Tag: AI

Oxford Martin School and the Chattering Classes

I made the mistake of going back to an Oxford Martin School event, this time for a talk on “How To Think About AI: A Guide For The Perplexed“. And perplexed they are, but not in the way they think.

Prof. Richard Susskind stood before a room full of white-haired privilege, clutching their free wine and clutching harder to their decaying certainties. Here was the techno-visionary they came to adore, telling them – soothingly – that everything will change, that AI will reshape the world, and that the path ahead is progress… as long as we just keep funding it and believing hard enough.

Susskind seams to be a long-time member of the #deathcult, confidently soft selling the same fantasy that this time, technology will save us. That AI, even though it’s still dumb and unreliable, is just a stepping stone to AGI, to superintelligence, to salvation. That the very market forces and institutions that got us into this mess will be the ones to rescue us. And of course, the audience clapped.

He spoke of risks, only to dismiss them. He nodded at ethics, only to brush past it. He dropped Marx as a flourish, then drifted into musings on AI-built virtual utopias. The whole performance was a flattening of thought, a parade of mainstream assumptions pushed as reassuring insight.

The discussion never left the orbit of privilege, there was a little talk of power, exploitation, and the social damage wrought by these systems, the was passing talk of the soon to torn apart communities by platform logic. Then onto half-baked fluff about “personalisation is only good, get over it,” and market adaptation as the highest concern.

A highlight, and I use that term lightly, was when he fluffed even the basic questions: What is intelligence? What is AI actually doing now? What are we regulating? But it didn’t matter. Because this wasn’t about hard questions. This was about feeding a room of retired professionals exactly what they wanted: the comforting story that they’re still in the loop, still part of the future, still the chosen class, even if only as spectators with signed books.

This is why I stopped going to Oxford Martin School talks a few terms ago. Tonight reminded me why. A dead-end of polite delusion, sipping Chardonnay while the world burns. They don’t want truth. They want reassurance, to believe that tech or economic fixes will save their world, that their system, capitalism, hierarchy, control, just needs a shiny new update. They’re terrified the market won’t adapt, but they’re not afraid of what happens to the rest of us.

This wasn’t a guide for the perplexed, it was a sermon for the faithful. A cult ritual for the mainstreaming elitists, draped in TED Talk syntax and academic credentials. He said nothing. He had to say nothing. Because anything real would crack the façade.

#AI as a capitalist sticking plaster on social and political issues. #Oxford: still good at sounding clever while saying absolutely fuck all.

Empty and successful.

Governance, the mess of AI tech-fix paths

Seminar Reflection: Philosophy, AI, and Innovation – Week 6
Topic: AI Deliberation at Scale
Speakers: Chris Summerfield (Oxford & AI Safety Institute), MH Tessler (Google DeepMind)
Key texts: Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (excerpt) and Summerfield et al., “AI Can Help Humans Find Common Ground in Democratic Deliberation”

This seminar focus is on scaling democratic deliberation via AI. The example proposal is the #HabermasMachine a test projects to facilitate large-scale consensus using #LLMs (Large Language Models). The framing, unsurprisingly, is drawn from the elitist tech sector – Google DeepMind and Oxford – with a focus on “safety” and “moderation” over human messiness and agency.

The problem we face is that this #techshit path might work, but for who is the question, what kind of “public sphere” is this #AI recreating, and who holds the power to shape it? These are strongly top-down, technocratic proposals, rooted in a narrow utilitarian logic. The underlying assumption is that human decision-making is flawed and must be mediated, and ultimately managed, by algorithmic systems. Consensus is determined not through lived human to human dialogue or, as I like to say – mess, but through an AI that quietly nudges discussions to centrist consensuses.

There is no meaningful eye-to-eye group interaction in this project, no room for DIY, #bottom up agency. Participants become data points in a system that claims to “listen,” but acts through elitist mediation. It is consensus without community, and safety without solidarity. What’s missing is the power of mess, the presenter ignores this central question: Can we build messy, human-scale deliberation that doesn’t rely on top-down interventions?

Projects like this are not grassroots governance, rather it’s governance-by-black-box, mainstreaming by design, the incentive model is telling: ideas that align with the status quo or dominant narratives are rewarded with more money. Consensus is guided not by grassroots engagement or dissenting voices, but by what the algorithm (and its funders) consider “productive.” This is the quiet suffocating hand of #mainstreaming, cloaked in neutral code.

