Tag: deathcult

NGI Zero open source funding talks about the @sovtechfund

NGI Zero open source funding
The @sovtechfund is offering grants to people who contribute to a sustainable open source ecosystem. Grants go up to €300,000 per application and cover three main topics:

1. Improve FOSS Developer Tooling
2. Securing FOSS Software Production
3. FOSS Infrastructure Documentation

With this program, the Sovereign Tech Fund seeks to stimulate an open digital infrastructure: fundamental technologies that enable the creation of other software.

https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/challenges/ #opensource
Three Challenges to Contribute Back to Open Source

UPDATE Looks like people are also arguing this point https://shared-digital.eu/statement/

We are pouring public funding down the drain agen, these criteria are feeding the #geekproblem not actually trying to take the “problem” out of our geek paths. The people who PUSH this agenda are the problem – please POINT at them and talk about this mess, thanks.

Can we get a link to the people making the agenda, thanks, will try polite conversation

I worked with the guy who used to be behind the #NGIzero account, we did good stuff with the #EU outreach.

The replacement, I have no idea who they are and getting #blocking

This is a fail.

In all these toots am talking past “people” to talk about things/social/groups and not directly to individuals, they are second in all these conversations. This is the place where social value lives. The problem is, we don’t have hardly any of this… which is the subject am talking about.

#blocking is not seeing this, addressing this, the is a lot of blocking going on 😉

Am happy to talk to “individuals” as a first step.

Pouring money down the drain, because the majority of the problems in the #Fediverse and the #openweb are social not technical – if they only fund technical parts of this culture they are feeding the “problem” and this problem is going to pour the resources down the drain.

I understand this is a hard conversation to have, we have to try.

First step is , WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE PUSHING MESS while doing “good”, step into the light please #openprocess

Ignoring this basic #openprocess is #blocking, this is why conversations are done in public

yes, I understand the fear this creates and the desire to #block, but this then makes the fail more visible if people wont to use this for the needed change and challenge if they don’t yes it’s more noise what are you signal or noise 🙂

Signal vs Nose.

I find #mainstreaming people to be actually mad and increasingly bad. When do we get more people pushing change challenge in these #openweb spaces, please?

Am increasingly seeing this #blocking as a culture of fear, or more real as a culture of fear pushed as power politics.

Am thinking meany people will be confused and likely mix signal with noise on this subject.

Who are the bad people, the powerless pushing the on the #openweb or the powerful Burocrats worshipping the #deathcult while protecting these thin careers in the #mainstreaming

If you find yourself agenst the first and defending the second, then you are the problem.

This makes your behaver noise, and what you do very likely to be more #techshit to compost.

I wonder if people understand what activism is on the #openweb any more?

You talk to people to explane why they are doing WRONG, and at the same time you push them as HARD as you can to change their wrong behaver.

This works best with the #fluffy #spiky debate as a core part of this process.

People who keep saying “why can’t we all get along”, and “wouldent it go better if we were nice to each other” and the PROBLEM blocking the activism from having the needed affect…

Mainstreaming “common sense” insanity

I’m starting to get the feeling we’ve really fucked up on the #Fediverse… It was always coming – but has it arrived?

I went to a geek meetup yesterday, and walked away with a heavy sense that the problem runs deeper than I’d hoped. The habits, the assumptions, the “common sense” people bring with them – it’s hard to see how we shift it. For those of us who actually want change and challenge, that’s a real issue.

Because in the era of #XR and #climatechaos, this isn’t abstract anymore. The stakes are real, and yet the thinking often feels… detached from that reality.

What worries me is that people are, once again, undermining the #openweb without even realising it. It’s not malicious, it’s ingrained. Forty years of absorbing the logic of the #deathcult shapes how people think, what they see as “normal,” what they accept as inevitable. So the same patterns keep reappearing, dressed up as “common sense.”

And in the current mess, “common sense” keeps winning. That’s bad. Really bad. Come on people – isn’t just a slogan, it’s a way to push back on exactly this drift.

So the question is: how do we deal with this? How do you work constructively with people who are reproducing the problem without seeing it – especially as #mainstreaming pulls everything in that direction?

