It’s good to see more people turning their focus back to the #openweb. For the past five years of the #reboot we’ve been distracted in a signal-to-noise mess from the #fashionistas. That time needs to be over, we need to start looking clearly at both internal rot and the external threats.
A good first step is in balancing the realisation that we actually have far more direct power to deal with the internal mess than we do over the eternal #dotcons and their #closedweb “common sense”. That’s why we need to put activism into composting the internal #blocking (see: https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=compost). Composting isn’t just a metaphor – it’s a way to recycle the piles of #techshit we’ve built up into soil that can grow new #openweb seeds. #KISS
I understand the focus on the external #dotcons, yes, we also need to keep pushing back against the external enclosures. But inside our own spaces, it’s clear that possessiveness, in code, in reputation, in control over projects, undermines cooperation. It destroys trust, it wastes resources, it corrodes integrity. People often destroy what they love, not out of hate, but out of possession.
Drafting blog posts, polemics, and rallying calls to sharpen the #OMN narrative. Use the compost metaphors (#techshit, seeds, soil) into accessible messaging that sticks. Editing to transform the long posts into shareable, short-form content for Mastodon, Fediverse, and allied networks.
Curating and organizing existing #OMN writings into a structured wiki-style knowledge base. Building summaries, FAQs, and primers for newcomers who hit the projects cold. Draft “composting guides” – how to deal with #blocking, #fashionistas, and #geekproblem inside communities.
Writing simple documentation for the Unite Forge and other #OMN tools. Helping draft roadmaps that explain what’s built, what’s missing, and what needs contributors. Produce explainers on why #OMN is different from #dotcons and #NGO capture, grounded in #4opens.
Write out templates for horizontal decision-making (#OGB style) that projects can adapt. Suggest practical ways to “compost” blockers while keeping the wider network fertile. Help draft neticate rooted in #KISS + #4opens rather than #NGO-speak.
Each of these can be grown into living resources: wiki pages, blog posts, shareable guides, or activist toolkits – depending on where you want the energy to flow.
The geek answer (bad faith or blindness): “If only everyone learned to code, then society would be fairer.”
The activist answer: Code is part of the landscape, but culture, governance, and lived practice matter more. We don’t escape domination by teaching more people to type commands, we escape by changing what we do together with the tools.
Why “teach everyone to code” has become a dead-end slogan – it’s been tried, it’s been funded, and yet it hasn’t shifted power one bit. If anything, it’s reinforced the tech priesthood instead of breaking it.
The #geekproblem is exactly this blindness: geeks mistake tools for culture, skill for power, and training for change. They can’t see that the last 20 years of “learn to code” projects have failed precisely because they sidestep politics, trust, and social fabric. It’s comfortable, because it keeps power where it already is.
So, coding literacy might be useful, but it’s not transformative without social literacy – trust, collective governance, open processes. The real activist social tech path is to compost geek mess-making and build alt-cultures where tools serve the collective, not the priesthood.
Otherwise, “coding for all” is another flavour of #blocking – keeping us stuck, distracted, and blind. This is a useful example of the blinded #geekproblem. I use the word blinded to illustrate that people can’t see the sense in front of their faces. And I use the hashtag #blocking to show the outcome of this common “sense” blindness #KISS
Coding is not automatically social power, but in some contexts it does act as power, and understanding when/why helps unpack the #geekproblem.
When coding is not power
Most coding done in industry is low-level labour: writing scripts, fixing bugs, maintaining old systems. These programmers aren’t powerful; they’re workers. Their code serves capital.
Teaching kids to code (“everyone can make an app!”) rarely translates to actual power, because the infrastructure, distribution, and governance of platforms remain controlled by corporations.
Coding on its own doesn’t equal voice. A line of code in a corporate repo is no more socially powerful than a line in a personal diary if the person coding has no agency over how it’s used.
When coding is power
Coding becomes power when it bridges infrastructure + governance + culture.
Building #openweb infrastructure: If you can write the protocols or standards (e.g. ActivityPub, TCP/IP), you shape the possibilities for everyone downstream. That’s a kind of structural power.
Gatekeeping: If you control the codebase of a popular project, you can decide what features exist, whose contributions get merged, and which voices are excluded. This is soft but real power.
Automation and scale: Writing code that automates tasks (e.g. bots, algorithms, moderation tools) gives leverage over many people’s experience, especially when hidden in the background.
Narrative + legitimacy: In activist or grassroots spaces, coders too often get treated as “high priests” because they appear to have magical abilities others lack. This cultural framing inflates their social weight.