#TechFixes paths like this are about stability at all costs, yet we live in a time when stability is the problem, with #ClimateChaos threatening billions, the demand is for transformation, not moderation.

This is AI as intermediary, not a facilitator of the commons paths we need. Transparency? Not here, no one knows how the #AI reaches consensus. The models are proprietary, the tweaks are political, and the outcomes are mediated by those already in power. The system becomes an unaccountable broker, not of truth, but of what power is willing to hear.

We need to be wary of any system that claims to represent us without us being meaningfully involved. This is a curated spectacle of consensus, delivered by machines, funded by corporations, and mediated by invisible hands. What we need is human to human projects like the #OGB, not tech managed consensus. This #mainstreaming path isn’t compost. It’s simply more #techshit to be composted, mess is a feature, not a bug.

In the #OMN (Open Media Network), we explore paths rooted in trust, openness, and peer-to-peer process. Not asking for power to listen, but taking space to act. We compost the mess; we don’t pretend it can be sanitized by top-down coding.

#Oxford #AI #techshit #dotcons

Telegram messaging app is dieing

Telegram partnering with Elon’s #AI to distribute #Grok inside chats is a clear line crossed. This matters because private data ≠ training fodder, bringing Grok (or any #LLM) into messaging apps opens the door to pervasive data harvesting and normalization of surveillance.

This is an example of platform drift: Telegram was always sketchy (proprietary, central control, opaque funding), but this is active betrayal of its user base, especially those in repressive regions who relied on it.

Any #LLM like Grok in chats = always-on observer: Even if “optional,” it becomes a trojan horse for ambient monitoring and a normalization vector for AI-injected communication.

“Would be better if we had not spent 20 years building our lives and societies around them first.”

That’s the #openweb lesson in a sentence, that the #dotcons will kill themselves. This is what we mean by “use and abuse” of these platforms which have been driven by centralization, adtech, and data extraction, that they inevitably destroy the trust that made them popular. It’s entropy baked into their #DNA. As Doctorow calls this #enshitification, the tragedy is how much time, emotion, and culture we invested in them – only to have to scramble for alternatives once they inevitably betray us.

What to do now, first step, remove data from your account then delete telegram app, not just for principle, but for your own safety. Move to alternatives – #Signal for encrypted, centralized messaging (trusted but closed server). There are other more #geekproblem options in the #FOSS world but like #XMPP, #RetroShare, or good old email+GPG can work too, but they can be isolating, so stick to #signal if you’re at all #mainstreaming.

Then the second step, build parallel #4opens paths by supporting and develop alt infrastructure like the #Fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.), #OMN (Open Media Network – decentralized media), XMPP and #p2p-first protocols, #DAT/#Hypercore, #IPFS, or #Nostr etc.

Yeah, things will get worse before they get better, what we’re seeing now is the terminal phase of the #dotcons era. These companies are devouring themselves and will eventually collapse under the weight of their contradictions. The question is, will we have built anything to replace them?

If not, authoritarian tech (like Elon’s empire) fills the void. That’s why we rebuild the “native” #openweb, even if it’s slow, messy, and underground. That’s why projects like #OMN and #Fediverse matter. If you’re reading this, you’re early to the rebuild, welcome, let’s do better this time.

Stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives

#Musk is a useful example of the #nastyfew: wealthy technocrats wrapping themselves in the cloak of progress while undermining the foundations of any, let alone a just future. These stories and narratives about innovation are a high-tech rebrand of green capitalism, a slick façade masking the same old decaying systems of extraction, inequality, and authoritarianism.

The problem they push is that instead of confronting the #KISS causes of our social and planetary crises, these people offer us distraction: electric cars for the elitists, fantasies of Mars colonies, and #AI overlords dressed up as saviours. This isn’t transformation – it’s #deathcult worshiping continuity in crisis.

People like Musk are useful to the #deathcult because they peddle a seductive, market-friendly myth: that we don’t need to change our behaviour, our economics, or our power structures, we just need to upgrade our tech. Comforting, isn’t it? For those who benefit from the status quo, it’s the perfect nasty con.

He personally embodies the worst of the #geekproblem: the cult of the engineer, disconnected from social reality, obsessed with “fixing” the world through code and hardware while ignoring the human systems that create the problems in the first place. This is dead libertarian ideology dressed in the shrowed of innovation.