Genuinely interested in thoughts, especially from people with experience in mental health, group dynamics, or social change.

The #hashtags embody a story and world-view

My use of #hashtags is confusing a lot of people, good to have some signal in the noise on this subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext I am using them in the way the #WWW was designed to use them #KISS

The #hashtags embody a story and world-view that are rooted in a progressive and critical perspective on technology and society. They highlight the negative impact of neoliberalism (#deathcult) and consumer capitalism (#fashionista) on society, and promote the original ideals of the World Wide Web and internet culture (#openweb). The #closedweb hashtag critiques the for-profit internet and its social consequences, while the promote the principles of transparency, collaboration, and sharing in open-source development.

The #geekproblem hashtag draws attention to the cultural movement of geeks, who can become blinded by their own technical knowledge and fail to consider the broader social implications of their work (#techshit). The #encryptionists hashtag critiques the dominant belief among some geeks that all solutions need more encryption, which can lead to a desire for total control and artificial scarcity.

Overall, these hashtags are interlocking to tell a wide-ranging story and world-view that advocates for a more humane, collaborative, and transparent path in technology and society. The #nothingnew hashtag raises whether new technological projects are needed, or whether we should focus on improving existing ones. The #techchurn hashtag refers to the technological outcome of the #geekproblem, which can lead to a constant cycle of new projects that do not address underlying social issues. Finally, the #OMN and #indymediaback hashtags promote the idea of an open media network and the rebooting of the altmedia project that was once the size of traditional media on the #openweb. The #OGB hashtag represents the need for open governance and the power of the community to make decisions collectively.

It’s simple #KISS, so please try not to react like a prat about this, thanks.

You are making a mess of social technology

From my prospective, a lot of people are being prats on social/technology. This should be obvuse statement, but it’s not. If you think about this we can take two paths, the first is to #block this, obviously making more pratish behaver. The second is to ask questions and grow, thus reducing pratish behaver. In this era of #stupidindividualism which path do you think people take, and yes they ARE oftern being prats on this 😉 Get off your knees comes to mind, and please be less of a prat.

The last 40 years of worshipping the #deathcult (#neoliberalism salted with #postmodernism poisoned our communities by making individualism toxic. I am all for freedom, that people can be stupid if they want to be, but I keep using my freedom to tell them that this is often pratish behaver that is toxic and self-destructive. It’s up to them if they want to act on this communication, and yes, the #stupidindividualism thing to do is to #block this communication.

In this, it’s up to YOU to get off your knees, to stop worshipping the #deathcult (neoliberalism salted with postmodernism) and to look up to see you are making a mess of social technology.

Why would you be the right person to build the #OMN

The social change/challenge project of an organic intellectual is an act of love and a gift economy, each toot and each hashtag is a gift. The #OMN hashtag story is designed to make people who often unconsciously worship the #deathcult (an obvious metaphor for #neoliberalism) and have internalized the last 40 years of the dead philosophy of #postmodernism uncomfortable.

The idea is that from these small openings, people can try to step outside this mess and challenge the status quo. To build the #OMN, we are looking for the tiny minority who can still think outside this mess and are willing to challenge the #mainstreaming narrative. The project is a call to action for those who want to create a more equitable and just society.

#boatingeurope at anchor for a few days on the Medway. Metaphorically, am  taking the piss outa #stupidindividualism. The reality picture would have 4–5 boats rafted up with a disparate crew having a barbi.

My indymedia story

#Indymedia was a decentralized, grassroots media network that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was founded on the principles of open publishing, direct democracy, and anti-authoritarianism. The project eventually experienced a split in the UK, with one side, the #fashernista, building an aggregating site and the other #geekproblem building a centralized silo. The split was supposedly over technical disagreements, but was driven by doctrinal and tribal disputes. The decision-making process, like much activism at the time grew to rely on #formalconsensus, become ossified and unfixable, so no decisions could be made to mediate this.

outline of the #reboot project

The split was ultimately driven by a focus on control on both sides. The two sides were more interested in their own tribal agendas than in working together to build a diverse and #OMN. The silo eventually built an aggregating site, with RSS feeds, but in a very controlling way. The stress was always on control as “security” and this ultimately led to the decline of the #Indymedia project. The #dotcons took over the space, and the project became irrelevant.

