Tag: 4opens

The Activist History of the Web: Lessons we can learn

Over the last few decades, the web’s evolution has been shaped by competing ideals. Early on, we witnessed the shift from the “better” #closedweb corporate controlled paths to an #openweb #DIY explosion—a time when collaborative, decentralized approaches thrived. #Mainstreaming efforts to recapture this spirit failed for years, but eventually, corporate-driven dot-coms platforms captured the majority of people. Activist voices were muffled as #dotcons pushed mainstream interests, pulling away the community-driven power the web once enabled. This phase was a bait-and-switch operation, leading to surveillance capitalism and making it harder to stand up for collective, public-first internet paths.

A key aspect here is that this decline wasn’t caused by isolated figures but by broader, recurring social forces, like #fahernistas and the #geekproblem, who fell into patterns of adopting dominant narratives by failing to recognize the alt values of “native” open tech paths. As this happened, the #NGO world came in with “nice funding,” which subtly aligned activist tech initiatives with liberal, watered-down approaches. This pushed and promoted co-option over the power of change. The result was tech stagnation, with communities gradually losing their voice and control, the mess we were in 5 years ago.

The current openweb revival is due to protocols like #ActivityPub, coinciding with the rise of #web03, which was about re-implements #closedweb paths. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity, especially as the rotting of dotcons reveals the hollowness of centralization. While this #reboot has potential, it’s often bogged down by the same forces that hindered past movements. The #fahernistas focus on transient tech trends and individualistic coding projects that ignore the power of collective working, and the #web03 uncritical push of #encryption as a solution without a broader social strategy results in mountains of #techshit.

What works? Building from simple foundations: As digital activists and #DIY tech communities try to reboot the web, it’s essential to start with simplicity: #KISS principles (Keep It Simple, Stupid) offer a practical foundation. Instead of complex, flashy approaches, this mindset prioritizes clarity, accessibility, and collective agency. Each simple, intentional step creates a more durable basis to counter #mainstreaming forces.

What do we need: Self-organization tools within community are needed to reshape the path. Hashtags, for instance, have devolved into self-branding tools (fashernista), whereas they originally provided decentralized organizing power. Reclaiming these tools for grassroots purposes helps bring DIY activism to the forefront and build cohesive networks across digital paths.

What needs balance: The #VC poison of “nice funding” and #NGO co-option, are the big challenges facing the #openweb movement. Often, well-intentioned tech initiatives accept NGO money to sustain themselves, but this financial support is not neutral. The NGO world, embedded in liberal agendas, steers projects toward safe, palatable solutions that appeal to funders rather than fostering the radical shifts needed for real change. This sugar-coated poison draws tech initiatives away from their roots and into a cycle of compromise, weakening the collective power that grassroots projects depend on.

What can we do? As we look at ways to reignite a meaningful openweb, these lessons from history are crucial. Without seeing these patterns, we are repeating the same mistakes and allowing corporate and liberal to dictate the paths we take to build our shared digital commons. How we actually make this work is not obverse, but the current #fedivers reboot is a seed that is in the ground and growing.

I use the as a tool to do this as it’s simply #foss development with #openprocess added on, a useful tool to get past what people say their projects are about. And what they are actually about https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens we need tools like this to compost the piles of #techshit people keep creating, if we are to have soil to grow tech seeds of hope, like #Activertypub

The path is simple, who is coming down it with me and meany others?

The #deathcult: 40 Years of neoliberal poisoning the #openweb path

For forty years, we’ve been steeped in a dominant, and largely invisible ideology I call the #deathcult, a metaphor for the relentless spread of neoliberalism that has reshaped our social, economic, and technological systems in destructive ways. Alongside this, the rise of #dotcons (corporate, centralized tech platforms) over the past twenty years has distorted the path of the internet and #openweb, steering it away from collaboration and into monopolized, extractive business models. We’re have been living the fallout now for the last ten years: a fractured digital landscape built on artificial scarcity and closed systems. This article explores the roots of this ideological mess and touches on the return to community-oriented solutions, rooted in collective ideals, through projects like the #fediverse and a renewed openweb.

Neoliberalism, is the driver of our current crisis, is anti-social at its core, cutting shared resources and social spaces in favour of so-called “efficiency” and profit, leading to what I call in the hashtag stories the deathcult—a mindset where profit pushes over life, social well-being, and environmental health. This ideological control permeates our sense of “common sense,” bending it to fit a world where exploitation is not just tolerated but expected. With our worship, we’ve been pushed to accept social and environmental sacrifices as the price of “progress”, instead of recognizing them as a sign of systemic failure.

