Tag: blocking

Why Most Fediverse Codebases Are Languishing

In this #openweb reboot, do you ever stop and wonder, really wonder, why most of the codebases outside #Mastodon are languishing? It’s not a technical issue. It’s not “a lack of funding” (though that’s what they love to talk about). It’s not even about network effects, not really. It’s because they’re all following Mastodon’s lead, straight into the #NGO world.

This is a path paved in smiles and slow death. A warm bath of #NGI grant cycles, #NGO diversity reports, and performative panels. On this dead-end, the goal isn’t to grow, challenge, or change. The goal is to survive, to be tolerated, within existing institutional structures.

Let’s be honest: this is such an obviously pointless and self-defeating direction that it’s stunning more people aren’t calling it out. Why is it pointless? Because in the #NGO world, success isn’t the point. The hierarchy already has its chosen project. It has its darling. And surprise surprise – that’s Mastodon.

Everyone else is there to tick the diversity box. You’re the “alternatives” that prove there’s choice, even if there isn’t. You’re invited to speak, but not to decide. You’re encouraged to exist, but only if you don’t matter.

So these projects stall, not because they’re bad ideas, or bad code, or have no community.
But because they’ve internalized powerlessness, shaped by institutions that reward conformity and punish genuine independence.

Here’s the bitter truth: If you want your project to thrive, you have to stop only begging at the gates of the palace. You have to stop only trying to be included, you have to also build outside their logic. That’s what the #OGB (Open Governance Body) is about, not building consensus at the top, building trust at the roots.

That’s what the #OMN is about, a web of native projects, not another hierarchy with a different brand. We don’t need to only “be taken seriously” by NGOs. We really need to #KISS build governance that works without them. And what we don’t need is more performative panels, we need compost, shovels, and seeds. Let #Mastodon be the flagship, in the long term, it’s likely to drift into irrelevance, or rot into compromise. Let the rest of us get on with building the working path.

You don’t have to only attack problems, you can also build round them and leave them to decay, then shovel over the mess to compost, the problem we face now is that we need a shovel, a first step is to build that #OMN

Some strategies to mediate the #blocking mess in a way that stays true to the #4opens:

1. Compost the Conflict. Don’t try to avoid the mess – use it.

Acknowledge blocking as an emotional reaction to risk/fear/powerlessness.

Create safe compost heaps where disagreements can break down slowly (forums, slow chat, moderated conversations).

Let things rot before replanting — time is part of the process.

Tools:

Slow-fed moderation queues

Forkable, linked discussions

Bridge-building protocols

2. Build Friction Where It Helps. Instead of forcing “smooth consensus,” engineer positive friction.

Let friction surface hidden assumptions early, but contain it constructively.

For example, structured disagreements (Yes/And).

Use #4opens to keep the process visible and trustworthy.

Tactic: “This disagreement stays open – until it breaks something or blooms something.”

3. Create Walkable Paths Around Blockers. If someone/some group blocks – don’t go through them, go around them.

Design with pluralism and linked forking paths as core strengths.

Accept divergence — allow others to #4opens fork rather than forcing them to bend.

Metaphor: Every open path has forks. We need more people walking, fewer people standing still yelling.

4. Bridge the ‘Trust Gap’ with Small, Lived Examples. Many people block because they don’t trust the process – they feel tricked, ignored, or co-opted.

Rebuild trust through visible, small-scale functioning examples — real communities doing real things with the #4opens.

Highlight stories where governance and code worked together.

Stay humble: don’t oversell the vision; show, don’t tell.

5. Normalize Changing Your Mind. Most blocking happens because people are afraid of losing face, status, or being co-opted.

Create spaces where changing your mind is not shameful — it’s rewarded.

Public “reconsideration threads,” “I changed my view” badges, etc.

Use organic intellectuals who model doubt and curiosity, not just certainty.

Reframe the debate using values: trust vs. fear, openness vs. control, native vs. extractive.