I was working on the project, the person working in the middle, saying “don’t be a prat” as each side tore and tore and tore I continued in the grassroots, saying that the culture is the key and that the value is in open media network, not control. The split in Indymedia was a shit show, but we can learn from it in the reboot of the project.

The plan now is to reboot the project before the split happened, around 2008 with a focus on the #fashernitas path of the two splinter groups. This path emphasizes openmedia and decentralized structures, rather than control and centralization. However, with the reboot there is still a very real risk that some members of the community will push for a control/#encryptionist path, which could lead to another split in focus. The challenge is to find a way to walk this path without succumbing to the same tribalism and power politics that led to the decline of the original project.

The use of hashtags and semantic web technologies did not exist at the time. Tags and metadata were not core to the start original Indymedia project, but they were later being added as a way to help organize and categorize content, the idea of building a structure with #RSS feeds was being discussed and enacted.

At the time, Interestingly, the silo path recognized that their approach was wrong and came back to aggregation, with moderated control of RSS flows. This is reflected in the #OMN’s choice of “trusted flow” and “moderated flow.” We are building both sides of the split of the original project and yes, criticizing the fashernista path a little, which only had trust, which would not likely work in today’s world. It’s important we do not make this decision for people. We let them decide and build both. The key is to avoid building pointless messes and to resist the #mainstreaming urge to make a mess. We are not #mainstreaming, and we must not be prats about this.

Looking at what happened to the web after this time, the last ten years of tech history, the grassroots silo path went on to build #Diaspora, while the grassroots #fashernista path went on to build the #Fediverse. However, despite these developments, there was still no news based open media network being built yet. This led to the creation of the #OMN project and the current #indymediaback reboot path.

Unfortunately, in today’s world of liberation “cats” due to the last 20 years of worship of the #deathcult, nobody sees any value in the “open” part of the #OMN. Everyone is still fixated on the silo path of control, we have to work against this #mainstreaming blindness. Over the last 20 years, the #mainstreaming as a whole took the silo/encryptionst path of the Indymedia split. Contemporary social media took #fahernista side of the #open path, the #dotcons, took the ideas and sold us back a facsimile of this that they could control, such as #Facebook and other algorithms based #dotcons

To make the reboot work , we have to tiptoe around the legacy of #Indymedia, focus on rebooting the project in its 2008 state, where the social process were still working. The silos’ path still controls the old domains, they took as a part of the ripping apart. We are building something that looks like the fashernista path they fought against, so we need to build two projects in one: control and trust. We need to get the domains back in use, which would be a huge boost to the #reboot project. At the same time, we need to build trust with everyone else, as this is the power of open. It’s complicated, but everyone wants it back. However, the history is challenging, and the two sides are still fighting: Fediverse vs. silos as we see this old mess today.

The social change/challenge project of an organic intellectual

The social change/challenge project of an organic intellectual is an act of love, a gift economy, each toot, each hashtag is a gift. The #OMN hashtag story is designed to make people who (often unconsciously) worship the #deathcult (an obvious metaphor for #neoliberalism) and have internalized the last 40 years of (the dead philosophy) #postmodernism uncomfortable. From these small openings, they can try to step outside this mess.

To build the #OMN we are looking for the tiny minority who can still think outside this mess, is this you?

A balancing of spiky/fluffy to see and act outside the current #mainstreaming mess.

the mess we made

This is a good podcast https://media.blubrry.com/novarafm_radio_for_a/audiofiles.novara.io/downstream/2023/03/230320_Downstream_Billions_Will_Die_If_They_Dont_Listen_To_Us_w_Roger_Hallam.mp3

The mess we have made over the last 40 years, the main challenges facing humanity today – #climatechaos, the degradation of the biosphere, and growing global inequalities – are not separate issues, rather different facets of the same problem. This problem is the #neoliberal economic system that has spread across the world through globalization, promoting high production and high consumption lifestyles and prioritizing economic growth over environmental sustainability and social equity. The #deathcult we all worship.

The neoliberal dogma is not only incompatible with a functioning Earth System at the planetary level, but it is also eroding human and societal well-being, even in the wealthiest countries. Growing global inequalities are a direct result of this economic system, which prioritizes the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few at the expense of the majority.

