Security comes from community rather than technological control

It turns out that what hackers yearn for is not raw power but security – not just the technical kind, but an emotional security that is harder to admit to, so it gets dressed up in the language and posture of technology.

Because many in these paths and spaces operate with narrow social and political horizons, shaped by individualist tech culture, a distrust of messy collective life, and little grounding in movement history, their insecurity rarely finds healthy expression. Instead, it gets channelled into #mainstreaming patterns: centralising control, hoarding decision-making, gatekeeping access. The feeling of safety comes not from trust, but from control.

This is why in so many “open” projects we see:

Root admin privileges treated like a personal bunker.

Technical gatekeeping replacing collaborative stewardship.

Social disagreements re-coded as “technical issues” so they can be “resolved” by force rather than dialogue.

The power they wield is a symptom, the insecurity is the cause, lack of balance is the disease. The problem is that command/control cultures make insecurity worse, they turn every challenge into a threat, every new contributor into a risk, and every disagreement into a test of dominance. Over time, this drives out the very diversity and collaboration that could create true resilience.

The #4opens – open data, open code, open standards, open process – is not just a governance checklist. It’s a practical, everyday discipline that forces a shift from control to collaboration. It changes the emotional terrain.

Open data dissolves the hoarding instinct, because nothing critical is locked away in one person’s vault.

Open code forces the bunker doors open, making it normal for others to touch “your” work.

Open standards create interdependence rather than dependency, reducing the fear of losing control.

Open process makes decisions visible, accountable, and shared, replacing the hidden backchannel with a transparent commons.

By practising the #4opens, even the most control-driven hacker can start to find a different kind of security, rooted in trust, redundancy, and collective stewardship rather than in solitary power.

The #4opens doesn’t magically fix emotional insecurity, but it creates a scaffolding of transparency and accountability where balance can grow. It turns projects from personal fiefdoms into shared ecosystems, and in doing so, helps people unlearn the reflex to seek safety only through domination.

The way out is not to strip hackers of influence, but to build cultures where influence is exercised in the open, with care, and where security comes from community rather than technological control.

A #fluffy view – Think of a self-hosted community chat platform, something small, privacy-focused, run by a handful of volunteer hackers. The core devs are brilliant, but they see every problem as a technical one: security means encryption upgrades, stability means more containerization, and governance means a GitHub permissions list.

When disagreements arise over moderation, they don’t trust open discussion. Instead, they quietly add admin-only tools that can hide messages or boot users without notice. From their perspective, this is “security”, keeping the platform stable and safe. But because the process is invisible and unilateral, it breeds mistrust. The community feels controlled, not cared for.

Now imagine this same project embracing the #4opens:

Open Data – Moderation actions are logged and visible to everyone.

Open Source – The code that runs moderation tools is public, so no hidden powers exist.

Open Process – Policy changes are discussed in a shared forum where everyone can contribute.

Open Standards – The platform can interoperate with others, so no one is locked in.

This changes the emotional root of the hackers’ insecurity: their “power” no longer depends on guarding the system against imagined chaos, but on participating in a transparent culture where the community itself holds the system together. Security is now mutual care, not technological control. The hackers still have influence, but it’s exercised in the open, grounded in trust, and shared with the people they serve.

A spiky view of this – The problem with too many hackers is that they mistake root access for moral authority. They wrap their emotional fragility in layers of SSH keys and sudo privileges, then strut around acting like benevolent dictators for life. You see it in the endless “code is law” sermons, in the backroom channel decisions, in the smug dismissal of “non-technical” people as if empathy were a bug. They lock down wikis “for security,” gatekeep repos “to avoid chaos,” and implement moderation tools that work like secret police. This is not liberation, it’s digital landlordism, the same power-hoarding rot we see in the #mainstreaming mess, just with a Linux hoodie instead of a corporate badge.

#KISS it’s best not to be either a dogmatic #fluffy or a #spiky prat about this need for balance.