You don’t solve #blocking by trying to make everyone agree, you solve it by making space for disagreement to stay open and generative – not as a problem, but as part of the compost from which better paths grow.

This is how we unblock the current monocultures.

Signal, Noise, and the Mess of #Mainstreaming

“Because controversy equals attention and attention equals brand recognition.” LINK

Yes, an interesting thread on advertising. But let’s add to this view in wider paths:

Mainstreaming controversy = attention.

Alt controversy = #blocking, by ignoring.

This mainstreaming/alt mess making is not about real disagreement or dynamic ideas. It’s about channelling noise that flatters the existing structures and silences anything genuinely alternative. This isn’t controversy, it’s signal-to-noise warfare. And right now, the noise is winning.

Let’s be blunt. On the subject of this site, nearly every so-called “alternative” tech event funded or structured by #NGO culture is riddled with parasites – projects more interested in their next grant or their place at the conference table than building anything outside the status quo. They’re not evil – just placated, softly herding us back into the polite cages we were trying to escape.

They block by doing nothing, block by talking too much, block by looking away when real change knocks. They block by turning real signal into noise.

The actual energy, the radical possibility, is elsewhere. The #OGB (Open Governance Body) is designed with this in mind: not to convince the already-compromised, but to build something permissionless and let it loose. Let people feel the value, or not. No “hard” hand-holding, no pre-approval, no gatekeepers.

It’s a #KISS project: Keep It Simple, Stupid. We’re building for the people up shit creek without a paddle, not the people arguing about paddle aesthetics on a conference panel. We don’t need more “controversy” to win attention in the #NGO #PR-sphere. We need real signal, real builds, real grassroots governance to share power.

And yes, we do have a problem with apathy and Laissez-faire “common sense” that lets this cycle repeat. So let’s stop waiting for the right moment or the perfect audience. We build with this problem in mind. We design #DIY structures that can work in the real mess.

Why #NGO and fluffy #openweb tech events should include radical real grassroots projects

If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.”
It’s “I just write the code.”
It’s “We’re neutral tools.”
It’s “Let’s keep politics out of it.”

This isn’t just naivety, it’s a deep, culturally reinforced avoidance of responsibility. And it’s one of the key reasons why even alternative tech replicates the same failures and power structures as the mainstream.

Worse, this behaviour is too often mainstreamed in the alt-tech spaces themselves, turned into best practice by #NGO people who should know better. It becomes active #blocking of any progress on alternative paths. New governance? Too political. Radical accountability? Too messy. Grassroots involvement? Too slow. Let’s just build it and hope for the best.

We can’t afford this any more, in the midst of #climatechaos, rising authoritarianism, and the enclosure of digital commons, building better tools without building better relationships, better communities, and better politics is a dead-end.

This is the core of the #geekproblem, and if we’re serious about anything more than shiny toys, it’s something we must talk about at our conferences, meetups, and hackathons. Let’s stop pretending code is apolitical, let’s start with this: tech is social, or it is very likely more wortless #tecshit.

Let’s be blunt, “inclusive” tech/#NGO events talk about change but don’t platform the people doing the hard, messy work of building this path. This is a real problem, rooted in comfort, control, and careerism.

Radical grassroots projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN) exist precisely to challenge the #mainstreaming mess, not to dress it up. We aren’t here to repeat feel-good slogans and deliver polished #PR. We’re here to offer lived solutions grounded in the #4opens and decades of collective, hands-dirty work.

So why should OMN and similar voices be invited in?

  • We speak from the grassroots, not the conference stage.
  • We build tools that people have historically used, not just write funding proposals about.
  • We hold space for #DIY, for #p2p, for real change, not only the reform theatre.

If your event doesn’t include these voices, like almost all of them, it’s the #mainstreaming problem of locking out knowledge, networks, and resistance, which the events #PR claims to support. This clearly makes the people involved into hypocrites.