We urgently need to compost these myths. Not just resist them, actively decompose them, mix them with grounded knowledge, and grow something better from this soil.

That’s where projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network) come in – a project seeded in the messy, composted soil of decades of grassroots media and digital commons. Unlike the sleek towers of technocratic illusion, #OMN is rooted in public-first values: transparency, participation, autonomy, and trust. It’s not about building new silos or chasing the next unicorn, it’s about connecting the islands of resistance, amplifying local grassroots voices to rebuild public infrastructure for storytelling, organising, and governance.

The #OMN isn’t anti-tech – it’s pro-human. It’s a network built with people, for people – not for investors or ego-driven billionaires. It draws from the radical legacy of projects like #indymediaback, and threads in tools like #OGB to bring coherence and shared narrative to the fractured #openweb reboot. So please stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives.

“Use and abuse” is a good strategy for dealing with the #dotcons while they continue to dominate our digital and social infrastructure. Why? Because refusing to engage with these platforms outright is the equivalent of shouting into the void – or living in a cave. And caves, while romantic to a certain type of purist, are never effective social solutions.

The truth is this #dotcons are still where the #mainstreaming people live, and mainstream attention is power, even if borrowed. As radicals or progressives, using their platforms to push counter-narratives, while simultaneously undermining their legitimacy and building our own independent infrastructure, is both necessary and strategic. Think of it as exiting from within by using their reach to grow the seeds of your alt-path.

The #nastyfew, billionaires funders fear informed, educated public

The #nastyfew are now building bunkers, literally, escaping with their bodyguards when the shit hits the fan. That’s the plan. No fixing the mess, no community care – just winning and escape. It’s #deathcult logic all the way down from now on – with pushing #geekproblem tech fixes as a cross fingers wing and a prayer, to stop any grassroots drift to green sustainable alternatives.

This is simply the next stage of the #deathcult worship of endless growth, and infinite tech “solutions”. It’s now about rebooting capitalism, so the machine can keep grinding. #NothingNew in a very bad way. This is the normal empathy for corporations, and brutal Darwinism for actual people like you and me. The #dotcons of big tech are moving visible to the business of manufacturing distraction to avoid facing the collapse they pushed for the last 20 years. The mess of #AI and #Bitcoin are energy black holes, sucking resources while pretending to be futuristic.

It should now be “common sense” that colonialism never ended – it rebranded. That’s how the consumerist growth cult started: exploit, extract, repeat. Capitalist “progress” is cancerous, more #GDP doesn’t mean better life – growth isn’t about thriving, it’s about churn. #TechCurn. The current #mainstreaming solutions are always more tech, more control, more conferences, and less reality. The #GeekProblem, with the #techbros philosophical inspiration: Nietzsche, or rather, a cherry-picked remix by his fascist sister, stitched together without context. The wannabe’s quotes “Will to Power” as gospel to justify trying to control the rest of us.

To the #nastyfew, education doesn’t mean opportunity – it means instability. A literate person is someone who questions power, organizes, votes, and leave toxic relationships. A curious mind is unpredictable. A well-informed population is a threat.

They know that: A literate woman may not rely on a man for shelter. An educated Black or Brown voter may vote in their own self-interest, unlike the more easily manipulated MAGA base. A widely read immigrant may advocate for systems beyond the #deathcult of vulture capitalism – community care, cooperative ownership, real democracy.

Education creates the conditions for social mobility, leading to change and challenge, which the #nastyfew see as an existential risk to their self defined stratified order and elitist based statues. Keeping people in their “place” is essential to maintaining control. Stagnation is strategic.

This is why capital flows into campaigns to undermine grassroots media, activists, public schools, libraries, independent publishers, school boards, and non-corporate scientific research institutions. The #nastyfew goal isn’t only profit – it’s cultural hegemony. Anything that feeds critical thinking or encourages civic imagination becomes a target.

From a progressive mainstreaming point of view, this agenda includes:

It’s a war on #4opens, public knowledge, disguised as common sense “parental rights” and “free markets.” In truth, it’s about maintaining control by keeping people uninformed and isolated, a core part of #stupidindividualism we have all been #mainstreaming for the last 40 years.