Talking vs. doing in the #openweb

I often hear: “You post a lot, but what practical work have you actually done?” It’s a fair question, there’s far too much hot air in tech spaces, and the #openweb can’t be rebuilt on rhetoric alone. The critique goes something like this:

“You’re preaching an idealised ‘community’ that doesn’t exist. You criticise the mainstream (fair enough) but keep pushing alternatives without showing a tangible model that works. It feels like you’re looking for an audience, not a conversation.”

And here’s my side of this:

I was part of the team that got multiple governments in Europe to adopt the Fediverse — working on the outreach that took the tech to the European Union.

I co-ran 5 Fediverse instances with thousands of users in its early years. We eventually had to shut them down — an experience I now talk about openly because we need to make this work better next time.

I’ve worked on meany of #openweb projects going back to the birth of the WWW. That history is here: https://hamishcampbell.com

Projects include UK #Indymedia, #VisionOnTV, the Open Media Network (#OMN), the #4opens framework, and the #OGB — all aimed at building governance, infrastructure, and culture outside corporate control.

Here’s the crux: building outside the mainstream is messy, fragile, and uncertain. There’s no guarantee that any of this will “win.” But the alternative – doing nothing and letting every commons be enclosed – guarantees failure.

The work is #DIY culture. If you don’t want to build, you don’t have to. But if you do, you have to accept the risk, the mess, and the fact that you won’t get the same dopamine hits as shipping a VC-backed app. You also have to resist the slide into trolling when frustration builds.

The real challenge is cultural: how to support tech that walks outside the dominant paths long enough to make new ones. That means building infrastructure that runs on trust, openness, and care, not just control, profit, and scale. If we stop doing this, every alternative will keep collapsing back into the defaults.

How a Rainbow Gathering Comes Together

DRAFT:

Rainbow Gatherings are built without formal hierarchies, no leaders, no directors, no centralized control. Instead, they operate through decentralized, consensus-based processes, fueled by volunteerism, mutual respect, and the shared intention to live cooperatively, if only for a month.

The process begins with scouting. Experienced gatherers, often seasoned from many previous gatherings, set out with newer volunteers to find potential sites. They pore over topographic maps, consult satellite imagery, and listen to local tips. The ideal spot will be miles from the nearest road or buildings, offer clean and abundant water, spacious meadows for group use, dry deadwood for fuel, enough space for parking, and natural limitations to deter unwanted car traffic.

Once a site is chosen, a crafted “invite!” goes out, online, through mailing lists, and via handouts. This simple, slightly metaphorical, document contains everything from directions and maps to contact numbers and general guidelines. The first to arrive become Seed Camp, a small team that prepares the ground for everyone else. They locate and tap fresh springs, build composting latrines, begin the first communal kitchen, cut trails, identify the main meadow, and liaise with the burocracy, like the local forest service that turn up. Environmental impact is taken seriously, efforts like reseeding, erosion control, and wildlife stewardship are all part of the preparation.

From here, the Gathering blossoms. But it doesn’t run itself, talking circals, working groups, councils are the lifeblood of collective decision-making. Held in circles, often under the trees, anyone can speak, and decisions are reached through consensus rather than votes. A talking stick or stone helps maintain focus, and once a proposal has been shaped and discussed, someone may call for “consensus by silence.” If no one objects, the idea moves forward. If even one person feels strongly against it, the discussion resumes until mutual agreement is found. This process isn’t always fast, but it is deeply inclusive and egalitarian.

Focalizers emerge naturally. They’re not appointed or elected. They’re the ones who step up, coordinating tasks, helping new people plug in, and making sure things don’t fall through the cracks. Anyone can become a #focalizer simply by doing the work and inviting others to help. The ethic is clear: avoid burnout, share the load, and don’t hoard responsibility.

Daily coordination happens when it’s needed through camp wide councils, a practical forum where representatives from kitchens, water teams, medics, security, infrastructure, and more meet to share updates, solve problems, and allocate resources. Supplies come from the Magic Hat, the symbolic (and literal) hat passed around during shared meals to collect donations. These funds are stewarded, which means simple accounts for every transaction with full transparency. This ensures the community’s trust and keeps the focus on collective benefit.