The #dotcons and digital enclosure of our commons. The internet was built to be an open and decentralized platform. Yet, the past two decades of “dotcom” culture transformed it into a centralized, corporate-controlled ecosystem that discourages innovation and subverts people’s and community autonomy. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon thrive by enclosing the commons, creating walled gardens where data and attention are commodities for sale and control. This shift, which we all played a role in, has stifled alternative voices and projects, pushing out grassroots initiatives in favour of profit-driven silos.

The dotcons path exploits not just users’ data but the very concept of community, turning every interaction into controlling people for private profit. At long last, we’re now seeing a response in the form of projects like the #fediverse and #activertypub, which decentralize and reclaim digital space from these corporate giants. However, without collective action and a shared vision, this new path remains under threat of co-option from these corporate interests, with #dotcons and #VC funded #threads and #bluesky both being pushed into this “commons” we have spent years opening.

On a parallel path of the last 20 years, we have been suffering from a #geekproblem: a cultural fixation within the tech community on solving social issues through purely technical means, in ways that exclude non-technical people. Encryption, for instance, is a valuable tool for privacy but isn’t a universal solution to all social or technological issues. The “more encryption” mindset neglects the importance of building trust and understanding in online communities, focusing instead on individual security in isolation.

For example, with projects like #nostr when encryption becomes the end-all solution, we’re left with technology that is impenetrable to regular people, creating more barriers than it removes. The challenge isn’t just technical; it’s social. We need to mediate the geek-centric approach with practical, accessible solutions that empower people, not only a few tech-savvy minorities.

A #KISS and #nothingnew path, can help to mediate these issues, concepts that encourage us to revisit old, tried-and-true solutions rather than reinventing the wheel in ways that add complexity. Complexity and “innovation for innovation’s sake” leads to, too much, #techshit—overly complicated tech that serves no one but its creators. The KISS path reminds us that simplicity fosters inclusivity. If we want more people to engage with the openweb, we need to create tools that prioritize accessibility and usability over complex features. The nothingnew philosophy supports this by encouraging us to look to the past for inspiration, reviving old ideas that worked instead of constantly chasing the latest #fashernista trends.

Hashtags are tools for #DIY community organization, but in this era of #stupidindividualism, hashtags get dismissed as tools for self-expression or “fashion statements” (#fashernista). Yet, hashtags can serve a deeper purpose in organizing and connecting people around shared ideas and goals. Instead of using hashtags to show off, we can use them to build flows of mutual support and collaboration. The DIY ethos is central to this: organizing from the bottom up, using digital tools to strengthen offline communities and collective action.

Embracing collective paths, one of the main issues that fractured early movements, like #indymedia, was the inability to work collectively. The culture of individualism championed by neoliberalism crept into activist spaces, weakening them from within. Reclaiming the openweb means reclaiming collective processes, where shared resources and collaborative decision-making are balanced with individual control. We need native digital spaces where communities work together, rather than being siloed into “users” isolated by individualistic platforms.

Moving forward: Composting the #Techshit. We’re now on a path to compost the tech detritus of the past two decades—the techshit accumulated through#NGO funding of misguided projects and closed systems. Just as composting turns organic waste into fertile soil, we can take the lessons of past failures to create a thriving, resilient commons reboot. By fundamentally abandoning the pursuit of artificial scarcity and focusing on shared abundance, we foster this better, more humane path.

For this to work, we need to address the #geekproblem to place as much value on social solutions as we do on technical ones, to create tech that supports community needs rather than hindering them. This path values process over product, relationships over transactions, and social well-being over profit.

Ultimately, the choice is clear: continue worshiping at the altar of the #deathcult, or support the “native” path with the openweb. The former is the path we are on now, of escalating, isolation, environmental destruction, and social disintegration, while the latter offers a chance at connection, collaboration, and resilience. This path won’t be easy, but it’s worth the effort to avoid being subsumed by the dominant, #deathcult story we repeat to ourselves.

As we work to reboot old systems and build better ones, let’s ask ourselves: What are we helping to reboot today? By choosing collective action over individualism, KISS over complexity, and cooperation over control, we can step away from the current mess and plant the seeds for hope and survival.