On a positive, #KISS, this doesn’t need to be a fight, let’s make events better together. Can you imagine real dialogue between grassroots builders and NGO funders? Imagine shared workshops where friction leads to function, messy, honest space that acknowledges power dynamics – and really then starts to do something about this mess.

Want a better event?

Put grassroots groups on the stage, not just in the audience.

Pay people for their time — especially those working outside institutions.

Focus on practice, not just policy.

Drop the gatekeeping.

Build open process into your event — make your own structure accountable to the #4opens.

But, remember, we aren’t going just to play nice, to be seen, we’ll come to compost the status quo, and plant something that might actually grow. Let’s try and maybe do this right, please.

Dig, Plant, Grow. Compost the #Techshit. Repeat

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.

#OMN #4opens #indymediaback #openweb #fediverse #techshit #KISS #NGO #deathcult #mainstreaming #altmedia #DIY

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.

The roadblocks to change are #Stupidindividualism and the #Deathcult that breeds it

If you’ve ever tried to build something radical, collective, and actually useful, you’ve run into strong #blocking forces. They’re not just annoying, they’re dangerous, structural, and they always show up. This post is about naming those, calling them what they are, and understanding how they’re entangled in the wider problem:

A culture that valorizes individualism, feeds on careerism, and bows to the false “common sense” of the neoliberal #deathcult.

The #NGO agenda: Careerism in activist clothing, highlights how too many grassroots projects are co-opted by well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) NGOs and their functionaries, who come waving grant forms and talking about partnerships. But really, they’re selling a diluted, bureaucratic version of change that fits inside capitalist institutions, with jobs and funding flows to protect.

At best, they water down radicalism into “deliverables.” At worst, they actively trample grassroots horizontality to build careers. They normalize the #dotcons. They manage, rather than transform. This isn’t conspiracy, it’s structure. And we need to build outside this deadened swamp.

What keeps this hard to see is the petty politics and personal grudges, as micro-level sabotage, let’s be honest, some people would burn the future to win a petty feud. This is the everyday rot of #stupidindividualism, where narrow self-preservation and shallow ego become more important than collective progress.

Projects like #indymediaback, which depend on shared vision and mutual respect, break down when people refuse to grow beyond grudges. These behaviours reflect deeper cultural damage, we’ve been trained to see each other as threats, not collaborators. #KISS we can’t build anything real if we don’t actively mediate this. That means talking it through, holding space, calling it in, before it derails the work.

The liberal trap is about dogma masquerading as “common sense”. I’ll say something unfashionable, I have respect for old-school liberalism. It gave us social safety nets, education, some rights, a lot of good stuff came out of liberal traditions. But today’s dogmatic liberals, clinging to broken institutions and smearing “common sense” over radical action, are a drain on movement energy. Their default is always compromise, always moderation, even when the world is on fire. We’re stuck negotiating with people who believe the future is a reformed version of the past. It isn’t. We need to move forward, not beg to stay where we are.

The #geekproblem is about control, complexity, and disconnection. We’ve talked about this before, and it keeps coming up. The #geekproblem is when technologists build tools for control rather than empowerment, for complexity rather than access, for themselves rather than people. Often dressed in “neutral” language or “perfect systems,” these tools lock out users, deny social context, and kill collaboration with arrogant assumptions. The fix? Build for people, not machines. Use the #4opens. Work from #DIY practice, not just theory. Centre community. Make it work for the bottom, not only the top.

The path we need is compost isn’t about perfection. We need to admit we’ve all played roles in the mess. The key is naming it, owning it, and moving differently. Tools like #OMN, #indymediaback, and #OGB are not ONLY shiny new things. They’re grounded in lived practice, built to solve real problems. They don’t pretend to be magic fixes, they are basic shovels, to compost the current mess, to old space to grow something better.