Main kitchen is the logistical heart of the gathering, purchases bulk food and supplies with Magic Hat funds. Tea kitchens that contribute to the communal are given access to these resources. Main Supply folks ensure fairness. Donations and receipts are publicly tracked, reinforcing openness and preventing favouritism.

Roles and Responsibilities: Kitchens, Welcome Home, Shanti Sena

The main kitchens is the heartbeat of the Rainbow Gathering. Entirely volunteer-run, it provides sustenance and space for community. The kitchen is a micro-village: fires are built, pots bubble, veggies are chopped, and water is hauled, all in rhythm. Every aspect is designed to meet sanitation and environmental standards. Hand-washing stations are mandatory, food is kept off the ground and away from pests, and tools are disinfected regularly with bleach water.

Main Circle food must be vegetarian, though some periphery tea shops offer extras – like pancakes, chai, or “love soup.” Kitchens build washing systems with multiple stages: scrape, wash, rinse, disinfect. Compost pits for food scraps and greywater pits for liquid waste are maintained and used carefully to avoid polluting the forest and water courses. Fetching firewood and hauling water for a kitchen is one of the easiest ways for a newcomer to contribute and feel part of the #DIY community.

Welcome Home is the first human contact many have when arriving. It’s a place of warmth and orientation at the end of the car parking trail. Here, tired travellers are offered water, a snack, a kind word, and printed guidelines about the gathering’s values and customs. It’s a gentle bridge from the outside world into the communal space being created.

Then there’s Shanti Sena, the peacekeeping network that is everyone’s responsibility. There’s no official, hard, security team. Instead, when conflict, distress, or danger arises, anyone can call out “Shanti Sena!” and others respond, mediators and willing volunteers show up to listen, de-escalate, and support resolution. If a situation requires more assertive action, it’s still done with care, firm but nonviolent, protective rather than punitive.

Shanti Sena works best in communities where people know and care for each other. Camps often form into informal neighborhoods, where people look out for one another and communicate openly. The goal is always restoration, not exclusion. Conflict is a chance to grow, not a reason to punish.

In this decentralized fabric – kitchens, welcome crews, peacekeeping, talking circals, councils, supply lines, and consensus – a temporary village or town takes form. It is imperfect, often messy, but also deeply alive. A cooperative organism woven from shared intent and mutual aid.

And when the gathering ends, it all disappears, leave-no-trace, like it never happened. But for those who participated, something lasting remains: the memory of what people can create together, without bosses or blueprints, when they trust the process and each other.

The Fediverse Is Social Tech Built by People Who Don’t Understand Community

We dig. Turn over the old soil. Question assumptions. Get honest about what’s working and what’s not. We plant. Build in the open. Share power. Let go of fear. We grow. Not towards scaling up, but spreading out, resilient, diverse, interconnected.

The Fediverse could still be a true commons. But we need to build it as one, together. Right now? Our thinking and common sense is building fenced off little kingdoms, each with its own rules, its own etiquette, and its own moderators-turned-monarchs. We wave our “federation” flags proudly, but let’s be honest, most of these flags are stitched from the same cloth: control, hierarchy, and a quiet hostility to anything really different.

Let’s stop pretending, the community side of the Fediverse is a mess. The instance as a community, was a good idea, but it never worked, the was no code that was needed to build the links that mattered, no mod tools, nothing. And it’s not a mystery why – it was built by the #geekproblem and marketed with white #PR lies. The developers who shaped this space were (and mostly still are) people who don’t understand, or worse, actively dislike, messy human social dynamics. They wanted control, moderation as containment, not mediation, identity as code, not culture.

This isn’t to blame them personally, many were doing their best. But structurally, the Fediverse was always going to build this current mess when it grew out of narrow foundations:

Built by people who think consensus means “do what I say.”

Designed in back rooms, then announced as done.

