Who Broke the #OpenWeb?

30 years ago, the #openweb held the promise of a decentralized, people-driven internet where communities thrived free from corporate control, built on openness, collaboration, and trust. However, over time, #mainstreaming overlapping forces contributed to its fragmentation and decay. I will outline each of these groups that played a role in hollowing out the one’s strong native path. Till ten years ago, we just had a shell of its former self.

A brief look at who undermined the #openweb:

#Encryptionists – Security Theatre Over Trust-Based Relationships

Security and privacy are crucial aspects of online interactions. However, the rise of encryption absolutism led to a fixation on security theatre rather than meaningful, trust-based relationships. By prioritizing complex, user-unfriendly security measures, #encryptionists alienated non-technical users. They created barriers to entry, making the #openweb feel inaccessible to the very people it aimed to empower. Trust, once a fundamental building block of the openweb, was sidelined in favour of rigid, abstract security morality that ignored real-world social dynamics. While encryption is necessary, it should complement usability rather than hinder this “native” path. When security becomes a gatekeeper rather than an enabler, it fractures communities rather than strengthening them.

#Geekproblem – The #openweb as an irrelevant subculture

Technologists and early adopters built the openweb, but over time, the culture of fear based geek elitism turned the flow into a closed-off subculture. Developers built tools for themselves rather than for broader communities, leading to solutions that required extensive technical knowledge to use. The obsession with purity in code and ideology hidden within this path created unnecessary division and infighting. Rather than embracing the diverse needs of the public, the #geekproblem pushed people away, reinforcing a bubble that only a self select few could engage with. Instead of evolving into an inclusive, mass-adopted movement, the openweb became a niche playground for those already initiated in its ways, leaving the rest to the mercy of corporate-controlled #dotcons.

#Fashernistas – Self-interest, greed, and the worst of both worlds

The rise of wannabe internet influencers, thought leaders, and opportunists, what we call the #fashernistas, has further eroded the openweb. Many latched onto the latest trends not out of any genuine belief or understanding, but for self-promotion and status. They borrowed aspects of both corporate and grassroots cultures, cherry-picking whatever served their individual interests while ignoring the larger ethical paths and responsibilities. Their influence diluted the radical ideas, turning this space into shallow branding exercises rather than growing the meaning filled movements. Instead of acting as advocates for real change and thus challenge, they became part of the problem, steering discussions toward popularity contests rather than the substance we need.

#Dotcons – The corporate takeover of data and social control

The most obvious and destructive force has been the rise of corporate social media (#dotcons), which privatized data and metadata for profit and control. The internet was transformed from an open space into a series of walled gardens controlled by tech giants. Monetization models based on surveillance and algorithmic manipulation reshaped online behaviour, pushing engagement metrics over any real or genuine human connection. By making convenience their selling point, they successfully pulled people away from the increasingly #geekproblem decentralized, community-led paths and platforms. The result? A generation that has become dependent on centralized services while completely losing control over their digital lives.

The destruction of the openweb was not inevitable, and it does not have to be permanent. A lot of people and communities are already back on this “native” path with the #Fediverse. How we actively help to work to reclaim this openweb reboot:

Reclaim Trust-Based Relationships – Instead of hiding behind abstract security models, we need to balance this with rebuilding relationships based on trust and transparency. This means developing tools that prioritize human connection over cryptographic isolation.

Stop Chasing Security Theatre at the Cost of Usability – Security should serve people, not alienate them. We need simple, effective solutions that balance safety with accessibility.

Challenge Commercialization and Centralization – Corporate control of the web needs to be actively resisted. Open, federated, and cooperative models should be the foundation of our digital spaces, this is a fight we can win.

Build Resilient, People-Powered Infrastructure – We need investment in decentralized, community-driven technologies that are not reliant on any single entity. By growing the culture of home-hosting, redundancy, and peer-to-peer networks, we can create systems that can survive and thrive outside corporate control and be a little resilient to social brake down we are going to face over the next 20 years.

In conclusion, the openweb was torn apart by a combination of #deathcult ideological rigidity, cultural elitism, opportunism, and corporate greed. But the is hope, as we are currently rebuilding this path, the question now is: Will we let the forces that destroyed the original openweb movement shape these fresh seedling beds, or will we take back control to grow something better and stronger.

People, community, the long struggle between the #openweb and #dotcons

This is a mess that has been clear to see for 20 years, but people keep falling into the same traps instead of stepping off the cycle of control. We had something, we lost it, and we are still refusing to face why.