Let’s get on with composting the #tecsit. We don’t need another app, another platform, another paper. We need to build trust-based networks, support each other, and get our hands dirty together. If we work for it, a humanistic future is still possible, to make this happen we need to stop feeding the #deathcult and start feeding the soil.

Add your thoughts in the comments: What Blocks the progressive path? We need to name these issues clearly, not to shame individuals, but to make them visible as systemic patterns we all get caught in. So tell me: what else is holding us back? What sabotages collective projects from within? Let’s document the patterns so we can start composting them.

#grassroots #DIY #openweb #4opens #nothingnew #postcapitalism #stupidindividualism #culturewars #commoning

First step is #KISS – Stop being a prat

We have strong passive #blocking of real change and challenge, that we need before we have any hope of changing the world, thus we as a community have to change our stance towards this blocking. And the first step – the most important one – is painfully simple: Stop being a prat.

That means:

  • Stop pretending you don’t understand the stakes.
  • Stop making perfect the enemy of good.
  • Stop whining about how broken things are while refusing to touch the tools that exist.
  • Stop treating radical, working alternatives like their someone else’s hobby project.
  • Stop waiting for someone else to do it.

You don’t need a degree in political science or coding, or anything to see what’s happening, from floods and fascists to boat evictions and mass precarity. You don’t need permission from a foundation or a blue tick to take part, you don’t need a five-year strategy. Simple, you just need to stop being a prat, and start doing useful things, so, what does “not being a prat” look like?

  • Instead of doomscrolling, publish one thing that matters using #OMN tools and paths.
  • Instead of performative politics, help document what’s actually happening around you in a native #4opens way.
  • Instead of building personal brands, build open #Fediverse infrastructure that your community can grow in.
  • Instead of hiding behind cynicism, show up and collaborate – messily, imperfectly is fine, just try not to be a prat.

Why this matters, because the #nastyfew people seizing power, from JD Vance to the canal eviction bureaucrats, aren’t being prats. They’re serious about building institutions to shape futures. The tragedy is that our side, the ones with the heart, the vision, the history, are too often busy being clever, passive, cool, and precious, kinda like prats….

The first revolutionary act in the 2020s isn’t heroic, it’s just showing up, not being a prat, and doing the obvious things, together. This is simple, most importantly #KISS please don’t be a prat about this, thanks.

The #mainstreaming is talking about the #deathcult – So why are you still waiting?

The #mainstreaming is talking about the #deathcult – So why are you still waiting?

It took four decades of sleepwalking through #neoliberalism, cultural decay, ecological collapse, and social atomisation, but at last, the #mainstreaming is starting to talk about the #deathcult we’ve been worshipping.

Case in point: Steve Coogan – yes, Alan Partridge – is now publicly accusing Keir Starmer and Labour of “paving the way for Reform UK,” the rising hard-right threat. Here’s the article. It’s not satire, it’s despair. Coogan’s right, and a few years ago, such a comment from a mainstream celebrity would’ve seemed extreme. Today? It’s just stating the obvious.

The “centre” has collapsed. The “left” has hollowed itself out in fear. And the space where #lifecult politics might live is now overrun with fear, cynicism, and opportunism. This is the #deathcult in action, the system that tells you there is no alternative while everything burns down around you. For 40 years we’ve been taught to accept decay as progress, control as freedom, and despair as maturity.

But here’s the thing, we told you so, for people like me, and many others working on open networks, digital commons, grassroots media, and post-capitalist systems, this isn’t news. We’ve been working and talking about this for decades.

In the world I am in, we’ve already working on alternatives: Decentralised governance via the #OGB. Federated publishing through the #OMN. Ethical tech rooted in the #4opens. And a cultural path that doesn’t rely on selling your soul to #dotcons or begging #NGOs for scraps.

We weren’t trying to be ahead of the curve. We were trying to get people to notice the damn cliff. Now that we’re tumbling over it, suddenly everyone’s surprised. Now the #mainstreaming, which ridiculed or ignored these grassroots, native paths, is whispering our language, but still to often refuses to take the paths we are on.