Sold as decentralised, while consolidating power around key projects.

Promoted with “diversity” stickers, while real diversity was culturly blocked or ignored.

No surprise the result is growing to be alienating, slow-moving, and hard to trust for actual social communities. So the question now is: how do we fix this? Here is my idea where to start:

Acknowledge the rot. No more polishing turds. Let’s call things what they are.

Shift governance from control to trust.The #OGB model exists to empower native communities, not gatekeepers.

Build openly. Work in the open. Use the #4opens.Transparency is the only path back to legitimacy.

Stop begging for NGO scraps. The #OMN is about building outside their logic. If they want in, they come on our terms.

Compost the techshit, but keep the compost. Acknowledge failures. Learn from them. Don’t drag them forward for brand reasons.

The Fediverse can still be a commons – but now we need to build it as one. Right now, we’re mostly fencing off little kingdoms, waving our “federation” flags. We’ve seen where this leads. It’s time to dig, plant, and grow something different.

Let’s look at this same issue from a different view, at the individual scale, self-hosting is pushed by the #geekproblem as the golden path to “being in control of my data.” But in reality, that’s a comforting illusion – like saying, “I grow a vegetable garden to be in control of my food.”

Yes, having a garden is valuable. It connects you with the land, the seasons, the rhythm of growth. But:

You can’t grow everything you need — rice, flour, salt, coffee?

You’re one bad season away from failure — drought, pests, illness, burnout.

It’s time-consuming, and often inefficient to go it alone — especially if you’re just trying to feed one household.

The same is true for self-hosting. Sure, it can be a great learning experience. You can run your own Mastodon instance, email server, or Nextcloud. You might feel a sense of autonomy and pride, “I’m off the cloud!”.

But, you’re now your own sysadmin, responsible 24/7. Security patches? Backups? Downtime? You’re one bug or hard drive crash away from losing everything, no safety net. If you’re DDoSed or targeted, you’re alone in the storm. Most people don’t know how to balance security and useablierty of their systems, and the risk of leaks or exploits is real.

This doesn’t mean “don’t self-host.” Like gardening, it’s a good and meaningful thing. But it’s not meaningful and sufficient for control or resilience. And the more we pretend it is, the more we set people up to fail.

The solution? We need to balance collectivizing resilience. Just like with food, we need shared kitchens, food co-ops, and community gardens – not just individual allotments. For digital infrastructure, we need to balance working #OMN mobile #p2p bridging to:

Small community-run servers with shared responsibility (like tech collectives or co-ops).

Federated services that respect autonomy and provide mutual aid.

Redundant backups across trusted peers, not just one node.

Tools designed for social trust, not corporate extraction or lonely geek heroism.

Because real control over data isn’t about having a castle with a moat. It’s about living in a village where the roads are open, the wells are shared, and people have your back when things go wrong. Resilience and transparency cannot be achieved in isolation.

It’s a social problem, and we need to bring social solutions, built with care, trust, and collective #DIY responsibility. What too meany people push is “common sense” #stupidindividualism that is so obviously prat’ish behaviour, let’s step away from this mess making, please.

We Don’t Need More Liberal Techno-Utopianism

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.

Trust is the foundation of moderation in decentralised networks like the #OMN

In the world of decentralised, peer-to-peer, and federated networks, from the Fediverse to grassroots projects like the #OMN, moderation works differently. It’s not a matter of top-down control or terms-of-service written by #process lawyers. Instead, the basic unit of moderation is trust – and this shifts everything.

Yes, we need practical moderation tools – blocking, filtering, reporting, curation – the whole established toolkit. But more importantly, we need to root these tools in a tech shaped culture of care, responsibility, and openness. This is where the #4opens come in:

Open data
Open source
Open standards
Open process

These aren’t #FOSS buzzwords, they’re guides to building (tech) trust in messy, real-world communities. In this path, you don’t have many hard “rights” in the liberal legalistic sense, there’s no authority swooping in to save you. Instead, you build #DIY community “safety” through the act of creating and sustaining relationships of trust. You find people. You then build a crew to join or establish norms and commoning practices.