Let’s use #Failbook as a practical example of a monster that devours our dreams, fifteen years ago, the writing was already on the wall, #failbook and the #dotcons would eat everything. It wasn’t some grand conspiracy, just basic power and control dynamics. People knew this. They saw the cage being built around them, yet walked in willingly. Why? Because in the small picture, it was “easier” to stay inside than to step outside. They thought they were users, but they were being used. Every attempt to “fix” #failbook, the endless ethical tech debates, the “kinder, fairer” alternatives, the #NGO-funded projects promising “a better social network”, misses the core issue: You don’t fix a monster. You stop feeding it and walk away.

This is where the religious metaphor fits, people don’t want atheism (the #openweb), they just want a nicer god (ethical #dotcons). They still kneel before centralized power, just hoping for a softer whip. We need to stop worshipping the digital feudal lords and start building something else entirely. One path is to reboot the original #openweb

To do this we need some social history: The #openweb was murdered, and no one faced the consequences, we need a truth and reconciliation process for what happened to the #openweb. Why? Because people refuse to learn from history, and that means they keep making the same mistakes. Look at the waves of migration from open to closed over the last two decades:

The rise of blogs and open publishing (2000s) → The pull into social media walled gardens (2010s)
The rise of the federated web (2000s, early 2010s) → The collapse into corporate-owned silos (late 2010s, 2020s)
The rebirth of the Fediverse (Mastodon, PeerTube, Lemmy, etc.) → Now being co-opted by NGOs and #mainstreaming interests

Each time, the excuse is different, but the result is the same, we hand over power, they take control, we lose everything. Until we face the fact that we let this happen, that we were complicit, this cycle won’t stop. Every time we fail to call it what it is, the blood-letting/stains keep coming back.

The problem with #NGO and Co-op models, people love to push the same “solutions” that failed before. Pushing a voluntary project into a hard “not-for-profit” structure kills it, this happened again and again. Look at #indymedia. It worked because it was messy, decentralized, built from the ground up. Run by volunteers, not controlled by a central authority. Rooted in the activist base, not an #NGO-funded agenda. Then came the push to “formalize” it, and what happened?

Funding fights, bureaucracy, infighting.
Projects being hijacked or forced into rigid structures.
Most of the co-op/NGO media projects collapsed.

There is nothing wrong with people building not-for-profit media, but stop forcing voluntary activism into structures that will kill it. The old mistakes aren’t new solutions. They are just mistakes waiting to happen again.

The #OMN and the need for diversity of strategies, the #OMN is built on a simple idea, diversity of strategies is strength. We need:

Commercial models where they work.
Not-for-profit structures where they make sense.
Voluntary activism as the foundation.

Then the basic #4opens of them linking to each other. What we don’t need is people using their own narrow worldview as a #BLOCK on other approaches in the guise of “helping”. This happens all the time, with the #NGO crowd that wants everything formalized, structured, and professionalized, they see grassroots messiness as a problem. The geeks want everything to be purely about the tech, ignoring the social and political realities. The politicos want everything to align with their ideology, even when that means excluding actual working solutions. These proxy fights kill the meany projects before they even start.

The solution is not ideological purity, it’s pragmatic diversity. If we want to break the cycle, we need to stop repeating the same mistakes, stop blocking each other, link and start building with what we have #KISS

One path to this, that needs support https://opencollective.com/open-media-network

The light in this is the #Fediverse, otherwise the last decade in tech has been a complete dead end. We’ve watched the same old mistakes play out, layering more “solutions” onto the #geekproblem without ever questioning the foundation. Instead of building trust, we’ve been sold “security” wrapped in fear, reinforcing the same toxic cycles that keep us locked in place.

The #OMN projects build from the #Fediverse and #openweb reboot to break from this. They are about real empowerment, shifting power by growing trust rather than control. If we keep repeating the same mistakes, we’re just feeding the #deathcult, accelerating the collapse. The #fashernista and #encryptionist obsessions, instead of opening paths to change, have become blind alleyways leading to catastrophe. We need to step back, reassess, and build differently, before the coming decades bring suffering on a scale we’ve barely begun to grasp.

Trump and the tools of the old world order

An example of this is The United States Agency for International Development (#USAID) which was presented as a humanitarian force for economic and social development worldwide. However, its origins and operations paint a different much darker path, of geopolitical manoeuvring and #neoliberal hegemony over the last 40 years. Now, with the hard shift to the right, USAID is being gutted, alongside other long-standing institutions of the U.S. “liberal” global order.