Coders confuse technical power with social change. They think: “If I can write the tool, I can fix the politics.” But tools reflect cultures. Without collective governance, tools just reproduce existing hierarchies.
The illusion of inevitability: because software underpins modern life, geeks assume society must organize around them. That blindness is what we’re pointing to.
When geeks push “everyone must code” as the path, they miss that most people don’t need to code to have power, they need agency in decision-making and trust networks.
How it really works (coding + social power)
Coding has power when embedded in movements that control their infrastructure. Example: early #Indymedia coders had real social power because their code directly enabled publishing outside corporate media – and at the start they were accountable to activist collectives.
Coding has power when it’s used to mediate flows of attention, trust, and resources. For example, algorithms that boost or bury voices. In grassroots hands, that can be liberatory; in corporate hands, it’s oppressive.
Coding becomes shared power when it is paired with open process (#4opens), shared governance (#OGB), and cultural literacy. Otherwise, it’s generally more priesthood, likely for the #deatcult in the end.
So: coding is like fire. On its own, it’s just heat and light. In the hands of a few, it’s a weapon or a fortress. In the commons, with shared tending, it’s the hearth – collective power.
To recap, coding as social power: Myth vs Reality
Myth 1: Coding = empowerment We’ve been told that “if everyone learns to code, everyone will have power.” Twenty years of coding bootcamps, “learn to code” initiatives, and school programs prove otherwise. Most of this simply trains people to slot into corporate pipelines. The power stays where it always was.
Reality: Coding on its own is labour, not empowerment. The infrastructure, governance, and distribution layers decide where the power flows. Without culture and collective governance, coding is just fuel for someone else’s engine.
Myth 2: Coding makes you special Coders often act like priests, holding secret knowledge. In activist spaces, this creates the illusion that coders alone can “save” or “lead.” That’s the #geekproblem in action.
Reality: Tools are only as powerful as the cultures and processes around them. A coder without collective accountability is just another gatekeeper. A coder inside a collective, with open governance (#4opens, #OGB), can help shift power outward.
Myth 3: Coding will fix politics The geek fantasy: “If I build the right app, the politics will fix itself.” We’ve seen this with countless “alternative platforms” that end up reproducing the same hierarchies.
Reality: Politics is culture, trust, and process. Code can mediate, amplify, or automate, but it cannot replace politics. Tools without culture are empty shells; culture without tools is still possible.
The compost view is the task isn’t to make everyone a coder, but to compost the priesthood and grow cultures where coding is a part of the collective. That’s the #KISS answer: code can support social power, but it is not social power.
Build cultures, not just tools: Stop pretending apps fix politics. Tools only matter if they grow inside strong cultures. Put people first, tech second.
Open the process (#4opens): Keep everything open: code, data, governance, strategy. Power hides in shadows; openness dissolves the priesthood. If it’s not open, it’s not our path.
Practice collective governance (#OGB): It helps when decisions about infrastructure are made more horizontally. Coders are part of the collective, not above it. Shared governance turns coding from priesthood into common fire.
The path out of the #geekproblem is in composting geek blindness and building living cultures where coding is a part of growing the commons.
For an example, this post is relevant to the degeneration of the #SocialHub project, which for meany years was the place for #ActivityPub and #Fediverse#openweb reboot, but now what’s left of the social side is the few remaining active unthinking “problem” people.
This is a normal path and outcome, that we need to compost to keep growing seeds #KISS
Most of the mess, and most of the #blocking, comes down to the same old story – ownership and control. Who holds the keys? Who decides? Who gets locked out? Instead of wrestling in that cage, the #OMN takes a simpler path: we walk away.
We put a class of media into the commons, governed openly through the #4opens: open data, open process, open source, and open standards. That means no one can close it down, hoard it, or fence it off for profit. The value comes from the shared pool, not from gatekeeping.
This is the heart of #KISS in the #OMN: make the flows work first, in ways people can understand, and build trust on top of that. The tech exists to serve these flows, not to dictate them. This isn’t about perfect crypto or hard lockdowns; it’s about commoning media so that everyone has the right to read, share, and build on it.
Yes, the #mainstreaming mess will eventually follow us – as it always does. But the plan and hope is that by the time it catches up, the habits, culture, and expectations we’ve grown around open media will have shifted society enough that the old traps won’t work the same way. If we’ve done our job, the default will be more open, collaborative, and accountable, not locked down. That’s the #KISS path: simple, resilient, and grounded in the commons.