This isn’t a call to abandon boundaries, it’s the opposite. You draw your boundaries with others and work to hold those, with #4opens bridges in place. You don’t demand control over others, you build spaces that work for you and find ways to federate, connect, and mediate with others doing the same. Your rights are your relationships. Your safety is your crew. Your power is your network.

This is the #KISS path – Keep It Simple, Stupid – agen, not in a naive way, but in a native way. It’s the opposite of the bureaucratic, compliance-obsessed, legal control systems of the #dotcons and the #NGO gatekeepers. Those are alien models people keep trying to drag into our “alternative” spaces and paths. And every time we do, we replicate the very systems we claim to oppose.

A #mainstreming view on this

We don’t need more frictionless tech platforms with “Trust & Safety” departments that answer to advertisers and #PR teams. We need open communities of care, rooted in shared values, transparency, and mutual responsibility. On this path its about working to compost the mess and growing something else.

This is how moderation works in a decentralised network, not by pretending we’re neutral, but by showing up with care and accountability. It’s messier, more human, and it works, when we let it.

On this path, we need a reboot of the #Indymediaback Infrastructure. As a core to reboot the radical media commons. Bring back trust based publishing, peer moderation, and local focus Why? Because #mainstreamin media isn’t neutral – it mainstreams the crisis while making resistance invisible. We need native alternatives.

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 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 real 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 nothing.

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.

#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.

What does mainstreaming do?

#mainstreaming narrows the field of imagination and excludes non-conforming ideas that could offer real solutions to systemic crises. Mainstreaming smooths the rough edges of society. It normalizes hierarchy, filters dissent, and packages politics into manageable narratives. It’s how radical demands are turned into reforms, then paperwork, then slogans, then forgotten.

Absorbing opposition into bureaucracy (e.g., NGOs, dead end consultancy)

Rewarding compromise and incrementalism, as blocking

Silencing or caricaturing grassroots resistance, as common sense

Making real alternatives seem "unrealistic", in the end

This is why grassroots #DIY matters as a counterbalance. On this path, Anarchism is not just rebellion or chaos, it is a living tradition of thinking and organizing that keeps real change alive when mainstreaming works to bury it.

Direct democracy, In a world of managed participation and elitist mediation, anarchism says: decide together, act together. It reminds us of grassroots power that doesn’t flow through institutions but grows in assemblies, co-ops, camps, and communities.
Mutual aid and cooperation, where mainstream narratives focus on competition, profit, and security through control, anarchism champions care, solidarity, and trust-based networks—a needed cultural shift to navigate crisis and collapse.
Decentralization of power, in the face of #dotcons, technocracy, and corporate-state collusion, anarchism is a map toward decentralization and autonomy. It’s the logic behind federated systems, commons governance, and resilient localism.
Critique of state power, mainstreaming always ends up strengthening state structures, even when it claims to oppose them. Anarchism pulls back the curtain on the violence and coercion baked into “order”, whether in border regimes, policing, or “benevolent” welfare systems.

Cultural compost: “We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism.” at its best this isn’t an identity, it’s a provocation, a composting force that keeps movements from hardening into systems of control.

This is why balance is key, without radical, un-mainstreamed perspectives, the so-called “left” drifts into hollow #NGO work, tech utopianism, or sanitized liberalism. The #openweb becomes a product instead of a commons, movements become brands, justice becomes PR. Balancing #mainstreaming means, keeping the imagination alive, creating space for alternatives and building systems that don’t replicate domination

In practice, projects like the #OMN and #4opens are examples of this balance: using basic tech to empower trust, not control. They are rooted in values without needing any label, community autonomy, voluntary association, transparent processes.

To reboot the #openweb, we need the cultural DNA of anarchism, without necessarily the costume. We need people unafraid to challenge power, even when everyone else says, “play nice, get the grant, follow the roadmap.” So yes, we need anarchism, not as a lifestyle, but as a counterweight, a cultural inoculation against decay to challenge the centre from the edge.