Origins and the Cold War Agenda, founded in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, USAID was pushed into view as a means to promote global development. In truth, it was the normal Cold War weapon of this era, countering Soviet influence under the guise of humanitarian assistance. The Foreign Assistance Act centralized foreign aid and explicitly tied it to U.S. geopolitical strategy. This was done in the open, Lyndon B. Johnson admitted that food aid was leveraged to redirect recipient countries’ spending toward military and security cooperation with the U.S.

A very easy to see example of this was the Food for Peace program, which used grain shipments to coerce nations into rejecting Soviet assistance. With famine relief being politicized as a tool for control, India, for instance, had to tone down its criticism of the U.S. war in Vietnam before receiving necessary aid.

Covert operations, as a soft power arm of the #CIA, despite meany of these institutions being branded as independent agencies. In 1973, Senator Ted Kennedy directly questioned whether USAID was involved in Southeast Asian covert operations. The answer was a resounding yes.

In Guatemala, during the genocide of the Mayan people in the 1970s, USAID funded and trained police forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations against leftist movements.

In Uruguay, USAID’s Dan Mitrione personally trained security forces in torture techniques, including electroshock and psychological warfare.

In the 1980s, USAID facilitated “non-lethal aid” to Contra forces in Nicaragua, effectively ensuring they remained combat-ready despite congressional restrictions on military support.
In Peru, USAID financially supported dictator Alberto Fujimori’s forced sterilization program, targeting 300,000 Indigenous women under the guise of population control.

Perhaps the most infamous case was Afghanistan, where #USAID provided millions to the University of Nebraska to develop textbooks filled with anti-Soviet propaganda, using religious rhetoric to radicalize young Mujahideen fighters. The blowback in globe mess from these operations is still felt today, a compleat shit storm of mess making.

With the fall of the USSR, these old #coldwar institutions pivoted towards more #neoliberal capitalist economic restructuring, pushing deregulation, privatization, and free-market reforms in post-Soviet states. Democracy promotion was a pretext, but only for “democracies” that aligned with U.S. corporate interests. Any “independence” risked financial punishment or outright regime change operations. This was a disaster for much of the region, which we are seeing play out in the Russia Ukraine war.

Post-9/11: The security state expansion saw budgets balloon, increasing by 70% between 2001 and 2003. The agency became more directly aligned with military operations, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. In these war zones, USAID’s stated mission of “nation-building” was a flimsy cover for consolidating U.S. control over shattered economies. The real work of development, tackling poverty and fostering stability, was an afterthought compared to the securing American military dominance in the era.

The left, right mess is on repeat

Trump’s “Draining the Swamp” what is this about and what will be likely outcomes: Oligarchy pushing #neoliberal chaos vs managed hegemony, These institutions were a tool of imperial control, but their removal creates a vacuum. The likely outcome is that private corporations and unaccountable privatised military contractors will increasingly step in to replace state-controlled influence operations.

We might see the growth of right-wing Isolationism with Trump’s America First rhetoric leading to a defacto disengaging from directly shaping international development, but not from coercion. Economic sanctions and direct intervention (as seen in Venezuela) remain the preferred tactics for managing the mess these polices create, there is a very dangerous feedback loop here.

There is a shift to cruder authoritarian paths, instead of “soft power” the replacement actors and institutions are based on direct strongman alliances, reinforcing a world order based on brute force rather than, shadowed economic manipulation.

What should the progressive left do? Rather than mourning the loss of USAID and other Cold War institutions, the left should take this as an opportunity to redefine internationalism. Instead of #neoliberal “aid” programs that uphold global inequality, we should be pushing for:

#KISS grassroots solidarity: Development led by those directly affected, not dictated by the #nastyfew imperial wonabe powers. A seed of this is the #OGB project.
Decentralized cooperative structures to replace hierarchical and state-controlled #NGOs with open, transparent, and accountable networks. A seed of this is the #OMN projects.
Reclaiming media from the #nastyfew Influence and control: With US funded media outlets shutting down, now is the time to push for independent, radical journalism free from state agenda. A seed of this is the #indymediaback project.

What we need to focus on is opposing the #deathcult in all forms, whether #neoliberal soft power or #Trumpist strongman tactics, which obviously both serve the interests of the #nastyfew class. A real #KISS alternative means dismantling or mediating global #capitalism itself. #Trump’s destruction of the old world institutions is another step in shifting power from one faction of the #nastyfew to another. The question that matters isn’t whether these institutions should exist, it’s what we build in their place, and how we gain the power to become the change and challenge to do this #KISS

A shift back to radical values and paths

Much of academia post-1990s is just a shadow of the #deathcult, stripped of radicalism and repackaged into careerist, bureaucratic loops. It became another self-referential path, detached from real world struggles. The privatization of knowledge through paywalled journals, corporate funding, and NGO capture made sure of this.