On this continuing common sense #blocking, let’s be blunt – now is the time to stop being prats about this necessary change. No more waiting for the next electoral saviour. No more hiding behind polite inaction. No more pretending that rebranded centrism is going to save us from fascism, it won’t.

If you're reading this, you probably already know the centre won't hold. So what's stopping you?

We don’t need more think pieces, what we need is more people to get their hands dirty, pick up the tools we’ve been building, and start doing the real work. This means, in my area of tech activism:

  • Federating your networks.
  • Hosting your own content.
  • Engaging in horizontal governance.
  • Publishing with principles.
  • Building trust and commons, not brands and silos.

The good news? The framework paths exist, the seed communities exist, the infrastructure, with the #Fediverse is small but growing solid. What’s been lacking is you, your time, your courage, your refusal to keep being a prat, to become brave enough to take this different path.

This Isn’t about nostalgia – It’s about now. We’re not dreaming of the past, we’re recovering futures that were lost when the #dotcons, the NGOs, and the #neoliberals buried the #opwnweb’s radical possibilities under a mountain of grift and branding. This isn’t utopianism. it’s simple pragmatism, resilience. It’s how we survive the rise of the new right without defaulting into the arms of the old centre – the ones who made this mess in the first place.

And for the record, if you need reminding: In this tech path, we don’t need another “platform.” We don’t need another fake “community” run by venture capital. We don’t need more loud voices doing nothing. What we need is to take paths back to rooted, open, and federated ways of working.

This is what the #OMN and #4opens have always been about. You can ignore it for another year or two, but you won’t outrun what’s coming, better to start planting now – it’s not too late to grow something real.

The time is now, if you’re waiting for permission, this is it. The people who once called us cranks are now writing op-eds about the collapse we have seen coming for years. The centre is falling, the right is mobilising, the old paths are dead ends.

The future will be built by those who show up now.

We need you, not in six months, not after the next election, now. Stop being a prat, pick up the tools to help build the next world – before the current one burns it all down.

First step: Stop being a prat

History has a lot to say on the peasant revolt vs. liberal half-measures

For thousands of years, the demands of the oppressed have remained startlingly consistent: Erase all debts, Burn the records, redistribute the land. These weren’t radical demands. They were and are common sense for those crushed by the weight of extraction, enclosure, and empire.

Compare that to today’s to often #fashionista “leftist” rallying cry of “Tax the rich.” Let’s be honest, this is moderate, half-baked reform in the #KISS sweep of human struggle. “Tax the rich” still assumes the rich deserve to keep most of what they’ve hoarded. It doesn’t touch the foundations of power. It doesn’t challenge the right of a #nastyfew to control the lives and labour of the many, it’s simply a polite request for a fairer share of exploitation.

Let’s talk about #conservatism – not the myth, but the mechanism. It’s not in any way about preserving “traditional values.” That’s branding. It’s about conserving power. Specifically, it’s about conserving the power relationships of the #nastyfew who own and rule, while the rest of us keep our heads down, grateful for scraps. It’s about saying the rich deserve their wealth, and the poor deserve their suffering. It’s about hiding violence behind respectability, and calling it “order.”

This didn’t start yesterday, from the French Revolution to today’s food bank capitalism, conservatism has been #blocking grassroots movements work to compost this mess. And now, it masks itself in liberal #mainstreaming, progressive slogans, while cops will increasingly beat your neighbours in the street.