On the #OMN with #indymediaback and #makeinghistory paths – We’re not talking about a single bridge, but a federated ecosystem, with the current example of both #DAT and #ActivityPub running on the same server, sharing a common database of media objects. As the data flows, text and metadata are redundantly stored in the open (#4opens). That way, if one server gets hacked, it can simply be rolled back and restored from the wider pool. #KISS
The P2P side works much like #nostr in that it can have a list of flows in and out to servers and can use any of these to publish and receive media on the #openweb. The advantage of the #p2p app side is that each local app in a backup for the online servers (see #makeinghistory), which as critics say can be, and will be, taken down some times. Also, they will work in their own right for people who need a more locked down path, and this will be needed in more repressive spaces and times. The clear advantage is this still gives them outflows to the wider #mainstreaming client server media outreach, to what matters, effect, so it ticks both boxes.
We aim to solve technical issues with human-understandable social paths, not hard tech for its own sake. Yes, in a minority of cases hard tech will be needed – but that’s for the #geeks to solve after the working social paths are clear, not before.
We fix problems through #KISS social processes and #4opens transparency, not by defaulting to encryption and lockdown. Hacking is outside the focus scope of the #OMN. What we’re building is about trust and flows, not code as an end in itself. Hacking belongs on the #geek paths – useful, but only after the trust and flows are established. The code should be there to secure what’s been built, not to block it before it exists.
Without trust and working flows, there’s no value at all, no matter how secure, encrypted, or elegant the tech stack. If the campaigns, activism, and people aren’t using it, the system is pointless. And being pointless is something we need to be more honest about. Building for the sake of building, while ignoring the social, community layer, feeds the #geekproblem and starves the movement.
So, what can people actually do in the real world to make this path happen?
If you have resources, you can help fund the development work – keeping it in the hands of the people actually building the open commons, not some corporate gatekeeper.
If you’re technical, you can code the applications and servers that power the flows. We need builders who understand that trust and usability come first, not shiny tech for its own sake.
If you work in UX or testing, you can make sure what we build is something real people can actually use and trust – simple, clear, and accessible.
If you do media, you can tell the story. Write, film, photograph, blog, podcast – whatever it takes to spread the word. The more people hear about an alternative that works, the more chance it has to grow.
Whatever your skills or resources, the important thing is to get involved in the flow. This is not a spectator sport, and the is unlikely to be pay, it’s #DIY so the commons will only be built if we build it together. #KISS #4opens #OMN
Activist tech has been stuck in “bunker mode” for 20 years. We now need to work on building #4opens native, commons-first systems that store, share, and protect movement knowledge in ways that don’t require a priesthood of insiders to operate.
In an active movement, forum threads, shared docs, livestreams, and photos aren’t just chat noise, they’re collective memory. If we treat them as disposable, we throw away the hard-earned lessons that future activists will desperately need. The solution is #KISS-fed, redundant, federated archiving:
All public movement data sits in the commons.
Metadata + content are mirrored across multiple federated nodes.
Backups are easy to pull, restore, and re-seed by anyone who ever has trust access.
Data is grouped via hashtags, not rigid taxonomies, so it flows where it’s needed.
This is appropriate tech: low-complexity, high-resilience, built for social utility first. But for this to grow it can’t be mediated to death by the #geekproblem – code should follow social needs, not the other way round. If we can get this kind of infrastructure running, we stop losing our history, we keep movements porous instead of paranoid, and we finally start building bridges instead of walls.
Let’s look at an example of this: For the #DAT protocol to become relevant in #FOSS activist tech, we need to stop treating it as an isolated island and start building solid bridges to #ActivityPub. The two are not enemies – they are complementary paths. p2p tools and protocols like DAT brings distributed, peer-to-peer file persistence; ActivityPub brings the social layer, discovery, and conversation. Together, they create a space where activists choose their preferred path without being siloed or alienated, and without the unhealthy isolation that comes from the current #geekproblem habit of fetishising one protocol at the expense of all others.
Diversity is the basis of any healthy ecosystem – biological, social, or technological. In nature, monocultures are fragile; in tech, monocultures are authoritarian. We need to approach activist infrastructure with the same principles that make ecosystems thrive: multiple species of tools, cross-pollination between communities, and a constant flow of ideas and resources. This doesn’t mean adding complexity for complexity’s sake; it means designing with #KISS in mind, while ensuring redundancy and adaptability.
If we take this ecological view of the #openweb, then bridges are not optional extras – they are the lifelines. In our example, by linking #DAT and #ActivityPub, we create a richer habitat for movements to live in. We make it harder for corporate capture to take root, and we give people the freedom to move between spaces without losing connection and context. That’s how we replace the bunker mentality with a real commons, not just defensive walls, but thriving, interconnected gardens.