And we need to compost the rest.

The mess we make trying to move away from the mainstream…

“Doing the same thing in the same context and expecting different results is one of the clinical definitions of insanity.” 😄

This is the core of the #mainstreaming problem. Our hashtags try to name it: #stupidindividualism #deathcult #dotcons #nothingnew in that we repeat the same patterns, inside the same systems, and wonder why nothing changes.

The truth is, we’ve already solved many of these problems. From grassroots media to consensus decision-making, from tech co-ops to decentralized organizing, we had working solutions. What we lacked was a way to scale them without breaking them. That was always the sticking point. But the irony: the activist culture that once created these solutions has eroded, just as the tech finally caught up, the tech is ready, it’s the culture missing. This is the mess we’re in.

It’s about social trust, human-scale processes, messy cooperation, and doing things differently, this time with tools that match our values, not bury them. Let’s stop acting insane, let’s try something new, built from something old, let’s get biblical 😉

Power Politics and the Race/Gender Card – A Contemporary Reflection

If we want to build meaningful alternatives, we must deal with difficult issues head-on. Sweeping things under the carpet – especially in radical spaces – always comes at a cost.

One of the more complex, and often misused, areas is around identity politics, particularly the playing of the race/gender card in ways that obscure rather than clarify the real issues at stake.

Let’s be clear: systemic racism and sexism are real. We all live with the deep, painful legacies of colonialism, patriarchy, and class oppression. These power structures are embedded in our cultures, our institutions, and, yes, in our own organizing spaces. Naming and addressing them is vital.

But sometimes, identity markers are used as shields, not in the pursuit of justice, but to avoid accountability. When this happens, especially in grassroots or activist collectives, it creates paralysis and prevents us from dealing with actual abuse of power.

A real-world example. This happened to me some years ago at a community-run space in Dalston. One person dominated meetings, spoke over others, and made every decision-making process a battleground. It was classic power politics, silencing others through constant assertion and manipulation.

When I finally took responsibility to challenge this, the room froze. Instead of engaging with the issue, some defaulted to “both sides are equally problematic.” Then, when pressure built, he played the race card, asserting that my criticism was racially motivated. No one knew how to respond. The conversation shut down. I became “the problem.” He continued unchecked.

It took 6 months of dysfunction and damage to the project before he was finally removed from collective meetings. In the end, people realised: yes, he was mentally unwell, addicted, controlling, and yes, he had useful skills. But we had all failed to support him and the group because we didn’t deal with the real power dynamics early and honestly.

Hard truths, sometimes someone uses identity-based arguments not as a reflection of structural injustice, but as a way to deflect accountability. When that happens, we can end up with unchallengeable behaviour patterns that destroy collectives from within. This doesn’t mean ignoring or downplaying racism, sexism, or mental health, far from it. It means being brave enough to hold multiple truths at once:

Someone can be from a marginalised background and be acting out of line.

Someone can be struggling with mental health and still be causing harm.

Power politics doesn’t disappear just because it’s wrapped in the language of social justice.

What Can We Learn?

Deal with issues when they come up. Don’t defer hard conversations. Don’t wait for people to burn out.

Support everyone – including people acting out – with clear boundaries, not blanket exclusion or indifference.

Distinguish real oppression from manipulative tactics. It’s not easy, but it’s essential to long-term health of communities.

Don’t collapse into false equivalences – not every confrontation is “two monsters fighting.” Trust your political instincts.

Ultimately, we need to reclaim the messy, complicated work of building trust, of calling in rather than calling out, and of recognising power wherever it appears, even when it wears familiar or “progressive” clothing. We won’t fix any of this with purism or purity politics. We’ll do it by grounding ourselves in collective care, lived experience, and honest struggle.