Lift your head, dirty your hands we have a world to plant

Community is the power we have

I understand people’s frustration. We’ve been working for decades at the forefront of social and environmental activism, particularly in the realm of tech, aiming to create change through initiatives like the and the #OMN. It’s clear that we’re addressing serious, fundamental issues—especially around how the #openweb has been captured by corporate interests with people’s use of the #dotcons.

People might misunderstand the path as less serious because they don’t grasp the depth of the critique or are overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues. They may also be caught up in their own perspectives, pushing back against ideas that challenge their comfort zones and #blinded entrenched interests.

We’re offering a radical, long-term solution to counter the #deathcult of neoliberalism and environmental collapse, yet people all too often mix up urgency and extremism. The good faith we’re extending in these discussions—despite resistance—shows we are dedication to finding real, grounded solutions, instead of surface-level fixes.

Maybe framing the conversation with clearer, step-by-step plans for practical actions might help open a few people’s eyes from their self-inflicted blindness to see the gravity of the situation without dismissing it as “too radical” or “not serious.” We are, after all, pushing for both radical and liberal coalitions to confront the massive issues of #climatechaos, #openweb, and our very real lack of collective future.

As ever, stay strong, it’s through persistence and clarity that we’ll navigate past the mess-making and onto the real work that so urgently needs doing.

PS. Please don’t be a prat about this, thanks.

Navigating the Postmodern Confusion and the Case for Common Sense

From a left-wing perspective, identity politics and class-based politics feel like competing ideologies. Identity politics focus on individual identities (race, gender, sexuality, etc.), while leftist movements emphasize collective struggle against class-based oppression under capitalism and neoliberalism. Both approaches aim to address inequality but through different paths. For the #geekproblem we can view them like competing tech standards (e.g., #Bluesky, #Nostr, #ActivityPub), in that they risk fragmenting movements unless there’s an effort to bridge them, balancing specific identity struggles with broader systemic change.

An example of this is #Postmodernism, which often leaves us questioning even the most basic aspects of life, and frankly, it can be exhausting. A recent example is the ongoing debate around biological sex. While it’s true that some people are born with disorders of sexual development, these cases are rare, just like being born colorblind or with physical disabilities. However, the overwhelming majority of the 80 billion humans that have ever lived were born from the combination of an XX and XY chromosome pairing.

The postmodern argument blurs these distinctions unnecessarily, but common sense tells us that reproduction still fundamentally relies on this biological reality. It’s not about denying people’s rights to live as they choose—people should love and live however they wish—but recognizing that certain basic truths shouldn’t be muddled by this long dead ideology. We need to move past the confusion and return to a clearer understanding of biology, while still fostering respect and dignity for all different people, regardless of how they choose to express themselves. Let’s focus on a healthier balance between respecting diversity and understanding the realities of the world we live in.

This is just one example, alongside #neoliberalisam in the economic path we have has 40 years of this mess shaping us, we need to step away from this #fashernista mess making. What would this look like?

Stepping away from the 40-year #fashernista mess shaped by consumer culture involves rejecting the shallow, surface-level trends and embracing deeper, systemic change rooted in sustainability and community. It means focusing on long-term, grassroots action instead of the trendy or performative activism that shapes us now. Practically, this would mean rebuilding independent, open media (#OMN), fostering, commons, collective ownership of resources, and rejecting the commodification of everything. It’s about creating social paths based on trust, openness, and shared values rather than profit-driven, corporate-controlled structures.

This path emphasizes:

  • Local Action: Rebuilding local communities around shared resources and sustainable practices, ensuring they operate autonomously from mainstream corporate structures.
  • Open Processes: Utilizing the as a framework to ensure transparency and collective engagement in both technology and activism.
  • Resistance to Co-optation: Staying vigilant against the dilution of radical movements by “common sense” #fashernista #NGO “market-friendly” paths which push for wider acceptance by abandoning the core values, we need to care to maintaining their original values and integrity.
  • Education and Awareness: Promoting knowledge-sharing and political education to empower people to resist superficial solutions and embrace affective and meaningful changes.

Ultimately, it’s about rewiring social values to cooperation, resilience, and ecological balance over competition, consumption, and power accumulation, It’s rebalancing our sense of self both individual and social.