When we defend grassroots projects, activism, schools, libraries, open-source platforms, small publishers, and public institutions, we are not just defending information, we are defending democracy itself. The battle for truth is inseparable from the battle for justice. We have to build our own compost piles, plant what matters, and ignore the bling. These #nastyfew and their billionaires funders aren’t saving us – they’re digging deeper bunkers and writing climate denial checks. It well pastime to stop playing the #mainstreaming game.

#KISS

Post inspired by @Npars

Ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – This is a path

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 need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nastyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and dead-end. And yes, I too wonder if we’ll survive this, but as you 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 #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’re 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 to do 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.

#KISS

Digging over the rot and planting something more real

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 our 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 paths. It’s not irony, it’s 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 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

We need to shape native paths, not recreate #fashionista ones with shinier branding

We’ve got a new bunch of #mainstreaming tech devs flooding into the #Fediverse. Some from burned-out Big Tech, some from the academic funding circuits, some just looking for the next shiny project after the #AI hype wore thin.

Now, this could be good. IF even a few of them started working on native, grassroots tech – tools built for and by the communities who actually use them, not just more #dotcons platform clones. Right now, we’re at a turning point. The first wave of the Fediverse was all about copying the #dotcons:

#Mastodon as “ethical Twitter”

#PeerTube mimicking YouTube

#Mobilizon as a Facebook Events replacement

#Lemmy doing Reddit but federated

All of this was necessary, it helped people jump ship and start imagining life beyond the #dotcons. But that wave is peaking, and the second step is overdue. That next step? It’s about original, grassroots infrastructure. A federated trust graph instead of reinventing karma points or like-buttons. Protocols for local-first publishing, like the #p2p side of the #OMN or radical #4opens-inspired news and tools for community trust flows, moderation and accountability, rooted in values, not corporate TOS and #PR management. Infrastructure for interoperability and redundancy, so projects don’t die when a maintainer burns out or a server goes down

But, the risk, if the new #devs only copy the #dotcons AGAIN, it’s a fail. Worse still, if they get sucked into the #NGO vampire nests, the slow, bureaucratic funding black holes of the worst paths of #nlnet and #NGI, we’ll see more “safe” projects that burn grant money building tools nobody uses.

Let’s be clear, these institutions do some small good, on basic infrastructure, but their #NGO sides are hoovering up resources by pushing for risk-free deliverables, and ignore the actual messy needs of grassroots groups. This funding is too often shaped by #mainstreaming politics and careerism, not lived practice. We’ve seen it before, and we’re seeing it again.

What we need now are tools that grow from compost, not code sprints. Tools built from social use, not tech fashion. We need radical simplicity, transparency, and flexibility, tech that can’t be easily co-opted by the forces we’re trying to move beyond.

So if you’re a dev stepping into this space, welcome. But please don’t make another Mastodon, but with more “privacy” or #AI features. Instead, work with those who’ve been composting here for years. Build with the messy, weird, and beautiful people who are on new paths, not, boringly, recreate the old ones with shinier branding.

AI slop, to #enshittification, the #FT writing on the internet is adding to the mess

#Mainstreaming talk about the internet generally completely misses the point, yep, it’s the paywalled FT so no surprise I suppose. The actual internet, the one we built before the takeover of the #dotcons, this is a culture of #4opens protocols, stitched together with moth-eaten mythologies and some messy traditions. It was never clean or pure, but it was ours.

What this guy in the article is describing isn’t the internet, it’s the #dotcons layer that’s been built on top of that original infrastructure. Worse, it’s very crap path that we helped build, by feeding it with our time, attention, and data. Yes, it’s a mess. But, the bigger problem is what we often do is add to this mess instead of composting it.

From “unstoppable slop” to “enshittification” to the idea of a “hostile internet”, all of these have explanatory power, but none really get to the root issues. The sickness isn’t just tech, it’s culture, warped by power and profit. What we’re living in now isn’t a broken system, it’s a deliberately built one. Designed not for us, but to extract from us. This #hostileinternet is not inevitable. It’s the result of a thousand bad decisions made by #deathcult tech and #VC backed greed, and not by accident but by design.

The FT piece ends up saying: “The internet makes us seem mad, always connected, always performing, always consuming – like streetcorner eccentrics amplified to global scale.” And yeah, it does feel like that. But that’s not the fault of the internet. It’s the fault of which focus we’ve chosen to feed. To fix this, we don’t need a new system. We need to remember the old one. Compost the current slop. Rebuild from the roots. Base it on native #4opens, community, and the culture that carried us before this #dotcons mess took over.