The consequences of continuing on the present trajectory are dire. Collapse is the most likely outcome. A transition to a more socialist economy is a path out of this mess. We need to prioritize social equity, which requires a fundamental shift in our economic system, where sustainability and equity are prioritized over short-term greed. Only then can we hope to build a sustainable future for ourselves and for future generations.

Talking about tech – Enclosing the “commons” is a bad history for native societies

White Lies About Security and Privacy in the Fediverse

We’re told small white lies about security and privacy to boot up #Mastodon. But the truth is, this #openweb tech is about dancing elephants throwing paper planes as a security/privacy model.

Yes, this is simply not the right tool for the “common sense” privacy and control needs the #geekproblem have. In reality, there’s already a wealth of mature, privacy-focused tech out there built specifically for that path.

Enclosing the “commons” is a dark chapter in history for native societies, and we risk repeating this mistake if we misunderstand the political roots of decentralized social media.

Let’s pause and check the unspoken/unthinking political aspect of this. Much of the desire to retrofit heavy privacy into the #Fediverse comes from #mainstreaming liberalism, which frames everything through fear and control. But the Fediverse wasn’t born from that path, it emerged from a trust-based, anarchistic culture.

At its core, social media is:

Social (one-to-many)
Media (sharing news and events)

It’s an inherently public activity.

On the other hand, encrypted chat (one-on-one or in small groups) is an inherently private activity.

The #dotcons messily mix these two spheres together, but only because their centralized architecture makes it possible (and profitable). Of course, this is a black lie, since these platforms don’t actually respect the privacy they promise. Their entire business model depends on violating it.

In the decentralized #openweb, public and private spaces have generally been separate and tidy, and that’s a good thing. But lately, some online discussions feel like an attempt to deliberately blur these lines, reproducing the #mainstreaming model under the guise of “common sense”, to take the same failed path we’ve been trapped in for 20 years.

We don’t need to reproduce the mess. We can have the best of both worlds:

Public, federated social media built around the #4opens
Private, encrypted communication for individuals and groups in P2P chat

Let’s keep our focus on the true nature of social media and build tools that respect both public and private spheres, without falling back into the traps of the #deathcult.

What is the value of “bounded” projects

We need to build “bounded” projects because we live in the era of the #deathcult based on the dead ideologies of post-modernism and #neoliberalism. Both deny the possibility of the world we want to build, so “common sense” is not our friend.

The “boundaries” of and #PGA keep focus vs this “common sense”, we are lost without something like these “historical” working bounders.

The #OMN are building tools for the “other” that’s us. “Them” are hostile, especially if they don’t understand who “they” are, this is #mainstreaming liberals, and right wing crew.

#PGA is about, horizontal paths giving us a shared space of practice, understanding and working for “politics” and the gives us the same for tech.

They together create the boundary for us to focus. Without this boundary we have a tendency to fight and create mess. So it’s a soft/pours “us” and “them” to provide focuses and direction. In a bad sense, it is the badges of the tribe, in a better sense, it’s the banners we fly at our gatherings, but this starts to sound a bit nationalist, so let’s not do this…

The subject of “branding”, flags, banners is a real balance, they have power… And we need power in horizontal movements.

This podcast is an interesting look at this https://media.blubrry.com/novarafm_radio_for_a/audiofiles.novara.io/acfm/2023/230212_ACFM_Trip_32_Myth_2.mp3 as background thinking.

Anarchist economics

Anarchism, in #OMN language, is not chaos. It’s the long historic struggle to build social paths growing trust, mutual responsibility, and shared power instead of fear, hierarchy, and extraction.

At its root, anarchist economics is simply the idea that people should have more direct control over the things that affect their lives. Workplaces, media, communities, land, tools, and infrastructure should be held more in common or managed cooperatively by the people actually using them, not owned by distant states, corporations, landlords, or bureaucratic classes.

This is the opposite of the current #deathcult path where power concentrates upward into institutions that claim ownership over everything while the majority are reduced to consumers, tenants, workers, and data sources. The important distinction is between use and ownership.