From a left-wing perspective, the critique of identity politics, in the example at the beginning of this post, is that it fragments social movements by focusing on individuals or inward looking group identities rather than uniting around shared economic and outward class struggles. The #fashernista path driven by the current mess emphasizes personal identity over collective action, leading to the dilution of the solidarity needed to challenge systemic structures like neoliberalism (#deathcult). This #mainstreaming path leads to division within movements, creating competition for recognition rather than fostering collaboration and addressing structural inequalities

Let’s share the activism fire place, rather than fight over it, leaving only a cold smoky damp mess. #KISS

People often vilify and attack people in progressive projects:

  • Fear of change: Radical ideas threaten the status quo, leading to backlash.
  • Internal divisions: Disagreements within movements about strategy, purity, or priorities cause infighting.
  • Co-optation and sabotage: External forces, including media or political interests, intentionally discredit or sow discord in progressive groups.
  • Fragile egos and clashing ideals: Differing views on identity, politics, and tactics spark personal conflicts, leading to attacks.

These reflect broader social divisions and insecurities. Both of these paths are kinda progressive, but one is based on fear and the need for control, and the other on openness and building of trust paths.

#KISS

A practical path to balance the current “governance” mess in #FOSS

To build consensus processes in #FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), we need to apply principles from radical activism, embracing messy democracy and affinity group organization:

  • Messy Democracy: Encourage open discussions, differing perspectives. Keep open space for debates, ensuring that small, actionable steps are agreed upon, even if the path is not linear.
  • Affinity Groups: Small, self-organized teams focus on tasks and goals. These groups can collaborate but retain autonomy, allowing for flexibility and diverse approaches to problem-solving.
  • Focus: Start with a simple, shared purpose. Use tools like #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) to keep away from overcomplicating processes. Consensus should be loose but structured—avoid rigid hierarchies.

For example, in FOSS, we could implement a process where a proposal only moves forward if it gains a basic level of support (likes or votes), and participants have the ability to block with a justification, allowing for transparent pushback and refinement.

By fostering open processes (as in ), trust is built, and solutions remain accessible and adaptable, promoting collective decision-making while keeping things practical.

To tackle the paralysis and distrust embedded in open communities after 40 years of neoliberal (#deathcult) worship, I propose a simple consensus-building process on SocialHub using the tools already available.

Proposal:

  1. Add a prominent, reciprocal link between SocialHub and the #SWF.
  2. Use a #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) process to ensure grassroots decisions reflect community values and paths.

Process:

  • Start a discussion on SocialHub based on a simple proposal.
  • Secure 10 likes for consensus; a block requires 5 likes on an explanation.
  • Review the decision in 3 months.

This approach emphasizes participation, native tools, and trust. It balances collective decision-making while avoiding bureaucratic paths that have failed in the past, such as #Indymedia’s formalized processes. By focusing on ruff, simple consensus, we can help compost the polarizing mess, rebuild trust, and empower the community to act effectively.

Let’s avoid repeating history and start a practical path to herding cats and fostering a decentralized, balanced approach! What do you think? Any ideas on how to improve the process?

Communities Adopt #KISS Tools, Not Technologies

Communities don’t adopt digital technologies—they adopt #KISS tools. People don’t think about TCP/IP or HTTP when browsing the web, or SMTP when sending emails. Similarly, they don’t think about #ActivityPub when using the #Fediverse. They interact with intuitive tools that simplify these layers.

One of the toughest challenges in grassroots #DIY tech is creating #FOSS tools that align with standards while offering good #UX. This isn’t just a technical issue; it’s a deeply social and political one.

The ongoing difficulty in having this conversation within #openweb and #FOSS spaces is part of the wider mess we’re in. We need to work collectively to compost this mess, what we can call the #geekproblem.

SocialHub has often tried to bridge this conversation, but there have been failures along the way. How can we do better moving forward?

Recognizing the Failure of the Center

A crucial question, that speaks to the frustration many people feel toward the ongoing crises—political, environmental, social—that is not only the failure of the center but also the collapse of the system itself. The center, blindly sees itself as a space of compromise and stability, but has been propped up for decades by a neoliberal ideology that promised endless growth, market solutions, and moderation, yet we are witnessing the disintegration of that “stability”.

