like #makinghistory. Protocols like ActivityPub form the connective tissue of this system, the plumbing.
In practice, this means people can build meaningful media spaces that reflect local struggles and solidarities without being dependent on corporate platforms or NGO gatekeeping. The data cauldron of the OMN stores the shared knowledge, and every community holds a golden ladle – a way to draw out, remix, and republish what matters to them. If you’re interested in supporting this effort financially, you can do so via Open Collective. And if you’re ready to dive deeper, we need to make this #KISS project work. Let’s build tools for memory, not marketing, infrastructure for resistance, not careerism. Let’s be #makeinghistory together, not sit bord looking at a screen.
This #OMN path is “native” built on a simple, powerful truth: “This is the Internet”:
GET PUT POST DELETE –MERGE–
These basic actions — close to the core HTTP verbs every website uses — are all you need to create, share, remix, and grow. (From RFC 7231 and RFC 5789.)
Then you have the #4opens which are about reclaiming the grassroots social power of the web:
Open data
Open source
Open process
Open standards
No gatekeepers. No #dotcons middlemen. No closed silos. Just people, building together. This is what #openweb reboot looks like.
Most people understand that culturally, and socially, we are in a growing nasty mess. The #blocking of action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with our use of language. And the deeper issue is how this bad language feeds back into culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, erodes trust, and paralyses collective action.
The last 40 years of postmodernism and neoliberalism made this worse. #Postmodernism chipped away at the idea of shared reality, leaving us with endless interpretation and “personal truths.” #Neoliberalism, on the other hand, commodified everything, including language itself, into marketing, spin, and #PR. Together, we have hollowed out words like “community,” “freedom,” and even “change,” to the point that we barely recognize practical use value.
Take “mutual aid” for example, a term grounded in solidarity and reciprocal responsibility. Now, on both #dotcons and #openweb platforms, it gets reduced to casual crowdfunding and anonymous asks, with little relational context. Not bad, but far from what it could and needs to be. If we want affinity-based action to work, if we want people to work together and trust and act together, then we have to compost this mess. And the way to do that might be surprisingly simple #KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid, not stupid as in naive, but stupid as in clear.
We need to reclaim simple language that carries shared meaning. This is exactly what we’re trying to seed with the positive side of the hashtag story. Hashtags act as anchors in this storm of noisy abstraction. They cut through, to the root meaning, and allow collective orientation without needing corporate gatekeepers or #blinded institutional filters. Think:
#4opens – a shorthand for open code, open data, open governance, open standards.
#techshit – composting the mess, not throwing it away.
#nothingnew – slowing tech churn, reclaiming meaningful pace and paths.
Each of these tags points to deeper, shared narratives that are simple, but not simplistic. They invite action, not common sense confusion. By composting the abstraction we regrow clarity, reclaim trust paths, in both tech and social spaces. Speak simply, act clearly, hashtag wisely with intention is a working path, please use this.
On this path, It is important for the progressives and radicals to come together and focus on real issues and the challenges facing society, rather than fighting among ourselves. To find this balance between being “nice” and being “nasty” is key to being effective about lasting social change.
The #hashtags embody a story and worldview rooted in a progressive and critical perspective on technology and society. By highlighting the destructive impact of neoliberalism (#deathcult) and consumer capitalism (#fashernista) on our shared lives, while promoting the original ideals of the World Wide Web and early internet culture (#openweb).
The #closedweb critiques the for-profit internet and its harmful social consequences, while #4opens advocates for transparency, collaboration, and open-source principles in tech development.
The #geekproblem tag draws attention to a dysfunctional cultural tendency in tech: where geeks, absorbed in their tools and logic, overlook the broader social effects of their creations. This feeds into #techshit, where layers of unnecessary complexity pile up, further distancing people from tech’s social roots. Meanwhile, #encryptionists critiques the knee-jerk reaction that “more encryption” is always the answer, reinforcing control and scarcity, rather than liberating people and community.
Together, hashtags tell a loose, coherent and powerful story. They call for a more humane, collaborative, and transparent approach to both technology and society.
#nothingnew asks whether constant innovation is the right path — or if we need to slow down and improve what already works.
#techchurn names the cycle of flashy, redundant tech that fails to solve core issues.
#OMN and #indymediaback point toward an Open Media Network — and a revival of the radical, decentralized media that once rivalled corporate media on the early web.
#OGB stands for Open Governance Body, an invitation to practice grassroots, transparent, community-led decision-making.
It’s an ambitious, needed path, to build and grow social tech that “fails well”, meaning they fail in a way that can be fixed by the people, through trust and collective action, not closed-source patches and corporate updates, that are control not community. The #OMN’s focus is human-first. Tech comes second, as a mediator, a tool, not the destination.