The #OGB (Open Governance Body) isn’t built around the smooth, efficient ideals of platform logic or institutional control. It’s messy by design, because it’s rooted in real-world activist practice. It draws from the hard-won experience of protest camp organising, where consensus, affinity, and trust are the foundations of action.
The #OMN governance model we’re working with doesn’t come from corporate boards or #NGO playbooks. It comes from the mud, the rain, the late-night meetings under tarps and tents, where people work through differences because they have to – because they’re doing something together that matters. This is people-to-people trust, built over time, grounded in shared struggle. We’re not designing for online autocracy. We’re designing for affinity groups.
So yes, the #OGB is trying to do what many others won’t. Not because it’s easier (it’s not), but because it’s necessary.
We already know this kind of organising works, not in theory, but in practice. Sometimes badly, sometimes slowly, but it works. People come together, they make decisions, they take action, and they build power without needing top-down control. But we also know it doesn’t scale well – that’s always been the limit of these methods. Consensus is powerful at small scales, but it breaks under weight if there’s no structure to hold it.
The #OGB is built on the idea that the horizontal protocols of the Fediverse can scale this kind of messy, native governance, not by centralising it, but by networking it. Federation isn’t just a technical model; it’s a political one. It mirrors the way affinity groups operate: autonomous, loosely coordinated, sharing enough common ground to work together without collapsing into uniformity.
This is what we mean when we say the #OGB is native. It’s growing from within the world we’re already in – not imposed from outside. It respects mess. It embraces friction. It understands that governance isn’t something you tack on later, it’s something you live through, build with, and struggle over, together.
If we’re going to have a real #openweb, we can’t keep mimicking the logic of platforms and empires. We have to build our own paths, grounded, imperfect, resilient.
Let’s look at this from a prospective, both the W3C statement and the #OMN recognize that the early web was built with open sharing, decentralization, and public good in mind. The #W3C calls for a web “respectful of all participants,” which aligns with the #OMN goal of building an open media infrastructure based on the #4opens: open data, open source, open standards, and open process.
Where this W3C #mainstreamin alt path falls short (and why #OMN matters). The W3C vision speaks of “taking responsibility” and “addressing the impact of our work” through technical standards, but in reality, the current web’s architecture has been co-opted by centralized, profit-driven platforms (#dotcons) that dominate communication and content flow.
In reaction to this, the #OMN is grounded in the reality that technical fixes alone won’t solve these social problems, we need working activist cultures, grassroots governance, and federated media networks to actively challenge #mainstreaming and #deathcult values.
What #OMN brings is a social layer: W3C focuses on technology and ethics at the standards level. The #OMN focuses on the cultural and organizational infrastructure needed to build, sustain, and govern alternative media networks.
Scaling what worked: The W3C admits we’ve lost the “openness” to misinformation and data abuse. The #OMN is about bringing back what worked (e.g., early Indymedia, radical tech collectives) and scaling it using tools like #ActivityPub and the #fediverse.
Compost and regenerate: The W3C wants reform from within. The #OMN recognizes the need to compost the #techshit, grow anew, and create autonomous, federated spaces where community processes are native, not retrofitted.
A positive reboot (from within the #openweb), where the W3C gives us a narrative frame. The #OMN gives us a path to act. We can reclaim the web not only through better standards, but through working, lived alternatives – composting what failed, and growing based on what we know works.
We need bridging, if the W3C and groups like them are serious about rebuilding a humane web, then the #OMN path as much to offer:
A bridge to activist governance.
A working example of the Ethical Web Principles being practiced socially, not just technically.
A push for native, grassroots agency, not just safeguards built by the same #NGO centralizers who failed the first time.
Let’s do better, yes, but let’s also be native, that’s what the #OMN is about.
A thread on a different project on the same subject, “Open Source and Open Standards nerds like me ought to know by now that the protocol is the least compelling thing about a service. Who cares if your home is built using only Stallman-blessed tools, when the walls are full of rats?” https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-never-going-back-to-matrix
This post is talking in the sense of structure rather than individual experience. Let’s be honest, much of the so-called “alternative” tech scene is still stuck. Yes, we fled the #dotcons for something better, but ended up with copies of the same broken models. The #Fediverse, with all its potential, is still as often dominated by “mainstreaming meta” chat (“Twitter refugees incoming!”) or conspiracy-laden, #fashionista rabbit holes. It’s little wonder that even the nerdy privacy crowd struggles to find meaningful content or community. And no, shouting “fuck the system!” isn’t enough.