The same thing happened with #FOSS and #opensource, once about radical openness, it was watered down when organizing shifted to closed chat systems and corporate-friendly platforms. We lost the #openprocess that made early public archives powerful.

Then you have, Modern Art, once revolutionary, was quickly absorbed into the cultural arm of the #deathcult, turning radical expression into a commodity for the #nastyfew. It’s the same cycle over and over:

A movement starts as a real challenge to power.
It gains momentum.
Power co-opts it, waters it down, and sells it back to us.

People will keep doing stupid things, that’s inevitable. The job is to call it out, push better paths, and make sure they don’t repeat the same mistakes. It’s not glamorous, and it won’t get you applause, but that’s how real social change works.

The cat meowing, the #fashionistas, whether intentionally or not, keep blocking the left’s paths by turning everything into aesthetics and performance rather than actual power-building. They chase whatever is trending, constantly rebrand, and ultimately reinforce the #mainstreaming forces they claim to resist.

Meanwhile, the right organizes, funds, and builds real infrastructure, they don’t waste time on purity politics and endless internal fights. That’s why they keep winning.

So what do we do?

Stop trend-hopping, we need long-term strategies, not just momentary viral moments.
Build real alternatives, tech, media, organizing spaces that serve movements, not just “woke” branding.
Own our narratives, not get trapped in the spectacle of liberal discourse and right-wing outrage cycles.
Get our hands dirty, shovel through the #techshit, compost the failures, and grow something real.

This is about taking control back, not only reacting to the crises the nasty few push us to manufacture. Radical media, the #openweb, grassroots organizing, these are the things that cut through the noise and shift power back to where it belongs.

#KISS

The #4opens act as a foundation to hold back the tide of the post-truth world, they enforce transparency, accountability, and community control. Without them, everything drifts into manipulation, closed power structures, and co-option by #dotcons.

It’s a chicken-and-egg issue because we need social trust and active participation to maintain the #4opens, but those same values are constantly eroded by the #mainstreaming forces of the #deathcult.

The #OMN is crucial because it builds digital commons as a form of social technology. It’s not just about the tech, it’s about the relationships, trust networks, and shared values that make it work. Once we have this space, what we do with it is up to us, but it has to be grounded in real, radical alternatives, not just another tech silo.

That’s where the rebooted #indymedia project comes in. It’s built on the #PGA hallmarks, which means it’s explicitly anti-capitalist, decentralized, and activist-driven. It can’t function within the corporate media sphere, so it has to exist in a #TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone)—a liberated, self-organized space outside of state and market control.

Wikipedia gives a decent artsy take on #TAZ, but in practice, it’s about creating spaces where radical alternatives can actually live and grow. #PGA is the backbone, an old grassroot global framework for direct action and real-world resistance.

The key is building trust-based networks that aren’t easily co-opted. If we don’t do this, the cycle repeats: good projects get absorbed, neutralized, or just fade into irrelevance.

These aren’t pointless projects

#mainstreaming #liberalism has lost its way. For the past 20 years, many self-described liberals have spewed out bilge water disguised as “common sense.” But when pressure mounts, they reveal themselves as dogmatic and intolerant, almost as if they aren’t truly liberal at all.

How did we end up in this mess? The #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the rise of #dotcons shaped the dominant version of “common sense,” warping it away from collective care and into something narrow and self-destructive. It’s worth reflecting on this if we want to reclaim a liberal liberalism, rooted in genuine openness and social good.

In practice, we can compost this mess by focusing on #nothingnew paths. Two longstanding cultural projects already embody this, working in non-federated ways for over a century. Now, we can add technical federation to the mix, building on 5+ years of #ActivityPub rollout.

This gives us two powerful, #openweb-native paths forward:

Grassroots #DIY culture — Local, self-organized, and messy, but thriving outside corporate control.
Technical federation — Interconnected systems designed to distribute power and ownership.

Both of these paths lead somewhere meaningful:

#indymediaback (part of the #OMN project) to rebuild radical grassroots media.
#OGB (based on #EU outreach on #socialhub) to create open, federated governance.

These aren’t pointless projects, they’re a chance to break free from the suffocating grip of the #deathcult and build something resilient, human, and actually free.

Shall we pick up the shovels and start composting? 🌱

Why the Fediverse Needs a Connection Between Mainstreaming and Grassroots

This is a key point that often gets misunderstood. #Mainstreaming isn’t inherently good or bad—it depends on who is influencing whom.

Good #mainstreaming = Bringing #openweb values into the mainstream (transparency, decentralization, cooperation).