In capitalist logic, ownership means control without participation. You can own land you never touch. Own housing you never live in. Own platforms you never contribute to. Own factories you never work in. Then extract rent, profit, interest, and power from the people who actually do the labour. This is the normalised logic of the #closedweb and #neoliberalism.

In anarchist and mutualist thinking, possession comes from use and participation. If you use something, care for it, maintain it, and contribute to it, then you have a natural relationship with it. This is a living social process rather than an abstract legal claim enforced through violence or bureaucracy. That’s actually how many healthy human systems worked historically before everything became financialized and enclosed.

The #openweb originally functioned much closer to this model. People built websites because they needed them. Communities moderated spaces because they cared about them. Developers shared code because collaboration worked better than enclosure. Infrastructure was often maintained through trust networks, volunteer labour, and shared responsibility.

The problem is that over time the #dotcons enclosed this commons. Social relationships became platforms, sharing became monetized content, participation became engagement metrics, human communities became extractable data flows. This is why the matter:Open data. Open source. Open standards. Open process. These are not abstract technical values, they are practical social tools for preventing enclosure and concentration of power. Without them, projects quietly drift toward hidden hierarchy and soft authoritarianism even when they use radical language.

This is also why thinking about the #geekproblem matters, too much alt-tech still thinks freedom comes primarily from technical architecture while ignoring social power. But history shows that purely technical fixes usually reproduce the same social hierarchies in new forms. The problem is not only bad code, it is social relations. A decentralized system can still become socially authoritarian. An open protocol can still become culturally closed. A cooperative can still become dominated by informal elitists. A “horizontal” project can still be controlled by hidden networks of influence. That’s why anarchist economics focuses so heavily on mutual aid, federation, and self-management.

Mutual aid is simply people organizing together directly to meet shared needs without waiting for permission from markets or states. Food sharing, community defence, free software, skill swaps, radical media, housing networks, protest kitchens, neighbourhood repair groups, grassroots publishing. These are not side projects, they are the foundations of another economy already existing inside the shell of the old one.

Projects like #Indymedia worked because they embedded technology inside living social networks and shared political cultures. The value was not just the publishing software, it came from trust relationships, collective process, and common purpose. This is the same path #OMN is trying to reboot for the #openweb era. Not by inventing endless new startups and pointless platforms, chasing #fashernista tech trends or feeding the #NGO funding machine.

But by rebuilding commons infrastructure that people can actually use, shape, and govern together. The goal is not perfect ideology, the goal is reducing domination. Less extraction, hierarchy, enclosure, passive consumption. More participation, transparency, shared responsibility and more collective agency.

The irony is that this is often more practical than capitalism itself. Mutual aid networks regularly respond faster than states during disasters. Open-source infrastructure powers huge parts of the internet. Informal community care keeps millions alive under collapsing systems. The future probably won’t arrive as one giant revolution, it grows more like compost.

Small living networks.
Shared tools.
Open processes.
Federated trust.
Commons infrastructure.

That’s the real anarchist economy in practice, messy, human, relational, and alive.

For the last 30 years the has been a strong alt-globalization movement

The opposition to neoliberalism (the #deathcult) is a global movement that advocates for the protection of humane culture, environmental survivability, and democratic institutions in the face of economic globalization. The anti #mainstreaming of this movement argue that the neoliberal position of free trade and removing public sector regulation has not benefited society and global survival.

One of the key events that sparked this movement was the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the 1990s. This treaty aimed to liberalize cross-border investment and trade restrictions, but it faced significant opposition from civil society representatives, who argued that mandatory standards were needed to ensure that globalization did not put people or the environment at risk.

Critics of neoliberalism argue that the interests of investors are prioritized over those of people, and that this leads to the exploitation of workers and natural resources. Noam Chomsky, a prominent scholar and activist, argued that the term “globalization” has been appropriated by the powerful to refer to a specific form of international economic integration, one that prioritizes investor rights over human rights.

Opposition to neoliberalism is not opposition to globalization itself, but rather to the specific form of globalization that prioritizes the interests of private power systems over the rights of people. The movement for an alternative form of globalization seeks to promote international integration that attends to the rights of people, promotes democratic institutions, and preserves the natural environment.