If we’re serious about systemic change, we need to do much more. The question is not if people will come, some always will, the real challenge is what they’ll find when they get here. Right now? It’s messy, insular, and missing the tools people need to use for change and challenge, let alone feel at home. We must move beyond building clones of corporate platforms and start composting the path that got us here.
This is why we need a reboot, not from scratch, but from memory. Projects like #indymediaback aim to reclaim 20+ years of working grassroots media practice. With tools like #ActivityPub we now have scalable tech that can bring those old social processes – based on #4opens (open code, open data, open governance, open standards) – into the present. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is such a path: combining the solid tech foundations with the radical social methods that we know worked (but didn’t scale).
To move at all, we must change and challenge the toxic norms of the #mainstreaming#deathcult, and yes, this means building real alternative identities and spaces that don’t live in the shadow of big tech. Being “alternative” used to mean something, and it can again, if we stop ONLY copying the mainstream and instead focus on nurturing something more strongly rooted and real.
This isn’t about being purist, #FOSS and Open Source already works in this way, the #OMN just brings this path to media and community infrastructure. It’s not utopian, it’s compost. And yes, that means dealing with hard questions, including our own funding. Let’s stop pretending we’re neutral when we’re not. Let’s build from honesty. It’s time to dig, plant, grow, and repeat.
NOTE: the comments below are a useful example of #stupidindividualism, and remember this hashtag is about social groups and their #blocking of social thinking. The history matters, flaming is not a useful response.
A few recent conversations remind me: we’ve already done the work of building alternatives. Twenty years of grassroots tech, radical process, and messy social organizing. The trouble is, that soil has been hollowed out, scattered, exhausted, and composted into the #dotcons
Our current mission isn’t to “start from scratch,” but to rebuild bridges, spread compost, and replenish the soil. That’s why I keep coming back to this moment, the bridging of the #openweb back into #mainstream via #ActivityPub. This is a rare window, let’s not waste it.
The #SocialWebFoundation (#SWF) and others organizing around this space need to think hard about where the bridges land. If we build only toward control, influence, and safety, we miss the point. The #Fediverse wasn’t meant to become a “cleaned-up Twitter clone.” That path leads us back to enclosure.
We need to keep the messy stuff alive, the radical roots, the collective compost piles, the experiments. Because if our worlds keep shrinking, if we make everything tidy and branded, we lose the alternatives that might save us in an age of #climatechaos and hard-right acceleration.
And yes, some of them do understand, the #nastyfew they ran the numbers, and concluded they don’t have to care. In their calculus, the collapse is survivable (for them). The rest of us? We’re disposable. We need different maths, rooted in care, commons, and continuity.
Personally, I’m tired, I no longer have the energy to push these projects alone. So the next step? Abstract the flows, share the compost, and hand the maps to the next generation. I’m still here to mentor. Still sailing, thinking of writing a book to document the 40+ years of practice that shaped this works
If you want to help build something that actually matters, not just another platform, but a commons, the tools are here. The ideas are ripe. The soil can be restored. Let’s keep building, linking, and #makinghistory.
Capitalism, especially in its late-stage #neoliberal form, has always had significant structural problems. In recent decades, these problems have been amplified and globalized through our society, I look here at the path of the digital platforms, what we call the #dotcons. These companies are not in any way a break from capitalism, they are its most refined, efficient, and extractive version to date.
Income Inequality
Traditional critique: Capitalism concentrates wealth in the hands of those who own capital (factories, land, assets), while workers receive only a small slice of wages.
#Dotcons example: Big Tech CEOs and early investors have become some of the richest people in human history – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – while gig workers and content creators struggle to survive.
Amazon workers are underpaid and overworked, with high injury rates in warehouses. Meanwhile, Bezos took a vanity trip to space.
Uber/Lyft drivers bear the cost of vehicles and insurance, receive no job security, and can be "deactivated" (fired) algorithmically with no recourse.
Exploitation
Traditional critique: The wage labour system is inherently exploitative, profits come from paying workers less than the value they produce.
#Dotcons example: Digital platforms exploit user-generated content while paying creators next to nothing.
YouTube demonetizes videos arbitrarily. Creators build platforms that YouTube controls and profits from.
Facebook/Meta builds its empire off unpaid emotional labour — your social life, your attention, your photos — monetized through surveillance and advertising.
TikTok algorithms suck in youth creativity, reward a few, and discard the rest. The work is free, the profit is centralised.