To use technology as a part of this social change, we need better working with the #dotcons generation. This generation is a mess. No surprise after 20+ years of submission to the #deathcult:

#Neoliberalism hollowed out our economies and replaced solidarity with consumerism.
#Postmodernism fragmented identity into a battlefield of individualism over collective action.
#Dotcons centralized control, turning the internet into a corporate surveillance machine.

The real question is: how do we break free? Our #fashernistas still dodge this, trapped in cycles of performative activism, #NGO co-option, and endless distraction.

The activist path out of this mess is not more chasing trendy tech stacks or branded illusions of progress. What we need is a grounded, #KISS path forward, #OMN (Open Media Network) to building grassroots, independent media beyond corporate platforms. #4opens for transparency, collaboration, and trust baked into our tech + social governance. And, reclaiming #DIY activism real-world organizing, not just digital spectacle.

We don’t need more #geekproblem “fixes” or slick branding exercises. We need radical, collective agency. The tools are here, let’s build. #openweb #climatechaos #socialchange #indymediaback #OMN

Bringing #indymediaback: A Gentle Revival of Radical Media

The old flower beds of #Indymedia lie fallow, not dead. The seeds are still there, beneath layers of neglect, factionalism, and the noise of 20 years of failed “alternatives.” What we need now is not revolution or reinvention, but revival. A slow, careful re-rooting in the fertile ground of experience.

We don’t need to tear it down or rebuild from scratch. Almost all of what worked between 2000–2008 still works today, at least 90% of the original social structure is sound. Let’s focus instead on the missing 10%, the gaps that were never resolved. That’s where the real energy and creativity are needed. That’s where trust, experimentation, and diversity of tactics should guide us.

Change with Care: Soft Hands, Open Eyes – In today’s tech-social landscape, even the slightest structural changes can lead to rips and tears. And once those start, the momentum of destruction escalates. We’ve seen this over and over again: dogmatic reinvention, ego-driven platforms, over-complex redesigns, and every time, we’re left with more fragmentation and less power. Instead, we propose a path of slow change. Work with what already functions. Use the existing structure as a trellis to support new growth.

Let’s be clear:

#4opens is not dogma — it’s the distilled learning of 30 years of open-source and open-process practice.

#PGA Hallmarks are not just ideals — they’re the living legacy of thousands of grassroots organisers across decades and continents.

#Indymedia isn’t a romantic memory — it’s the real-world, working outcome of diverse radical media groups building something that worked.

Indymedia only fell when it forgot the principles it was built on. When the foundations faded, it couldn’t flex under pressure, from internal disagreements or external attack. Let’s not make that mistake again.

Old Tools, New Wisdom – We don’t need saviours with shiny ideas. We need comrades with shovels. We need “elders” who are kind and sharp, who know when to step forward and when to stay quiet. Let’s embrace our role in this: gently holding the centre path, not controlling it. When someone passionate comes forward with a “better” idea, let’s respond with:

“How does that work with the #4opens?”

“Does it move us toward the PGA hallmarks?”

If it does, let’s try it. If not, let’s compost it and try again. That’s the rhythm of real change.

Expect Mess. Build Anyway – Let’s not sugar-coat it. We live in a world collapsing under its own contradictions. #Brexit, #ClimateChaos, the digital enclosure of the commons, these aren’t trends, they’re symptoms of systemic failure. And into that storm, every grassroots effort will be met with confusion, conflict, and co-option.

Expect:

People driven by petty grudges and personal agendas.

NGOs smothering action with managerialism.

#Stupidindividualism hijacking community energy.

Waves of right-wing actors using open platforms better than the left.

The approach: Focus and fertility – The Open Media Network (#OMN) exists to nourish, not replace. It’s a shovel to compost the piles of #techshit and #NGO mess. It’s a network for linking what already works and rediscovering the strength of shared infrastructure.

This is what makes #IndymediaBack different from other “radical” tech revivals?

It’s built on lived practice, not theory.

It’s structured for diversity, not conformity.

It’s based on human trust, not techno-fetishism.

It’s deeply political — anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, rooted in care and collaboration.