And yes, if they’re beating your neighbours today, they’ll be beating you tomorrow. But maybe that shouldn’t be the reason to care, maybe it should be enough that they’re beating your neighbours today. This is not about guilt, it’s about clarity, we need to remember what real justice has always meant. Not tweaks, not taxes, not “top” tables with seats for the “marginalised.” But a complete rethinking of power, because if we don’t start #KISS thinking again, we’re not challenging anything – we’re decorating to hide the smell of the #deathcult

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

When we block thinking, it’s pratish #dotcons behaviour

Anyone still building their career only in the #dotcons is either an idiot or a parasite. Because when you tie yourself to platforms owned by the #deathcult, you’re feeding the very machine that eats your freedom, your data, your culture. The #openweb is the commons. It’s messy, imperfect, but it’s ours. Stop polishing the cage. Start building the garden.

We’re living through a cultural shift. The #Fediverse, the #openweb, and grassroots tech projects like #OMN were born to challenge the values of the corporate web, not to reproduce them.
But what are we doing instead? We’re seeing people attacked simply for linking to context and history. Linking is native to the #openweb. Attacking people for linking? That’s native to #dotcons. Take this example: When we post links to hamishcampbell.com, a site with over 20 years of radical media history, no tracking, no ads, no monetization, some people respond with hostility, instead of engaging, they block, slur, and accuse.

Why? Sometimes It’s because the link was shared on a #dotcons platform? Because it challenges their gatekeeping norms? It’s absurd. The truth is simple: #KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
This site is part of a long history of grassroots movements. No one is selling anything. No one is farming clicks. Yet bitter, shrinking cliques still push to block it. That kind of behaviour? It’s at best compost – something to shovel through as we grow better soil.

If you don’t get why this matters, start here: Why linking on the open web matters. Not linking is a dangerous cultural regression. The act of linking is a kind of mutual aid: it’s memory, solidarity, and a way to keep the commons visible. When you attack people for linking, you’re actively damaging the infrastructure we need to resist the #deathcult of #neoliberal capitalism, doing this is the problem, in no way any solution.

Here’s another angle worth reading: CrimethInc on mutual aid vs. charity. Mutual aid is not charity. Linking is not self-promotion. These are fundamental ideas. The #Fediverse is built on these values, it thrives when people share freely. But when we import #blocking behaviour and #dotcons paranoia, we replace trust with fear. We end up with closed circles, bad vibes, and petty gatekeeping.

The act of linking is how we build shared infrastructure. This is how we win. So please: Let’s stop slurring people for sharing knowledge. Let’s stop policing links with fear. Let’s link more, think more, and rebuild grassroots, networked culture rooted in trust, rather than control. Because without this? We’re just another branded platform, with nicer avatars and the same old decay underneath.

A call-out for collective tech with teeth

It’s important to be honest about the messy world we’re working in. Just about every so-called “alternative tech” or #opensocialweb event, especially the ones run under #NGO banners, ends up riddled with institutional parasites. They talk endlessly about ethics, governance, decentralisation, and community, but their real role is to capture energy rather than release it. The value produced in these spaces is minimal, a few worthwhile corridor conversations, maybe a useful contact or two, but structurally they overwhelmingly reproduce the status quo rather than challenge it.

What we’re watching is the #mainstreaming of dissent itself. Change gets reshaped into something passive, safe, marketable, and grant-friendly. The focus shifts from building to branding, from autonomy to funding cycles, the result – performative process replacing meaningful action.

At the same time, many people inside these spaces are so used to the #feudalism baked into current #FOSS governance models – gatekeepers, toxic meritocracy, invisible hierarchies, and endless procedural blocking – that they struggle to imagine moving beyond them. Instead of recognising the limits of these structures, they double down on them, in practice, becoming a culture of #blocking disguised as principled caution.

This is why the #OGB project (Open Governance Body) takes a radically different path of build it permissionlessly and let it loose. No waiting for approval, no begging institutions for funding, no asking gatekeepers to validate the work before it can begin. Just creating space where people can actually do things together, openly and socially. If something works, people will use it and build on it. If it fails, we compost it and try another approach. What matters is breaking out of the dead ritual cycle of conferences, grant applications, strategy decks, and carefully managed “community engagement”.