We’ve all become digital piece-workers, feeding the machine with likes, posts, and swipes, and we’re not even getting wages any more.
Environmental Degradation
Traditional critique: Capitalism’s drive for infinite growth in a finite world results in ecosystem destruction.
#Dotcons example: The cloud isn’t light and airy, it’s made of data centres that consume vast amounts of energy and water.
Bitcoin mining (driven by capitalist speculation) consumes more electricity annually than Argentina.
AI training for LLMs (like ChatGPT) has a massive carbon footprint, often hidden behind “green” branding.
Amazon delivery and consumption cycles have increased packaging waste and pushed unsustainable shipping logistics into overdrive.
Digital capitalism gives us the illusion of “clean” convenience, but its ecological impact is catastrophic and accelerating.
Short-Term Thinking
Traditional critique: Shareholder capitalism focuses on quarterly profits, not long-term well-being.
#Dotcons example: The platforms build attention economies, short-term dopamine hits over sustained engagement, destroying social connectivity and democratic culture.
Twitter/X encourages outrage over insight. Algorithmic virality means trolls win.
Facebook actively promoted divisive content because it increased “engagement.”
Startups "move fast and break things" without repairing the damage. Few are held accountable.
Product design is driven by venture capital exits, not by usefulness or ethics. Tech isn’t solving problems; it’s creating new ones, faster and faster.
Lack of Access to Essential Goods and Services
Traditional critique: In capitalism, basic needs like healthcare, housing, and education are commodified, your access depends on your income.
#Dotcons example: Digital access is the new essential, but it’s increasingly paywalled and monopolized.
Google Classroom became a default education tool during COVID — but it’s ad-funded, tracks users, and lacks any transparency.
Zoom and other platforms required for remote work/schooling are corporate-run silos, with data surveillance baked in.
People in the Global South are increasingly pushed into “zero-rated” Facebook and WhatsApp ecosystems — giving up any path to digital autonomy for basic closed access.
The digital divide isn’t just about cables or bandwidth, it’s about who owns and controls the networks we rely on to build a future.
From Capitalism to #dotcons to #deathcult, the digital platforms didn’t disrupt capitalism, they turbocharged it. What we’re living through and witnessing now isn’t Big Tech behaving badly, it’s the logical endpoint of capitalism in a networked world. The #dotcons replicate and intensify the worst features of capitalism:
More control with less accountability
More labour with less compensation
More growth with more destruction
They’re efficient machines of extraction, cloaked in the language of innovation and empowerment. What’s the Alternative? We need to stop asking how to “fix” the #dotcons and start building outside of them. That means:
Supporting the #fediverse and #ActivityPub as protocols of freedom and decentralization
Backing grassroots media and alternative tech through projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network)
Embracing the #4opens
Fighting back against #mainstreaming capture by NGOs and foundations that reproduce te normal power hierarchies
Prioritizing trust over control, cooperation over extraction, and commons over private for profit platforms
We need to name the problem for what it is: Capitalism – digital or otherwise – is incompatible with the future of people and planet. It’s past time to compost it and grow something better. As a first very basic step, let’s build tech that reflects our #KISS values, not just our fears.
And what would that actually look like? Let’s be honest about what the #Fediverse is, despite all the code and standards talk, the heart of the Fediverse is anarchism – not in the chaos sense, but in the older meaning:
The letter A for anarkhia (‘without ruler’), circled by an O that stands for order or organization.
We have plenty of the A with decentralization, voluntary cooperation and resistance to imposed authority. But where’s the O? Of clear coordination, transparent process and federated trust and mediation?
Right now, we’re herding cats – each server, dev group, and community running off on their own, building tools and protocols, often without clear ways to connect, share governance, or defend against capture. This worked when we were small, it will not work now the big boys have arrived.
Warning from experience: The #EU outreach failure, we had a direct taste of this during the 2023–24 EU outreach process. It worked, but was quickly transitioned to the infrastructure of the #Fediverse without its soul. This isn’t theoretical, it is what happened to #FOSS transitioning to #opensource in the 2010s. This is what happens if we keep doing nothing? If we don’t act:
The foundation model is imposed — not built.
The fig leaf of “community governance” will be ignored.
A self-selecting oligarchy will form — friendly faces, perhaps, but still an eliteist power cleqe.
The Fediverse will be co-opted — just like we watched Google and Microsoft do to open source over the last 20 years.
Yes, #ActivityPub is “open” but openness alone doesn’t stop capture. Ask the #FSF, or look at meany #NGO paths in tech.