Recognizing the Failure of the Center:

  • Erosion of Trust: People are aware that the centre—the moderate, mainstream establishment—has failed to deliver on its promises. Political polarization, the rise of populism, and a loss of faith in democratic institutions signal, the so-called center is unable to address the mess people face. Economic inequality, climate breakdown, and social injustice are not marginal concerns but #mainstreaming crises.
  • The System is Not Working: The underlying system—whether it’s neoliberal capitalism, representative democracy, or technocratic governance—are visibly incapable of dealing with the crises they have created and exacerbated. The #climatecrisis is intensifying, the wealth gap widens, and the erosion of civil liberties in the name of security shows that the current paths prioritizes control and profit over human well-being. Some are starting to admit that the system itself is fundamentally broken.
  • Center Did Not Hold: The idea that the path of endless growth, individualism, and market-driven solutions would bring prosperity for all, but, the reality is starkly different. The collapse of consensus politics, the weakening of institutions, and the rise of extreme right-wing movements are native to this “center” path. It could not hold because it was never stable to begin with.

Why Haven’t We Admitted It?

  • Denial of Alternatives: For the last 40 years, the mantra of #neoliberalism has been “there is no alternative” (#TINA), so as the system crumbles, people and institutions cling to the belief that it’s the only path. This ideological blindness has so far prevented the meaningful change we need from taking root, as alternatives are either dismissed as utopian or subverted into market-friendly forms.
  • Fear of Uncertainty: The collapse of the system brings with it the fear of uncertainty. People, even those disillusioned with the status quo, fear what might come next when the system fails. This fear manifests as apathy, #blocking or retreat into isolation, the scale of the problems seems overwhelming.
  • Perpetuation by the few greedy, nasty people who “benefit”. The #deathcult worship still works—though only for a small, powerful few who benefit from this deteriorating  status quo. As long as they control much of the media, politics, and economy, the narrative of the center and the system’s viability will continue to be pushed. This gatekeeping prevents #KISS acknowledgment of systemic failure.

What Happens Next?

  • Collapse of “Legitimacy”: We are already witnessing a growing collapse of the respect for the priests of the #deathcult and their propping up of “legitimacy” in institutions across the globe, from governments to corporations. We can also see the rise of decentralized movements, from the #Fediverse to local grassroots activism, people are looking for alternative ways to organize outside the path that has failed them.
  • Emergence of New Stories: One of the tasks ahead is to (re)create narratives that challenge the current paths, offering visions of sustainable, cooperative, and inclusive futures. Where grassroots movements, technology, and environmental justice play a role in this shift, offering both practical solutions and different ideological frameworks that counter the fear-driven status quo.
  • Radical Imagination: Admitting the system didn’t work requires embracing a radical imagination, to think beyond the limitations of the normal political and economic paths. This means reconnecting with hope, while recognizing the balance of collective action over individualism.

In so many ways, people are already admitting the failure of the center and the “common sense” that supports this, though often not explicitly. The challenge is how to move from recognition to practical #DIY grassroots action, from seeing the collapse to building what comes next. That requires tapping into the potential in grassroots networks, tech communities, and activist spaces to foster a viable path. You can see a part of this path in the work done on the #OMN for the last ten years.

When do you think we reach a critical mass where this failure is acknowledged widely, and what role do you see for grassroots #DIY movements in driving that change?

https://opencollective.com/open-media-network

The tension, grassroots movements and #NGO paths

The is a tension between grassroots movements and #NGO paths on the #Fediverse and wider #openweb projects. From a #fluffy point of view the NGO path, while often well-intentioned, can lead to forms of imperialism where outside forces-through funding, structure, and top-down approaches—unwittingly impose their agendas on communities. These actors often don’t realize they are replicating imperialist dynamics, but the impact can be profound: displacement of native grassroots efforts, co-option of local autonomy, and prioritization of centralized goals over the organic, bottom-up “native” development of projects.

Recognizing NGO Imperialism in the Fediverse:

  • Unconscious Imperialism: Many in the NGO sector fail to recognize the harm their actions cause because they see their work as inherently “good” or “neutral.” However, when they impose structures or funding models without deep collaboration with the grassroots, it replicates patterns of control and hierarchy. Imperialism here refers to a powerful entity, organization extending its control over others, often under the guise of ‘helping’ or ‘developing’ them. On our current Fediverse path, this manifest as NGOs exerting influence on decision-making, resource distribution and governance, overriding local or native voices in the fediverse.
  • Disconnection from native spaces: One telltale sign of this mess is the lack of linking to #socialhub or other grassroots-driven projects. If a NGO or organization is bypassing the platforms where the community itself is actively discussing and governing its own spaces, it signals a disconnect from native grassroots paths. #DIY spaces like #socialhub embody open, collaborative, and bottom-up approach to governance. Linking to these spaces signals an intention to engage with the community’s self-determination rather than imposing external structures.
  • When NGO-led initiatives fail to collaborate with the grassroots, the likely outcome is #techshit—technology that doesn’t serve the needs of the community, ends up being unsustainable, and ultimately becomes #techshit to compost for future efforts. The liberal history of imperialism, especially in the last few hundred years, is full of such failed interventions. This is part of the ongoing cycle in the openweb, where obviously crap and disconnected technological solutions (often driven by #fashernista agendas) fail and must then be broken down and repurposed by those still engaged in the space, composting techshit take time and focus which is the one thing in short supply.