Yes, the #geekproblem is real. Technical expertise becomes a gatekeeping mechanism. But tech can also empower, if we design for simplicity, accessibility, and community-first paths and values. The only working path is simple, trust-based, and human. That’s why we keep coming back to #KISS.
Why haven’t we been doing this for the last 10 Years? Over the past decade, we’ve lived in a state of quiet paralysis. Climate change, ecological collapse, technological overreach, all of it loomed. And instead of digging in to work on solutions, we froze. Well-meaning people chose fear over action. Understandably. But fear is a poor foundation for building anything sustainable.
We’re not on this site to only blame – we’re here to compost. The problem? We stopped critiquing, we stopped examining the tools in our hands. Not only that, we bought into the illusion that #NGO paths and tech would save us. That shiny apps and startup culture could greenwash a better future. And when the results disappointed, we turned inward, stopped questioning, and left things to rot.
So now, can that rot be composted? By using the #4opens – open data, open code, open standards for open governance, we have a practical framework to call out and compost the layers of #techshit that have built up. Tech that divides us, tech that distracts us, tech that damages the planet and calls it progress. Yep, like gardening, composting takes time, it smells at first, it’s messy. But give it care, and you get soil – to plant better ideas in, soil for hope.
One of the reasons we haven’t made progress is the #geekproblem, a narrow slice of technically-minded culture made up of (stupid)individuals, which so far have dominated the design and direction of our tools. They, sometimes, mean well, but in their obsession with technical elegance and “solutions,” they’ve sidelined the social and the ecological. What’s left is a brittle, sterile infrastructure, constantly churning out newness without any substance.
Meanwhile, #stupidindividualism has flourished, encouraged by #dotcons social media systems built for engagement, not connection. These silos encourage performance over solidarity, branding over community, and endless scrolling over doing. We’ve all felt it.
And most activist groups, instead of resisting this tide, drank the #NGO poison, chased funding, watering down their goals, professionalizing their resistance until it became another logo in a funding application. We’ve lost a decade to fear, distraction, and capture.
But it’s maybe not too late, we have the tools, in the #ActivityPub based #Fediverse. We have the frameworks, the #4opens can guide us to rebuild with transparency, collaboration, and care. The hashtags like #geekproblem, #techshit, #nothingnew, and #OMN give us a shared vocabulary for critique and regeneration. They point to a web where people, not platforms, hold power, and where technology serves life, not control. Let’s stop being afraid to critique, stop outsourcing responsibility and get on with composting.
Because that’s where the soil of a better path will come from.
It’s worth remembering that, in the current political mess, the right-wing and the so-called centre are extremists.
They are insisting that endless growth on a finite planet is “realistic,” that widening inequality is “natural,” that ecological collapse can be managed by markets, and that social breakdown is an acceptable cost of doing business. It’s constant crisis management, coercion, and denial of material reality.
What’s labelled “left-wing” is generally moderate: the belief that people should be able to meet their basic needs, that cooperation works better than competition for shared survival, and that systems should serve society rather than extract from it.
The Overton window has been dragged to exploitation and collapse that proposing care, restraint, and collective responsibility is framed as radical, when it’s the minimum required for any stable future.
Seen this way, extremism isn’t in change and challenge. It’s insisting that a failing system must continue at all costs.
Ideas please what we can practically do to compost our #fashionistas? The “social./bill-of-rights” is a fresh example of a well-meaning but toothless attempt at defining ethical tech. It’s the same process and project as the existing #4opens, but framed in a way that’s more palatable to liberal and capitalist interests. The difference? The #4opens isn’t an appeal to values, it’s a functional way of judging, thus pushing change and challenge to developers and projects. #KISS
For those who actually want to build a better #openweb, the real work is here: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens Its basic, base off #nothingnew#FOSS – We really don’t need another set of guidelines that sound good but change nothing. What we need is accountability and practical tools that push projects directly to align with the open principles they sometimes claim to support.
The #4opens isn’t an ideal, it’s a framework for action.
If a project doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, it’s not open.
The hashtag #nothingnew comes to mind, but diversity is not necessarily bad, diversity in approaches is good, but fragmentation isn’t. To fix this these initiatives need to be linked together in a meaningful way, rather than diluted into disconnected efforts. This is basic #openweb thinking, connect, build, and push back against the corporate creep. If the #deathcult of #neoliberal tech has taught us anything, it’s that soft reforms lead to endless co-option. The effective path to take is through grassroots accountability and practical, enforceable openness #KISS
It’s not sin to have to submit to the #dotcons overlords – we all do it, whether we like it or not. Just recently, I found myself installing that vile spyware known as #Whatsapp because this was the only way to talk to the people I needed to talk to. That bitter swipe to hide the app from view brought a momentary sense of agency, but the reality remains: we are still failing at building out the #openweb that normal people find useful and really use in everyday life.