What would “native” governance look like? Built from our values, not imported from the institutions we’re resisting.
Soft Structure – Not no structure. The #OGB (Open Governance Body) project is one possible model: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody It’s based on the #4opens and rooted in the real history of grassroots organising, not rigid control, but visible, participatory trust-based structure.
Real federation of trust -Imagine something like “trust instances”, each instance or org can choose to endorse certain process and values (e.g., 4opens, PGA hallmarks), creating a visible network of aligned projects. Not a central body, but a web of consent, the #OMN is an example of this.
Self-accountability + Diversity of tactics. Everyone agrees to transparency and openness. Everyone chooses their own path. Nobody is forced, but the community can see what you’re doing. This is essential for resisting #NGO co-option without creating more gatekeeping elitists
Are Platform Co-ops the Answer? Maybe, but… proceed with caution. Many tech co-op projects I’ve seen:
Become ossified in bureaucratic process
Elevate process geeks over users and communities
Reproduce #NGO behaviours under a different name
We’ve seen this in the #techcoop movement, especially in the UK, where platform co-ops often start with radical aims and drift into “doing B2B consulting for ethical startups.” Fine, but not the revolution we worked for. The stakes are real, we’re not just talking about tech here, we’re talking about:
Climate collapse
Social fragmentation
The rise of digital authoritarianism
We need an #openweb that reflects our values, #fediverse governance that protects the commons, and to move from just the A to the full A inside the O – the anarchist circle of voluntary structure. Let’s not wait for another hijacking, we need to build something native to the Fediverse before it’s too late.
The signal-to-noise problem of our #geekproblem in the #fediverse and the wider #openweb. Let’s be clear: platforms like #Mastodon and the #Fediverse are native openweb projects. They embody the values of the #4opens — open data, open source, open process, and open standards.
The value here is not in hardening and securing these systems to the teeth. People who are pushing for hyper-“security” are missing the point entirely. This isn’t about “common sense” dev practice. It’s about use-case. Public media content should be open — and that’s what the Fediverse is good at. It’s media. It’s conversation. It’s public dialogue. That’s what #ActivityPub is designed for. For private communication, we already have mature and well-tested encrypted tools: #Matrix, #Briar, #Signal, etc. Use those for whistleblowing, direct action, or anything sensitive.
Trying to bolt high-security models onto public communication tools breaks the value of the #Fediverse – its simplicity, accessibility, and low barrier to entry. Right now, the #Fediverse is a functional part of the #OMN – it’s a mesh of many small pieces, loosely joined, low-barrier, easy to host, easy to adapt, easy to grow. This is a fragile ecosystem, not a fortress. By pushing unnecessary “security” requirements, this #geekproblem are:
Scaring away potential users and admins
Raising technical barriers
Spreading #FUD
And most dangerously — undermining real-world activists who rely on open visibility and reach, not secrecy.
The #geekproblem, pushing complexity, abstraction, and fear over usability and trust, has been blocking the alt-tech world for over 20 years, it’s happening again. Let’s not let them smother this moment, the open web works when it’s messy, simple, and human.
Let’s be honest: we have a real and ongoing #geekproblem in how funding is allocated in the alt-tech and #openweb space, and it’s holding us back. The current push for infrastructure is important, but it’s not enough.
Yes, backend infrastructure is vital. You can’t build sustainable alternatives to #dotcons without solid plumbing. Funding projects like mesh networks, free firmware, and decentralised protocols, as #NLnet and others often do, is necessary work. BUT… If no one uses the infrastructure, or if it simply gets absorbed back into corporate platforms, then we’re just building tools for the next round of tech enclosures. That’s the pattern we’ve been trapped in for 20+ years.
Take the example of #ActivityPub. It would have remained a marginal protocol if #Mastodon hadn’t wrapped it in good UX, approachable design, and a culture people actually wanted to be part of. It was this social work, not just the code, that made the #Fediverse grow. That success was accidental, not structural, and we’re now coasting off that one cultural leap forward while backend devs get all the attention and funding. Culture first, code second is the hard truth:
The Fediverse is a culture first, and a standard second.
Where is the real funding for building sustainable social tools, interfaces, and communities? Where is the funding for actual alternatives to #dotcons that real people can use? This is one of the things we mean by the #geekproblem, the over-prioritisation of backend infrastructure in a vacuum, without acknowledging the social, political, and cultural layers needed for real systemic change. What’s the Risk? It’s that we end up with:
Endless dev churn.
Great tech no one uses.
A cultural vacuum that’s quickly filled by bad actors or subsumed by corporate rebranding.