Bad #mainstreaming = The mainstream (corporate control, surveillance capitalism, hierarchy) infusing itself into the #openweb and reshaping it in its own image.

In the current context, mainstreaming is mostly bad because it tends to dilute radical alternatives into market-friendly compromises. The #deathcult (neoliberalism) doesn’t absorb things in good faith—it co-opts and neutralizes them.

That’s why we need mediation, pushback, and a clear understanding of context when talking about #mainstreaming. Sometimes it’s the right move, but right now, the priority is defending and growing the roots of the #openweb before our # #fashionistas can sell it off as a brand.

One of the best things about the Fediverse is that real people and community’s get to choose what kind of digital paths they want to take. Don’t want #Meta snooping around? Join or host an instance that blocks them out. Prefer not to have people search your content? Lock it down in your settings. Want to mediate the strong #blinded flow of “normies”? Close the doors via your instance settings. It’s a “nativist” system that offers a radical degree of agency compared to the #dotcons.

But what happens when people start demanding that their version of the #Fediverse become the default for everyone else? That’s where things get tricky, and where we risk losing the most valuable aspect of this messy, decentralized network: the bridges between worlds. The danger of closed loops, it’s understandable that people want their corners of the #Fediverse to feel safe, sustainable, coherent, and aligned with shared values.

The problem is that when we focus on tools so that every group can retreat into its own echo chamber, we recreate the failures of the wider #dotcons web: fragmented bubbles where ideas stagnate, and meaningful conversations can’t happen. This is what I mean when I talked about #mainstreaming echo chambers, the tendency for people to isolate themselves in what feels comfortable, which ultimately makes everything smaller.

The irony is that this impulse to close off is, in a way, the same as the desire to keep the Fediverse open. Both are reactions to the failures of centralized tech platforms. People who want to mediate #mainstreaming influences are trying to nurture the fragile seedlings of the grassroots culture they’ve built, while those advocating for broader adoption hope to prevent the network from collapsing into irrelevance. Both impulses come from wanting the Fediverse to survive, they just express that desire in too often opposite #blocking ways.

The failed bridge of #FediverseHouse is a normal path. This tension came to a head with projects like #FediverseHouse and #Fediforum, which aimed to be a gathering space but ultimately failed to build lasting bridges. It wasn’t because people didn’t care, it was because there wasn’t enough understanding of how to hold that tension between the grassroots and the mainstream without one swallowing the other. The projects lack the simplicity of #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and got tangled in the same old dynamics of control and fragmentation.

Keeping the bridge in place has a lot to do which sharing resources, in non #mainstreaming ways, yes, we understand, this is a hard leap for meany people but only people who can make this step can acturly be useful in the end to the “native” #openweb paths. The solution isn’t to pick a side, but to intentionally hold the bridge. In a smaller, view, that might look like running accounts across multiple instances and boosting content between different ideological spaces to keep ideas flowing. It might mean advocating for #4opens values even in mainstream-leaning spaces, or gently nudging the more isolated pockets of the Fediverse to stay curious about what lies outside their walls.

The Fediverse doesn’t need to be one thing, that’s its strength. But if we let the bridges decay, we lose the possibility of cross-pollination, of radical ideas seeping into #mainstreaming consciousness, or of everyday people stumbling into a space that makes them question the status quo. Instead of fighting, as we so often do, to make one version of the #Fediverse dominant, maybe the real work is in keeping the network alive, messy, imperfect, but always connected. Because it’s in those connections that real alternatives grow.

Fear, hope, and #climatechaos

The path we are on, climate change, mainstream politics, and fear reveals a troubling pattern: in times of crisis, like #climatechaos, mainstream politics instinctively shifts to the right. It’s essential to understand the underlying role of fear in pushing this drift.

Fear is a powerful political motivator. Right-wing ideologies thrive on it, whether the fear stems from economic instability, cultural change, or national security threats. In the current path of accelerating climate breakdown, fears of environmental collapse, mass migration, and resource scarcity intensify are creating fertile ground for reactionary politics to grow.

Yet, an intriguing shift to a counter path is underway: the fading fear of socialism among the western bourgeoisie. For decades, socialism was the boogeyman used to justify capitalism’s worst excesses. But as socialist ideas gain legitimacy, especially among younger generations, that fear diminishes. This shift cracks open space to challenge and thus change the right’s dominance and revive radical real alternatives.

This opening offers a brief flowering of hope. By balancing collective, community-driven projects and advocating for systemic change, we can push back against the politics of fear. Movements like #OMN, #OGB, and #indymediaback are seeds of this potential, growing resilience, equity, and sustainability outside the #mainstreaming mess driving spectacle.