Balancing NGO paths with grassroots movements that create value:

  • Creating Bridges is a good path, instead of rejecting the NGO path outright, there needs to be a focus on bridging the gap. NGOs can play a role, but need to be willing to diversify power to the community and respect the self-organizing nature of grassroots movements. This requires transparency, active listening, and a commitment to open process, the .
  • LINKING: Encouraging NGO Accountability a crucial step to make NGOs understand the historical context of their actions. By encouraging more self-reflection and linking their work back to grassroots spaces, NGOs can avoid falling into patterns of imperialism and instead work at balancing better openweb’s paths which is actually, often, there core stated mission.
  • Building Native Governance, native governance is currently a black hole in #DIY spaces, this is a problem we need to work on with projects like the #OGB. This is a space where the #NGO path with its access to funding could be a very real help to fill this hole.

For Grassroots, we need those involved in the Fediverse (at best with the support of the privileged #NGO crew) to create strong, independent governance models (like the #OGB) that are needed to push back against co-option. By making sure these paths are, built, linked and visible, it becomes easier to hold a healthy balance in place to bridge understanding without compromising autonomy. This approach preserves the Fediverse’s native path, ensuring it stays rooted in the ethos of trust, collaboration, and openness, the core values of the openweb itself.

By composting what doesn’t work and nurturing what does, we can continue to cultivate a healthier, more resilient network for the change and challenge we need for a liveable future. What steps do you think could be most effective in initiating this dialogue between NGOs and grassroots paths without compromising the integrity of grassroots spaces?

Not domination, the cultivation of many efforts, collectively, lead to significant change

We need a metaphor-rich vision for planting “gardens of hope” instead of falling into the trap of fear-based ideologies, as this “trust” path offers a profound way to rethink activism. By moving away from the factory-like, large-scale approaches that dominated much of the 20th century, we can focus on advocating for small, vibrant, community-focused projects that feed not just political outcomes but the spirit and imagination of those involved. This nurturing of hope, rather than a reactionary stance based on fear, can be a powerful antidote to both right-wing and left-wing stagnation.

How to escape the “straitjacket of fear” a first step is recognizing fear-based cycles. This is currently the dominate social path of contemporary politics, both right and left operates on fear. Understanding this cycle and making it more visible is the first step toward composting this mess we live in on the #mainstreaming path. Activist movements as well do fall into reactionary patterns, continuously responding to crises rather than building positive alternatives.

There is a central role for grassroots media: Librarians, historians, and grassroots media makers are essential for documenting, archiving, and telling the stories of hope that are often forgotten. This is critical for escaping the activist memory hole. Curating and sharing the successes of past movements, we provide the building blocks for new projects. The #OMN has a project for this, #makeinghistory, a tool to create open archives, digital networks, and libraries dedicated to past and present activist movements. These archives can focus on what worked and why, so future movements can learn from them.

With these tools we can start to composting failures, particularly those based on fear, which then become the compost that nourishes future projects. Rather than seeing these failures as losses, they become resources that fertilize new growth. A practical step for this is encouraging transparency in activist circles about what didn’t work, and build spaces for reflection and critique.

Gardens instead of factories, a shift from large, impersonal systems to smaller, community-based, human-scale networks and projects. These gardens are not just metaphorical, they represent real, localized efforts to create change to challenge the current mess. Let’s focus on launching many small projects rather than one big, one path. Use tools like the to encourage unity in this diversity, experimentation at the grassroots level, where communities can grow organically and learn from each other. These “gardens” could be physical spaces, like urban farms or community centers, or they could be digital networks fostering open dialogue and collaboration. We can use technological federation to scale horizontally, as we know this works after the last 5 years of the #fediverse.