The insight we need is that there is a much larger group of people beyond the usual tech and activist circles who can be empowered by technology – if the structures are simple, social, and human enough. Most people do not want to spend their lives fighting inside issue trackers, governance debates, or foundation politics. They want tools that help them cooperate, share resources, build resilience, and support each other in practical ways.

The technical side matters, of course. The tools need to exist. But many of the ideas already exist. What has been missing is a path that does not instantly collapse back into control, capture, and institutional inertia.

That’s why #OGB follows a #KISS approach. It is not about designing perfect systems. It is about creating simple enough structures that communities can actually pick them up, use them, and evolve them over time. Living processes rather than frozen frameworks. Something grounded enough to function socially instead of becoming another endless GitHub argument or abandoned grant proposal.

And honestly, people are up shit creek without a paddle right now. Most of what gets presented as “innovation” or “solutions” is simply more #techshit wrapped in cleaner UX and polished #fashionista language. If we want people to find different ways forward, we need to build different places for them to stand. That means creating tech ecosystems rooted in social trust, creativity, mutual aid, and practical autonomy – not more extractive platforms or professionalised NGOs performing change while maintaining dependency.

There is also the deeper cultural problem of apathy and laissez-faire fatalism. People know the system is failing, but many no longer believe meaningful change is possible. Decades of neoliberalism and #deathcult politics have trained people to internalise defeat before they even begin. This means we need to design structures that can survive low energy, inconsistency, and uneven participation. Systems that do not depend on constant enthusiasm or perfect behaviour to keep functioning. Systems that can hold space through both momentum and exhaustion.

This is where there is real room for creativity and care – not just in what we build, but in how we build it, and who we build it with. Not glossy pitch decks not self-promoting conferences, not another round of empty institutional networking. Compost piles and messy gardens are a better metaphor.

Things that live.
Things that adapt.
Things that root themselves in everyday needs.
Things that people can actually inhabit together.

That is the path worth building.

The #OGB project is just one shovel. But there are others. Pick one up, the ground’s ready.

The Mess – If You Don’t Value Things, You Destroy Them

For roughly 200 years, we’ve lived inside – and many of us under – a single system: global capitalism. In this system, value is not measured by care, connection, or collective wellbeing, but by market logic, if something cannot be priced, scaled, or exploited within that logic, it is treated as waste. This has a brutal consequence, that, if you do not actively value alternatives, you will “accidentally” destroy them. This applies to technology, culture, nature, and community alike.

In tech, this shows up as misplaced value. People keep using #mainstreaming tools – the platforms and apps of the #dotcons – not because they’re good, but because they’re easy, familiar, and socially reinforced, its habit masquerades as neutrality. But this behaviour actively erodes the alternatives we’ve built, draining energy from projects like #visionontv, #OMN, #OGB, and #indymediaback. It recentralises power, breaks human-scale governance, and reinforces #stupidindividualism.

This is where the balance between social change and technological change becomes critical. Social change without technology stalls. Technological change without social grounding fails, or worse, causes harm. The #OMN projects, and especially the #OGB, exist to bridge this gap.

The #OGB isn’t dogmatic, no single ideology owns it. That’s its strength, it’s a balanced framework that many groups could accept – if a committed few would actually implement it. But implementation is hard, because we’re surrounded by BLOCKING. #BLOCKING and the #deathcult are everywhere, including inside us. We all block, liberals block radical alternatives, dogmatists block flexible, balanced ones. Most people block anything that complicates their worldview or demands responsibility.

After forty years of #neoliberalism, this #deathcult logic has soaked deep into us. It fuels a vicious cycle of #stupidindividualism. Without community ownership and shared vision, our tools rot. Projects collapse into power struggles. People retreat into passivity or purity spirals. “Personal freedom” becomes a hollow slogan that accelerates collective collapse.