However, hope can be a dwindling resource. Every moment lost to inaction feeds the cycle of despair, reinforcing the right’s grip on public imagination. The urgency of #climatechaos means we can’t afford to waste time or the pointless distractions that #mainstreaming common sense pushes over us.

This struggle is a balance between fear and hope. Fear is the tool of the #deathcult, but hope lives in grassroots action. The future depends on whether we push fear to suffocate change or seize this fleeting opening to build something real — from the compost of what’s been lost all ready.

Best not to one of the prats, who #block this path, thanks.

Feeding on the Roots: How Mainstreaming Devours Radical Movements

We’ve had 40 years of head-down worship of the #deathcult, and now very few people dare to lift their heads to look around at the mess we live and die in. It is really hard to communicate to #mainstreaming people inside the #dotcons that today, way too much mainstreaming is simply parasitic. That the balance is out with them feeding, draining the life from grassroots #DIY creativity, to consumes it, and then discards the husk. This is in part why our liberal society and wider ecology are in crisis. We let “them” devour and discarded the very cultures that regenerates our lives.

Punk emerged as a raw, anti-establishment eruption of energy: people building their own venues, pressing their own records, and living outside the system. Within a decade, the mainstream chewed it up, spat out mall-punk aesthetics, and sold rebellion back to kids as a fashion statement. The original #DIY culture that sustained community withered, while corporations wore its preserved skin to sell the same cultural emptiness punk rose to resist.

Or take the light green movement. Grassroots dark green eco-activism in the ’70s and ’80s was fierce and uncompromising, with people physically blocking bulldozers, building tree-sits, and creating autonomous zones. Today, the “green” label is a marketing gimmick, plastered on disposable products and corporate ad campaigns. The radical core of systemic change has been devoured, leaving a husk of performative (stupid)individual actions like buying metal straws.

Even the internet itself — once an open tool of ideas, built by native #DIY culture and hackers who wanted to share knowledge freely — was, after a ten-year fight, enclosed by the #dotcons. They bought the creativity, built walled gardens, and replaced collective digital commons with algorithmic echo chambers. What was once a chaotic, messy, generative space became a polished, ad-riddled shopping mall.

This cycle repeats because people don’t see the consumption happening in real time. They’re taught to see success as visibility, and visibility as validation. But by the time a radical idea becomes visible to the mainstream, it’s usually already being gutted from the inside. The #mainstreaming only lets radical ideas and actions in when they’ve been defanged, made safe, and rendered useful to perpetuate the status quo.

The result is today’s society running on empty, haunted by the hollowed-out shells of the movements that imagined another way of being. And because we’ve been taught to equate progress with endless consumption, of ideas, identities, cultures, few people realize they’re living in a landscape of corpses.

The question is: how do we shovel this mess to change this cycle? How do we protect the roots while letting the flowers bloom? And how do we get people to lift their heads, shake off the #mainstreaming trance, and see the compost we’re standing in, the fertile ground where real alternatives do grow? How do we change and challenge what is mainstreaming?

Note: This is a #fluffy attempt at communicating to the #mainstreaming. In reality, this post is about #activertpub and the #Fediverse. I’ve already written extensively on this, but I don’t think those pieces break through to the #mainstreaming. So, I used other examples to illustrate the issue.

#fediversehouse

Keeping Conversation’s Open, with the Fluffy-Spiky Debate

In activist spaces and grassroots communities, the tension between #fluffy and #spiky approaches is a well-worn dynamic. Fluffy represents a gentler, consensus-driven path, centred on kindness, inclusion, and collective care. Spiky, on the other hand, is sharp-edged, direct, and confrontational, willing to disrupt and break things to push for change. Both paths have their place, but the trouble arises when fluffy turns dogmatic, morphing into a hard passive-aggressive policing that silences needed dissent.

Dogmatic fluffy presents itself as kindness, but when it becomes rigid, it is just as destructive as unchecked aggression. People get shamed for stepping out of line, challenging dominant group norms, and advocating for more assertive tactics. This isn’t only a theoretical issue, it actively fractures movements, creating an echo chamber where only approved, safe opinions are allowed to circulate. Its activism dressed in softness but wielding the same #mainstreaming blunt force as the systems we set out to dismantle.

The danger lies in the #blocking of paths to meaningful discussion. When conversations are shut down in the name of maintaining harmony, we lose the ability to take difficult paths. The #fluffy-spiky debate needs to be dynamic, a living exploration of what tactics are effective in different contexts. Sometimes, gentle community building is the answer. Other times, the situation calls for confrontation and disruption. But when one side forcibly silences the other, we stop evolving.