The needed question is: why? It’s too easy blaming users, after all, if they just cared more, if they just tried harder to use open tools, we wouldn’t be in this mess. But let’s be honest: this isn’t on them, the fault lies with the so-called “open developers” who have spent the last 20 years failing to make open tools actually work in usefull ways for normal people. And before anyone objects, yes, I’ve been in the trenches, I’ve been building, testing, promoting, and using these tools for decades, i’ve seen what works, and more often, what doesn’t.
The truth is stark: “open development” is too often a dead end and few of the current paths are going anywhere useful. There are way to meany dysfunctional ecosystems of half-built projects, overcomplicated interfaces, and insular communities that gatekeep instead of welcoming. Meanwhile, the #dotcons corporate silos grow stronger, locking out alternatives at every turn. And what do the open devs do? They tinker endlessly on the backend, build for themselves rather than for real people, and when questioned they retreat into identity purity rather than engaging in practical bridge-building. The #geekproblem is not just one of incompetence, it’s one of misplaced priorities and an aversion to social reality.
Control vs. Trust is the divide, at the heart of the #geekproblem lies a misunderstanding of social dynamics. Where the #OMN sees the solution as building bridges, the dominant geek mindset sees it as erecting gates. A gate is about control: who gets in, who stays out, who holds the keys. A bridge is about trust: connecting communities, facilitating movement, and breaking down barriers. Yet, the geek worldview, is deeply shaped by corporate structures, #neoliberal ideology, and a toxic engineering mindset, defaults to control every time.
This is why open projects fail, they mimic the structures of the #dotcons without the resources to sustain them. They chase security and rigidity at the expense of usability and social flow. Then see failure as an inevitable technical problem, rather than a failure of community engagement and human-centred design. And worst of all, they refuse to recognize that openness isn’t just about code, it’s about social process. So what needs to change:
Stop only building for yourself, the #openweb won’t be rebooted by developers coding for their own niche needs and narrow interests. For grow, the open path needs to serve real people, communities in real contexts.
Embrace messiness, if it’s not messy, it’s very likely not worth doing. The corporate mindset is about tidiness and control, the #openweb must be about adaptability and flexibility.
Then there is leaky by design – data and communication should leak in ways that benefit social needs, but yes, not in ways that only serve the surveillance economy. We have to focus, locking everything down means locking serendipity out.
Bridge, don’t block: Instead of obsessing over identity purity, we need to build pragmatic solutions that work alongside existing tools while providing clear alternatives.
Trust as the foundation: The default state of open networks should be trust, not fear. We have seen where the obsession with security leads, it builds walls instead of communities.
#KISS is the paths, a good place to start is with the principles of the #OMN and #4opens. These aren’t abstract theories; they’re rooted in decades of radical tech and media movements that worked, before they were systematically ignored and buried by the rising tide of centralized control.
It’s time to stop pretending the current model will somehow fix itself, it won’t. We need to look back, dig up the roots, and start again, not with another doomed attempt at technical perfection, but with a renewed commitment to social usability, community-first development, and a radical rejection of the failed control-based mindset.
The alternative is simple: keep failing, keep watching the #openweb erode, and keep making excuses while we all install the next piece of #dotcons spyware just to stay connected. The choice is ours, and the time to act is now.
Our #geekproblem needs to think about this “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”
This applies to code too, the social structures developers work inside shape the problems they see, the solutions they build, and the assumptions buried in the code.
You don’t escape politics by writing software. You often just hide the politics inside the software.
Radical movements are too often their own worst enemies. The push/pull between the desire for real change and the gravitational pull of #mainstreaming feed the #stupidindividualism that keeps people locked into conservative, performative loops. These loops are not accidental, they are the result of movements that to often shift focus to prioritize (invisible) ideological purity, insular “safety” subcultures, and a morbid reverence for past failures over the messy, unpredictable work of building living alternatives.
It’s easier to mimic revolution than to risk anything for it. People cosplay as radicals, reenacting historic struggles, as if performing the gestures of revolt is enough to topple ongoing systems of oppression. The rituals of protest, the left pamphleteering, and the echo chambers of online discourse imposed as safe spaces to play at rebellion without any actual danger of dismantling and rebuilding the world as it is.
The #mainstreaming path is insidious. It draws radical energy into a cycle of visibility and co-option, the movements become symbolic representation not material transformation. Meanwhile, #stupidindividualism fractures collective power, as people mistake dogma for meaningful action. The result? A self-policing culture where standing out, innovating, or questioning sacred paths is treated as betrayal not (rev)evolution.
It’s very basic history that radical breakthroughs happen when people break these loops. An example I keep bringing up is the early #Indymedia, an example of when people embraced uncertainty and acted as if the world could be different, not just talked about it. These moments weren’t perfect, and most collapse under internal contradictions, but they proved that stepping beyond lifestyle/ideological safety nets is possible.