The loop looks like this: Individualism → Disconnection → Destruction → Fear → More individualism. Breaking this loop is messy. It has to be messy. That’s why we must reclaim ownership of our #openweb infrastructure. We need democratic instincts, not polished #PR, not market-driven clarity. We need to take the #KISS path – Keep It Simple, Stupid – precisely because simplicity is the hardest thing to sustain in a world of endless distraction.

And yes, this involves you, many people are passive, disengaged, even stupid, not because they’re bad, but because the system rewards disinterest and punishes care. Many can’t even see the problem because they’re fully submerged in it. That’s the real trap, is the invisible #BLOCK.

That’s what #OMN and #OGB are trying to push through. So yes, I’m pointing the finger at you. But I’m also inviting you: to build, to grow, to compost the myths we’ve been fed and cultivate something more real, more collective, more human #KISS

#Neoliberalism is in everything we look at, everything we touch. We should feel distaste when we see it, and revulsion when we handle it. That discomfort matters. Without it, nothing changes.

This may get unpleasant.

It probably needs to.

We need to compost the spiky and the fluffy nasty

From hard walls to fluffy blocks – let’s compost the negative nastiness in our progressive spaces.

A reflection on toxic communication in radical spaces, and how to build something better.

In the 20th century, much of the nastiness came from the hard vertical left. Back then, control, ideology, and vanguardism created rigid hierarchies, enforced through forceful exclusion and dogma. In the 21st century, that same exclusion comes from the “fluffy” horizontal left, the #fashionista crew wrapped in progressive aesthetics. It’s still fear and control. It’s still the same mess. And it still needs composting.

Even in spaces that claim openness and justice, we see “common sense” pushing of gatekeeping, moral absolutism. From both ends, the old vertical hardliners and the new fluffy puritans, we’re still well stuck in cycles of not hearing each other. One of the hard problems of the current left/progressive paths is this intolerance and dogmatic nastiness dressed up in fluffy cloth. Historically, from the hard vertical left, but much more common today is from our “fluffy” #fashionista “progressive” crew and their pushing of postmodernist language games as #blocking.

It’s a real and persistent issue in left/progressive paths, we do all service by worshipping a #deathcult, so people are often “wrong” as this common sense worship is the normal, not the exception. It is a cycle where gatekeeping, moral absolutism, and social exclusion dominate on every side. But when this comes from the “fluffy” or “horizontal” side, it is even harder to talk about, as it’s too often masked as care or safety, but still ends up reinforcing fear and control.

Non-nasty communication would be rooted in trust, a touch of humility, and most importantly shared purpose, and could look like a presumption of good intent, default to assuming people are trying, even if they fail. Then we need to replace instant cancellation with curiosity, “What do you mean by that?” or “Can we unpack that together?” in more constipated language that works for some more academic people.

Yes we do need clear boundaries without exclusion, you can say “That’s not OK here” without blocking, shaming, or exiling. Encouraging dialogue before disengagement builds stronger communities than isolation does. Then in every step visible open process (#4opens Style).

In group process, clear decision-making, open archives, transparent moderation, and rotating responsibility make space for people to learn and grow instead of fear missteps. If this goes wrong, and it will, deep listening, slow speaking. Let things sit. Respond with reflection, not reflex. Allow pauses and silences; don’t rush to dominate with the “correct” take.

In the end, it’s best to see conflict as compost, not crisis. See disagreement as a chance to grow shared understanding, hold space for messy difference rather than rushing to resolution or punishment. A part of this is inviting language, use “we,” “let’s,” and questions more than commands or declarations. Say “I’m wondering if…” instead of “You’re wrong because…”

In short and sharp, what to do when people are “wrong”, treat people as comrades, not problems is a good first step. Communication should be generative, less about winning, more about creating together. #KISS we do need to compost this nasty mess, do you need a shovel #OMN

Then OK in the end you might end up hitting each other, but this should always be long down the process path, long down. Hope this helps 😉