#openweb #AI #AISlop #GenerativeAI #KISS #nothingnew

#AI and Warfare – Oxford Panel Discussion

A conversation with Professor Stephen Rosen and Professor Shivaji Sondhi on artificial intelligence in warfare. The talk stays on the surface, not offering deep insights, but it does stimulate thinking, which is maybe its purpose. We are already well down this path.

Some of my takeaways: #AI in war functions as a force multiplier, but the key question is how nations deploy it. Ukraine shows that both sides use similar technology. A major limitation of current AI use is that it is too expensive to be integrated into cheap drones and autonomous weapons. To bypass communication jamming, control is shifting to space, which then requires AI to operate in space as well.

A stopgap is drone relays flying at high altitudes, but these become targets themselves. Simple autonomy (using basic image recognition) is being developed to maintain functionality when communications are jammed, for both targeting and navigation. With this we highlight the issue of autonomy and decision-making, if AI is to be increasingly used to managing battles, then the advantage will go to those who trust it most. Authoritarian states embrace AI more readily, as they do not trust their own people. This “first strike advantage” AI brings increases instability in conflicts.

This rises, the issue of why the U.S. Fails in War. The answer might be simple, the U.S. often struggles in warfare due to a lack of understanding of other cultures, leading to psychological biases in strategy. AI might help identify these blind spots by analysing what people actually fear. However, there’s scepticism, will AI truly improve decision-making, or will it reinforce existing biases?

Vulnerabilities and decision-making, it is already used in autonomous machine decision-making for missile defence, where human response times are too slow. People are more ready to accept AI in a defensive role because it does not involve direct human casualties, but history shows that similar systems have been used offensively, sometimes dangerously. The Soviet Union’s use of automated nuclear systems for attack nearly led to disaster. The increasing reliance on AI in space-based “defence” systems raises concerns about whether similar failures could occur today.

Let’s step back from that brink, to look at the future of AI in war in wider senses. In the near future, the battlefield is moving to space, where communication for AI-controlled drones and communications is increasingly shifting. Ukraine’s use of Starlink: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network has been crucial for Ukraine, allowing drones and soldiers to maintain communication even under heavy Russian jamming.

A scary likely future scenario is AI-controlled satellites managing drone vs. drone warfare, where AI systems fight each other in a logistics and targeting battle, without direct human involvement. This creates new arms control challenges, how do you regulate AI-driven weapons? How do you verify compliance when AI systems operate in secret?

AI and economic warfare: #Capitalism vs. #Socialism, AI is also shifting the balance of power between capitalist and socialist economies. For example: China’s “social credit system”: AI-driven surveillance and data collection allow China to exert social planing while improving resource allocation. Silicon Valley’s AI in finance: AI algorithms in the U.S. optimize high-frequency trading, automating stock market decisions and reinforcing economic inequalities.

Could AI reshape military-industrial production? AI could redefine supply chains, making economies less dependent on foreign production. AI-powered cyber warfare could cripple rival economies without direct military engagement. This raises a final question, will AI-driven economies favour authoritarian or democratic paths?

Conclusion, the future of AI in war, the panel discussion raises far more questions than answers. Will AI create more stable deterrence, or increase instability by enabling preemptive strikes? Will “democracies” fall behind authoritarian regimes in AI warfare due to ethical constraints? How will AI shape the future of economic and military power?

The only certainty #AI is already changing the nature of warfare, and we are not in any way prepared for this.

The stair to nowhere

#Oxford

The rise of #fascism and the #openweb response

With each passing day, we’re witnessing the acceleration of the global far-right resurgence, a modern incarnation of #fascism, adapted to our times. This #neofascism wears the mask of democracy, claiming legitimacy through hollow elections, while quietly dismantling political freedoms. It thrives on the wreckage of #neoliberalism and the crises this mess has left and unleashed, feeding on fear, resentment, and social breakdown.

The growing number of neofascist regimes around the world may lack the overt military displays of the past, but their violence is no less real. It simmers beneath the surface, ready to erupt when they feel threatened and is needed. And unlike the old fascism’s obsession with state control, this new version embraces the worst of #neoliberalism, surrendering public welfare to private greed, while doubling down on nationalism, racism, and hostility to any form of collective humanistic liberation.