The is a core role for storytelling as nourishment, in these gardens, the stories we tell are as important as the physical outcomes. Stories inspire, sustain, and spread hope. Media bees, buzzing around and pollinating, represent the crucial role of communication in activism (#indymediaback). Let’s make storytelling central to every project. Whether through podcasts, blogs, social media, or video, ensure that every small success is documented and shared. This is basic linking to spread a culture of hope.

Pests as balance, just as gardens need a balance of insects and pests, movements need their challenges to stay healthy. This means embracing the struggles and pushback that inevitably comes, without letting them derail the movement. Accept conflict as part of the process. Instead of viewing internal or external challenges as wholly negative, see them as opportunities to strengthen the movement and build its resilience.

Planting 100s of gardens, rather than trying to create one monolithic left-wing solution, advocate for planting hundreds of small projects. This is a native path to build a body of knolage, myths, traditions and lessons about what works and what doesn’t. This decentralized approach aligns with the creation of affinity groups and grassroots organizing. Let’s focus on diversity in both method and scale. Some might be focused on local food production, others on tech solutions, media, or community care. The key is to document and share what works in each context. So we can start to build the common bridges that we need to hold us together during the onrush crises.

This strategy avoids the trap of overwhelming scale that can easily lead to burnout or co-option by #mainstreaming forces. The goal is not domination but the cultivation of many efforts that, collectively, lead to significant change. This approach is more sustainable, more adaptable, and more rooted in human connections and hope.

Let’s help people build grassroots communities in this fertile time for tech change and challenge

The #KISS framing of left and right as driven by emotional motivators—fear for the right and trust for the left—could be used as a simple, powerful tool to influence current #openweb paths and projects, especially amid the current pressures of #mainstreaming. By simplifying the underlying social dynamics, it helps cut through ideological complexities and focuses on the core emotional drivers behind decisions and structures. This will act as a guiding principle to shape how grassroots projects navigate the ongoing cycle of breakdown and renewal.

Trust is the foundation for collaboration, native projects in the openweb space thrive on trust-based collaboration. If we focus on this as a core value, we create affinity groups and networks that operate with openness, transparency, and a sense of shared purpose. This is in contrast to mainstream pressures that rely on fear-driven, control-oriented models (e.g., paywalls, exclusivity, or centralized decision-making). Practical Step, foster spaces where trust is built through process, a tool to cement this path in place. The focus on trust strengthens community bonds and keeps grassroots projects resilient against the constant “common sense” mainstream co-option.

We need to recognize fear-based structures so we can counter them. Mainstreaming pressures often introduce fear-driven structures (e.g., security concerns, exclusivity, monetization) under the guise of progress or sustainability. By identifying and naming these paths, grassroots people can resist the pull toward control-oriented paths and emphasize open, inclusive solutions. Practical Steps, analyses current openweb projects, identifying where fear-driven control mechanisms are creeping in. This could be as simple as asking, does this decision come from a place of trust or fear?

By using this simple path, affinity groups can form based on shared values, making it easier for people to align around common goals without getting bogged down by complex political debates. This grows organic collaboration and keeps the focus on productive action, rather than reactive division. Some practical first steps to take, would be trust building initiatives, for example creating open governance networks like the #OGB, and pushing for the wider use of FOSS tools. This approach can build momentum in the face of mainstreaming pressures.

Reclaiming the openweb path, the influx of mainstream people into the openweb reboot can feel overwhelming, but if grassroots projects focus on their native paths, they can create alternative spaces that resist the control-oriented, fear-based agenda as it tries to take root. By framing this struggle in emotional terms, it becomes easier to rally people around these #KISS ideas. A practical step is to frame this struggle not in terms of ideology but as a battle between fear and trust. People can easily grasp these emotional drivers, making the cause more relatable and less abstract. It becomes about protecting spaces of openness where people feel empowered, rather than driven by fear and control. And can help prevent paralysis in the face of complexity. Trust, openness, and collaboration should always be the focus, while fear, control, and exclusion should be recognized as threats to the native path.

Core to this is the creation of affinity groups around simple principles that are resistance to fear, crews that focus on pushing back against control-oriented features, especially in projects facing mainstreaming pressures. These groups can form the backbone of a renewed grassroots movement, even as the larger openweb undergoes changes. They can act as pillars of trust, providing stable spaces for experimentation and collaboration while resisting the fear-driven forces commercializing and enclose the commons. Let’s work together to help people build grassroots communities in this fertile time for tech change and challenge.