Sound familiar? So what do we do?
Balance the Funding. Yes to infrastructure, but also fund user-facing projects, UI/UX work, community engagement, moderation tooling, multilingual outreach, and federated editorial practices. In other words, fund culture-building.
Support “Soft” Projects That Matter. There’s very little funding for projects like #OMN, #indymediaback, or #openwebgovernancebody because they don’t look like “innovation.” But these are the organic, lived tools that connect radical tech to real social movements.
Fund social protocols, not just transport protocols.
#4opens, the #PGA hallmarks, and trust-based governance are protocols too, just not the kind that compile into binaries. They help mediate conflict, keep projects focused, and build human networks that last.
Funding only “safe” backend tech guarantees it will either be: Irrelevant, co-opted, or turned into the next closed platform. We have to fund risky, visible, social alternatives if we want a different outcome. None of this is new, I like meany people been banging this drum since the #indymedia days and writing about it for decades. On this path, the #geekproblem isn’t about individuals, it’s a systemic blind spot. Let’s please take the time to balance funding tech AND the culture to finally move toward more humanistic paths.
Almost everything built in today’s alt-radical tech scene is, bluntly, pointless. Despite good intentions, most of it ends up feeding the endless cycle of #fashernista churn, flashy new platforms, bleeding-edge protocols, or encrypted communication tools nobody uses, built by isolated teams disconnected from real-world needs or history. This is the #geekproblem: a culture where novelty is fetishized, and social usefulness is an afterthought, if it appears at all.
Examples:
Secure scrolling tools: Every few months we see new chat apps, usually cryptographic fortresses with no communities. No one’s asking what these tools are for beyond vague abstractions like “privacy” or “freedom.” Tools without context.
Peer-to-peer silos: Projects like Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) or many DAT spin-offs build entirely new social ecosystems that demand complete buy-in, rather than integrate into existing networks. What results is islands of lonely idealists yelling into empty timelines.
Protocol over people: Many Fediverse projects argue endlessly over specs like #ActivityPub or #Nostr, often prioritizing purity over pragmatism. What good is a protocol if no one actually uses it beyond a few devs congratulating themselves?
Why #indymediaback isn’t a pointless tech project, it offers something truly different. It is not “new.” It doesn’t pretend to invent a whole new ecosystem. It is an act of digital memory, a revival of the still-needed infrastructure that once helped build radical networks globally. #Indymedia worked. It published resistance. It distributed power. It was embedded in real communities and real movements. This is #nothingnew done right.
The #nothingnew approach mediates against the churn by reusing workflows, social trust, and existing cultural practices. It doesn’t ignore tech, it grounds tech. Examples:
#indymediaback uses simple publish-form-comment workflows, already familiar. No #AI, no #blockchain, no obscure identity layer. Just people posting and curating stories.
It connects to existing radical spaces: housing co-ops, street kitchens, climate camps—places where digital tools are needed right now, and where the point isn’t building a unicorn startup but having a place to publish the truth when the cops are lying again.
Why copying #dotcons isn’t enough, in the #fediverse we so far have replicate Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram — Mastodon, PeerTube, PixelFed. This is useful, to a point. But all code is ideology. Copying capitalist infrastructure dose smuggle in capitalist logic. Copying invites the #deathcult right back in through the side door.
indymediaback avoids this trap. It doesn’t replicate any#dotcons logic or UX patterns. It revives a publishing common that worked before Silicon Valley captured this path. And more importantly, it’s embedded in a set of radical social practices: the #PGA hallmarks, the #4opens, and the messy, beautiful legacy of grassroots movements who already knew how to organize.
The value of #indymediaback isn’t just in tech. It’s in trust-based social continuity, the hidden glue of any working movement. Without this, you don’t have a radical tech project. You have a ghost repo on GitHub. That’s the central point, without real community, without continuity, without trust, radical tech is a dead end.
This is the carrot and stick we need now. If you care about the #openweb as a human value network, not just a protocol playground, you have to build things people can use today, and that people want to use, not because it’s encrypted or federated, but because it serves a purpose they already have.
This is where the wider #OMN (Open Media Network) comes in. It’s not another protocol war. It’s a shovel to compost the inhuman mess we’ve inherited. It’s a framework built with the #4opens, to grow digital commons that don’t depend on VC, control freaks, or fashion. It’s where we build bridges between radical tech projects, rather than isolate ourselves in yet another Git-based castle.
In short, it’s a path of people over product, process over platform. We don’t need more “solutions.” We need to stop being prats, pick up the tools we already have, and start rebuilding.