This is where the #OMN come I as a real path, that, by creating decentralized, native #4opens networks for storytelling and organizing, we build infrastructures that resist the gravitational pull of mainstream capture. Instead of reinforcing ideological bubbles, we make space for radical plurality, a compost heap where competing ideas decay and fertilize new growth. The goal isn’t another subculture; it’s a living, breathing movement capable of evolving while still linking and bridging to the wider world.
One thing to keep in mind is that these people largely think they are good people, doing the best they can in the world as it is. And will become upset and very #spiky defensive when pointing at them on their knees prostrate worshipping. Like they said in the seminar, “I don’t know what to do about this”. I don’t think most of us do.
The Clarendon Lectures 2025 – Designing the Future: Multidisciplinary perspectives on designing better futures
Systems thinking challenges traditional approaches to management research and practice. In this second Clarendon event, Tima Bansal engages in conversation with academics in #Oxford who are integrating research and practice with the ambition to co-create futures rather than simply analysing solutions.
An outsider, polemical look at this event: Most university panels have a #NGO-thinking academic for process box-ticking. This is the representation of the fluffy side of #mainstreaming social change. This lettuce person is at best a #fluffy careerist and at worst a #NGO parasite. If there is any content at all, it’s box-ticking to create the illusion of consent and goodwill.
Then the meat of the business school is the worship of the #deathcult — people climbing the gravestones of hierarchy in the shiny, crumbling mausoleums. Even then, it’s mostly careerist. This one is talking about embedding in more fluffy NGO groups to build their story. It’s all about community and relationships. She lets go of the ego she pushed first, to step back to embed. No idea what the outcome of her work is — it’s all process. She ends with a call for nature and holism, the world her work destroys.
The currency is theory; on this, the business school is completely bankrupt from an academic point of view — not to get into the subject of morals, let alone basic human survival. She says they push their content out into science journalism, as these people are not able to judge the value of abstract academic work.
The next is an accounting bureaucrat, who does mention the green limits. He touches on the real and talks about the language in documents of bureaucratic regulation. He says it’s a mess and doesn’t know what to do. Trusting what companies say is not going to be enough. You need to change the economic relationships, and changing this is very difficult — and it’s currently simply not working.
The summing-up person is excited with an issue? Not sure what — no idea what she is actually saying. She is back to not talking about anything. She touches on statues and embarrassment. Finally, she asks an interesting question: who is the ordinance, us or somebody else? We have no idea who?
She says we need strong institutions, as individual companies are not going to do it — they capture the levers of power and pull them to keep the mess, and money, flowing. She has no answer to this. She does mention moving past “markets” in passing for a moment.
Boundaries come up — the answer is fluff, then more substance, accounting has hard boundaries, but useful change comes from stepping outside this. Systems thinking — no answer.
These people are lost and are training up the next lost generation. It’s interesting to see that they have some understanding of this, but it’s looking like they will do nothing to change it.
Wine and nibbles were OK.
Talked to many of them after the event. A few said they were undercover academic “radicals” infiltrating the business colleges — which was maybe a tiny bit true, or not. The students I talked to were blank and staying in academia.
The “consultants” were interested and animated; they found it a little shockingly invigorating to have a counter-culture conversation.
To sum up, mostly hopeless. I am always surprised the place doesn’t stink of rotting zombies, a metaphor, maybe? They need some real content… they really need some real content, but you get the strong feeling that they are not even going to change until the Thames is flowing up under the nearby railway bridge. Even then, there will be calls for more sandbags while talking more about careers — all they know — but underneath this, they have the fear that these careers will likely not exist.
This is it. What to do?
It’s a bleak cycle: academics pump out theory to feed the chatting classes, who in turn guide the #fashernista, spinning ever more refined justifications for the status quo. The echo chamber reverberates with hollow soundbites while the world burns. What we end up with is a layer of intellectual manure, with no one doing the work to turn it into compost.
With projects like the #OMN social tech could be the spade that digs through this mess, breaking down the dead ideas and aerating the soil for something new to grow. But instead, we use #dotcons tech to pile up more waste. Every app, platform, and algorithm is designed to reinforce the system, not break it. The closed loops of influence, profit, and prestige just churn on.
If we want to prod this beast, one way I am working on is to embrace the disruptive potential of the #openweb. What if we built platforms that exposed the rot? Imagine public academic review systems where research couldn’t hide behind paywalls, or tools that tracked the influence of corporate funding on “objective” scholarship. There are some seeds for this, what if we grow them #4opens
Or more direct action, maybe we just crash the garden party. What if we hijacked their panels, flooded their Q&As with real questions, or set up rogue alt-conferences right outside their events? The goal isn’t destruction for destruction’s sake — it’s breaking the illusion of inevitability.
What do you think? How do we spark that shift in behaviour, that even they, softly, say we need to do.