With escalating #climatechaos pushing systemic social collapse, this is not just a political threat but an existential one. These forces are accelerating our collective destruction, blocking meaningful environmental action, and fuelling division at precisely the moment we need solidarity just to survive, let along flourish.

So where is the path out of this mess? The answer isn’t found in bunkers or prepper fantasies, survival in the face of collapse requires cooperation, not isolation. And it certainly won’t come from the #dotcons or the #NGO complex, which are too entangled with the systems they claim to resist. From my expirence, a step on the needed path is composting the crisis by reclaiming the #openweb.

We need to build a grassroots counterforce, grounded in the principles of the #4opens, to cultivate digital and physical spaces of resistance. The #openweb offers us a framework for doing this, a messy, imperfect garden where we plant alternatives and nurture them with care. But it only grows if people use it. We need joined-up thinking, not the fractured, piecemeal approach of the #fashernista crowd. We need people to commit to using and building tools outside the corporate silos, even when it’s inconvenient. Because in the end our communities are all that matters, in the end every click, every post, every conversation shapes the landscape we inhabit.

Muscular Liberalism by #AI – Trump vs Zelensky by @nimayndoleaux

It’s pastime to move, don’t ask, just do it, please don’t wait for permission or perfect conditions. Pick up a shovel and start composting the current mess. Rebuild local networks, create spaces for collective storytelling, and amplify voices that push back against #neofascist narratives. Use tools like the #OMN to link these efforts together into a larger ecosystem of resistance.

The fascist wave may be rising, but history shows us that these forces can be stopped, not by isolated individuals, but by collective movements. The seeds of this change and challenge are already in our hands. The question is whether we have the courage to plant them.

#4opens #OMN #DIY #ClimateResistance #NoPasaran

Web search is a cesspit of algorithm-driven propaganda

The #dotcons have turned web searches into a cesspit of algorithm-driven consumerist and political ideological propaganda. What was a tool for discovery and connection is now a tightly controlled funnel, pushing people towards preordained narratives and commercialized echo chambers. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Google, the go-to gatekeeper of information, where what you find is shaped not by the richness of human knowledge, but by whatever serves the interests of the #nastyfew who control power and capital.

This isn’t simply an “inconvenience”; it’s a crisis for public knowledge and collective memory. When dissenting views, grassroots history, and alternative voices are buried under layers of #SEO spam, ad-driven results, and opaque censorship, we lose the ability to shape any understanding of the world. So what’s the plan to step outside this mess?

A real path is to build and use the #openweb to actively shift our habits to support networks, platforms and projects built on the #4opens principles – open source, open data, open process, and open standards. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one path to reclaiming these collective narratives, by creating decentralized, community-driven archives where stories are curated by people, not algorithms.

With the #dotcons shift to #AI in everything, resisting this algorithmic trap is key, that the more people understand how these systems blind us, the less power they have. Building native #4opens tech is a very good first step, then teaching media literacy, by running workshops on the dangers of algorithmic control, and spreading knowledge about decentralized alternatives, so this can gradually chip away at the illusion of choice presented by the #closedweb paths.

This is a big step to #Rewilding the digital commons, the web was meant to be a messy, vibrant ecosystem, not a manicured, walled garden. We need to plant seeds in neglected corners of the internet, build hyperlocal networks, and use peer-to-peer tech to share knowledge directly. The more we create and share outside the #dotcons, the harder it becomes for them to control the narrative.

The next step is to create and nurture alternative search tools, we used to run an instance of #Searx which is #metasearch tool which works outside the algorithm as much as possible. But we had to shut this down due to lack of support, this lack of support is a real continuing issue we urgently need to overcome, we need users, contributors, and champions to increase usage of these tools and promote their development to build the infrastructure for an alternative discovery layer that need to bypass the #dotcons.

This is based on #KISS just do it, don’t wait for permission or a perfect alternative to emerge. Start archiving, writing, and sharing now. Build your own small-scale #4opens projects and connect them to others. The #OMN isn’t some grand centralized solution, it’s a framework for thousands of messy, local, independent nodes, each adding to a larger network of people-powered knowledge. This is a shovel-ready project. We don’t need to beg the #dotcons to change, and we certainly don’t need to play by their rules. Let’s get our hands dirty, compost the rotting remains of the algorithmic web, and start cultivating a truly human-centred internet again.

What will you plant today? 🌱

#openweb #OMN #4opens #DIY #digitalcommons #techresistance