The #mainstreaming is always filled with imperialism, we need to mediate this mess making

The imperialism visible in FediForum is a part of the broader critique of the culture surrounding it, that can help to highlight a core issue in the evolution of the openweb and grassroots activism: the tension between #mainstreaming (enclosure) and grassroots commons (open, decentralized commons paths).

The Cultural Divide, the culture around FediForum is #NGO and #liberal, #dotcons-friendly, a path that tends to centralize control and enclosure, even in discussions about decentralization. The use of #closedsource tools like Zoom and Eventbrite highlights this contradiction. This cultural divide is significant, grassroots communities, including those on SocialHub, reject participation in spaces dominated by tools and processes that contradict the values. While this isn’t necessarily about whether the individuals involved are “good or bad,” it’s crucial to acknowledge the cultural influence of #NGO and corporate models, that seek to enclose and professionalize what should remain a grassroots, commons-based path, we need to do this so as not to simply end up enclosing the commons in ignorant “common sense” paths. Now that’s a mouth twister 😉

Lack of a Bridge, suggests a commons-oriented solution—a bridge between these two cultural approaches through transparent linking and collaboration between different projects (e.g., FediForum and SocialHub) which would respect the decentralized nature of the #openweb. I personally talk to them about this at the first event, unfortunately, this advice was ignored, and the #NGO path continued, leading to the ideological exclusion of grassroots participants who have been building the Fediverse and the openweb for years at this paywalled event


The is useful to highlight what for meany people is an invisible, thus unimportant divide:

Applying the framework is a helpful way to assess the project’s alignment with the openweb’s foundational values. Here’s a quick DRAFT breakdown of how FediForum fares:

Open Data: They are somewhat open, using Creative Commons licenses and publishing event videos openly, but the paywall during the events limits input and participation, reducing the openness. Partial TICK.

Open Source: The CMS might be FOSS, but the reliance on closed-source platforms for the events themselves (Zoom, Eventbrite) contradicts the open-source ethos. Half TICK or none.

Open Industrial Standards: Limited to some RSS feeds, but the integration of proprietary platforms makes it hard to give full credit here. No TICK.

Open Process: Organizing is closed, with paywalled events, though the unconference format allows for more open discussions. However, the ideological closure to many grassroots participants remains. Half TICK.

At best, this makes FediForum a bronze project with significant room for improvement. At worst, it’s not aligned with the , thus the #openweb at all.

Moving Forward, what’s missing is a mediation space where these different paths can intersect without one side dominating the other. This space could look like the #OGB with each participant being an affiliate stakeholder https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody

The path that keeps “commons” open is activism, which is about making it hard for these values to be ignored. In this case, we could start this by pushing for the adoption of simple steps like linking and transparency (#KISS). This can begin to rebuild bridges that better reflects the diverse contributions of all involved, without closing doors on those who helped build it in the first place.

Is #fediforum a #4opens project?

This is a DRAFT as have not looked at this project deeply for a while.

Look past what they say, look at what they do .

The are a simple way to judge the value of an “alt/grassroots” tech project.

* Open data – is the basic part of a project. Without this openness, they cannot function. Open data is essential for transparency and collaboration.

- The are pretty open on this and use CC license, the are some RSS feeds. But input into the events is paywalled so closed, after the event videos are published as open. A full TICK or a half TICK

* Open source – refers to “free software.” This keeps development healthy by increasing interconnectedness and fostering serendipity. Open licences, such as Creative Commons. Open source FOSS encourages collaboration and innovation.

- am not sure what CMS they use but likely #FOSS. They use a a mashup of closed source #dotcons for the events. Half TICK or non?

* Open “industrial” standards – are foundational for the open internet and WWW Open standards ensure interoperability and compatibility, enabling diverse systems to work together seamlessly.

The are some RSS feeds on the sites but this is it, the #dotcons used for the events make this hard to give a tick so no TICK

* Open process – is the most nebulous part but crucial for collaboration and trust. Examples include wikis and activity streams. Open process ensures that project workflows are transparent and participatory.

- the organizing of events and process to organize the events are closed, the events themselves being unconferences are open. But are paywalled so ideologically closed to meany people.

Half a TICK to be positive

It’s easy to become a project and join the #openweb path:

2 opens: Bronze badge
3 opens: Silver badge
4 opens: Gold badge

So we have a wide spread for this project at worst, not a project with one TICK at best a bronze project with 2 TICKS that needs improvement.

DRAFT