Yes, this is slow work, there will be times when things get ugly, when howling mobs throw shit, metaphorically and otherwise. Our job is to stay calm, stay focused, and keep the compost warm. Reviving Indymedia is not about nostalgia. It’s about learning from what worked, and building with care on that foundation. Let’s dig in. Let’s grow something together.

4Opens

Stop throwing regurgitated theory at me: We’re drowning in academic mess

The “common sense” of mainstreaming #deathcult worship is one thing. But a different side, i’m getting bored – and honestly frustrated – with people constantly throwing academic articles and dense theory into conversations about practical grassroots change. If academic knowledge worked in the real world, we wouldn’t be stuck in a permanent state of crisis. We wouldn’t be burning out. We wouldn’t be watching every radical initiative slowly get co-opted, neutralised, then forgotten.

The truth is obvious: most academic frameworks don’t translate well into real-life practice. They to often abstract away the people, the politics, the pain, and the actual doing. And when you try to impose this abstract knowledge onto the messy, complex world of activism, it often backfires. Badly.

Example: The Horizontalist Trap – We’ve all been in those consensus meetings that take hours because someone read a paper on “formal process” and insists we follow it to the letter. The outcome? People walk away frustrated, nothing gets done, and the only ones who benefit are those with time, education, or social power, the exact opposite of what the theory promised.

Example: The NGOization of Resistance – Academics love to talk about power and hegemony, then take funding from the same institutions that perpetuate the problems. They publish papers about “grassroots voice” while never showing up to a single protest, occupation, or food distribution.

Worse still, academic frameworks often become the justification for #NGO “best practices”, which means measurable, fundable, easily controlled deliverables that neuter real resistance and keep everything nice and “professional.” Look at the climate movement’s NGO wing, all form, no fire.

Example: The Misuse of Radical Jargon – Words like “intersectionality,” “decolonisation,” “assemblage,” and “ontology” are thrown around like power spells. But often, they act like a fog machine, confusing, not clarifying. They become tools for gatekeeping rather than building shared understanding.

This isn’t to say these ideas are worthless. But if they aren’t grounded in practice, in lived reality, in #DIY doing, they become another form of control, the academic equivalent of bureaucratic jargon. Empty power.

Let’s Talk About Practice – If you’re serious about radical change, start with what people are actually doing. Watch how trust is built. How disagreements are handled. How collective tools succeed or fail. This is the terrain of useful knowledge. Theory should grow from practice, not the other way around.

This is the basis of the #DIY approach. It’s what grounds #OMN, #IndymediaBack, and the #4opens framework. These projects didn’t come from a PhD thesis, they came from struggle, failure, and iteration on the ground. They work because they grow from practice.

Stop adding to the mess – when you post academic articles without any connection to what’s happening now, in the real world, you’re not helping. You’re contributing to the noise. To the inertia. To the pile of unread PDFs sitting in everyone’s guilt folder.

Instead:

Link to practical guides, not just papers.
Summarise ideas in accessible ways, not just as a show of knowledge.
Relate theory back to what people are already doing.
And most of all, ask first: Is this helping, or is this just feeding my own need to be heard?

We don’t need more theory right now. We need fire, tools, and compost. If you must bring theory, make sure it’s something that came from someone doing the work. Otherwise, maybe save it for the seminar room.

We’re building from the bottom, join us there.

#DIY #NothingNew #4opens #OMN #IndymediaBack #Activism #Compost #OpenWeb #Deathcult

Theory and Practice in Activism

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

If you’ve ever tried to build something radical, collective, and actually useful, you’ve run into these 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. 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 model.

Petty politics and personal grudges: 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. 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: 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: 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 the top.

The path we need is compost, this isn’t about perfection. 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 shiny new things. They’re grounded in lived practice, built to solve real problems. They don’t pretend to be magic fixes. But they are shovels, to compost the current mess, and grow something better.

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. A humanistic, future is still possible, if we stop feeding the #deathcult and start feeding the soil.

Add yours: 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