It’s good to remember #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Complexity is necessary, but so is cutting through the noise. If our movements become bogged down in internal purity tests, we soon lose sight of the actual struggle. With, people stepping away from the #dotcons and looking for alternatives. We need to offer spaces where messy, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations can happen, not sterilized bubbles where dissent is treated as betrayal.

Real movements thrive in the tension between fluffy and spiky. The key is to stay flexible, to let people navigate those paths without turning one into a dead-end. Fluffy doesn’t need to fear spiky, and spiky doesn’t need to dismiss fluffy. They’re both tools, both necessary. And if we can hold space for that complexity, we might just build movements resilient enough to withstand whatever the #deathcult throws our way.

What do you think? Should we lean into the discomfort and keep the debate alive?

UPDATE: it needs to be said that #blinded dogmatic #fluffy people can become nasty #fuckwits without a clue, what do you think we can do with this mess?

When doors to dialogue slam shut, people look for other ways to be heard

With the crackdown on #XR’s peaceful, #fluffy protests, it’s no surprise that movements are moving into stronger, more disruptive actions. When one path to change is systematically #blocked, history shows that movements turn to #spiky, and we’re already seeing this shift. Recent events, like the symbolic damage by Oxford University by the Palestine Action group, or climate activists turning to sabotage, signal a new phase in the fight for justice and survival.

This escalation isn’t happening in isolation. It’s the predictable result of a systematic refusal to listen to those calling for change. People lose faith in liberal symbolic demonstrations as the #deathcult of #neoliberalism marches on, indifferent to the destruction in its wake. When doors to dialogue are slammed shut, people look for other ways to be heard.

Universities should be at the forefront of this conversation, providing space for genuine debate on how change happens, not just as an abstract academic exercise, but as a living, breathing discussion that acknowledges the urgency of the current mess. We need to break out of the cycle of blinded performative process and confront the reality that people will not quietly watch the world burn.

The #KISS path reminds us to keep things simple: listen to people, understand the roots of their motivations, and create pathways for meaningful action. Otherwise, as we’re already seeing, the pressure will keep building — and the cracks in the system will only grow wider.

To find my wider view on university’s role in this

The #fashernistas poisoned the well of alt-media

This has been going on for more than ten years, I have been at the heart of this movement, at many of the steps, I meet defeatism and negativity. It’s frustrating, especially now, when the mainstream is visibly stepping away from the #dotcons and looking for a place to land. We should be building that landing space, but instead, we’re tangled in the wreckage of failed ideas and cynical inertia.

Yes, stupid fashionable ideas have failed again and again, but that doesn’t mean the basics no longer work. The #openweb grew from simple, powerful principles: decentralization, collaboration, and a belief that media should be in the hands of the people, not locked behind corporate walls. It worked then, and it can work now.

The #blocking wall, the #dotcons built to dam this flow, just might be crumbling, but I don’t think people realize just how much defeatist noise we had and still have to break through:

“Old tech. Nobody uses torrents anymore.”
“That’s been tried — it failed.”
“This is better, nobody’s interested in that.”
“You should be using XYZ instead. I have a better idea...”

It’s an endless cycle of negativity, driven by a #geekproblem that values novelty over function, and a #fashernista culture that chases trends rather than tending to the messy, necessary work of composting old ideas to grow something real. The #openweb tools still work, If we use them. The core tools of the #openweb are still powerful:

#RSS feeds for simple, open distribution.
#Torrents for decentralized, resilient file sharing.
#Fedivers networks like #Peertube, #Mastodon, and #Wordpress for publishing and connection.
Mesh networks and local-first tech to break dependence on centralized infrastructure.

None of these are new, that’s the point, they work. The failure wasn’t in the tech, it was in our inability to hold space against the relentless creep of the #deathcult. Reclaiming the compost heap is a first step, we need to stop chasing the next shiny thing and start digging through the muck. The #OMN, #indymediaback, and #4opens are all rooted in the idea that we can rebuild from what we already know works, not by reinventing the wheel but by getting our hands dirty and composting the failures into fertile ground for the future.

The defeatism is loud, but it’s not unbeatable. We’ve been here before. We know the way out.

Decentralize.
Publish.
Connect.
Trust the process.

We (re)build the #openweb one small, stubborn step at a time.

Deep breath. Take a step.

The Said Business School is a temple of the #deathcult

One thing to keep in mind is that these people largely think they are good people, doing the best they can in the world as it is. And will become upset and very #spiky defensive when pointing at them on their knees prostrate worshipping. Like they said in the seminar, “I don’t know what to do about this”. I don’t think most of us do.

The Clarendon Lectures 2025 – Designing the Future: Multidisciplinary perspectives on designing better futures

Systems thinking challenges traditional approaches to management research and practice. In this second Clarendon event, Tima Bansal engages in conversation with academics in #Oxford who are integrating research and practice with the ambition to co-create futures rather than simply analysing solutions.

An outsider, polemical look at this event: Most university panels have a #NGO-thinking academic for process box-ticking. This is the representation of the fluffy side of #mainstreaming social change. This lettuce person is at best a #fluffy careerist and at worst a #NGO parasite. If there is any content at all, it’s box-ticking to create the illusion of consent and goodwill.

Then the meat of the business school is the worship of the #deathcult — people climbing the gravestones of hierarchy in the shiny, crumbling mausoleums. Even then, it’s mostly careerist. This one is talking about embedding in more fluffy NGO groups to build their story. It’s all about community and relationships. She lets go of the ego she pushed first, to step back to embed. No idea what the outcome of her work is — it’s all process. She ends with a call for nature and holism, the world her work destroys.

The currency is theory; on this, the business school is completely bankrupt from an academic point of view — not to get into the subject of morals, let alone basic human survival. She says they push their content out into science journalism, as these people are not able to judge the value of abstract academic work.

The next is an accounting bureaucrat, who does mention the green limits. He touches on the real and talks about the language in documents of bureaucratic regulation. He says it’s a mess and doesn’t know what to do. Trusting what companies say is not going to be enough. You need to change the economic relationships, and changing this is very difficult — and it’s currently simply not working.

The summing-up person is excited with an issue? Not sure what — no idea what she is actually saying. She is back to not talking about anything. She touches on statues and embarrassment. Finally, she asks an interesting question: who is the ordinance, us or somebody else? We have no idea who?

She says we need strong institutions, as individual companies are not going to do it — they capture the levers of power and pull them to keep the mess, and money, flowing. She has no answer to this. She does mention moving past “markets” in passing for a moment.

Boundaries come up — the answer is fluff, then more substance, accounting has hard boundaries, but useful change comes from stepping outside this. Systems thinking — no answer.

These people are lost and are training up the next lost generation. It’s interesting to see that they have some understanding of this, but it’s looking like they will do nothing to change it.

Wine and nibbles were OK.

Talked to many of them after the event. A few said they were undercover academic “radicals” infiltrating the business colleges — which was maybe a tiny bit true, or not. The students I talked to were blank and staying in academia.

The “consultants” were interested and animated; they found it a little shockingly invigorating to have a counter-culture conversation.

To sum up, mostly hopeless. I am always surprised the place doesn’t stink of rotting zombies, a metaphor, maybe? They need some real content… they really need some real content, but you get the strong feeling that they are not even going to change until the Thames is flowing up under the nearby railway bridge. Even then, there will be calls for more sandbags while talking more about careers — all they know — but underneath this, they have the fear that these careers will likely not exist.

This is it. What to do?

It’s a bleak cycle: academics pump out theory to feed the chatting classes, who in turn guide the #fashernista, spinning ever more refined justifications for the status quo. The echo chamber reverberates with hollow soundbites while the world burns. What we end up with is a layer of intellectual manure, with no one doing the work to turn it into compost.

With projects like the #OMN social tech could be the spade that digs through this mess, breaking down the dead ideas and aerating the soil for something new to grow. But instead, we use #dotcons tech to pile up more waste. Every app, platform, and algorithm is designed to reinforce the system, not break it. The closed loops of influence, profit, and prestige just churn on.

If we want to prod this beast, one way I am working on is to embrace the disruptive potential of the #openweb. What if we built platforms that exposed the rot? Imagine public academic review systems where research couldn’t hide behind paywalls, or tools that tracked the influence of corporate funding on “objective” scholarship. There are some seeds for this, what if we grow them #4opens

Or more direct action, maybe we just crash the garden party. What if we hijacked their panels, flooded their Q&As with real questions, or set up rogue alt-conferences right outside their events? The goal isn’t destruction for destruction’s sake — it’s breaking the illusion of inevitability.

What do you think? How do we spark that shift in behaviour, that even they, softly, say we need to do.

#Oxford

UPDATE: If this #fluffy path is #blocked then people will turn #spiky as we are already seeing happening https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24973861.oxford-university-palestine-action-group-admits-vandalising-building/ and https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/08/a-new-phase-why-climate-activists-are-turning-to-sabotage-instead-of-protest we need a real debate in the university about how change comes about #KISS