The #Hashtags Tell a Story: Building Trust in a Messy World

We live in a time of crisis. Climate, community, communication, all are breaking down. Our tools and platforms no longer serve us. To make sense of this, we need to tell stories. And in the digital world, hashtags are one of the most powerful ways we do this. But our hashtags don’t just tag, they trace the roots of our problems, and signpost paths out. Each one is a seed. Together, they are a map.

#dotcons – From #openweb to walled gardens. Once, the internet was a place of openness, built on free tools, shared protocols, and community spirit. Then came the #dotcom era, where profit became the driving force. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, what we call the #dotcons, reshaped the web to lock us in and sell us out. A handful of corporations own the highways of our communication, and their algorithms guide what we see, say, and believe.

#dotcon = profit for a few, con for the rest.

#stupidindividualism – A trap we set for ourselves, we were promised empowerment. But what we got was individualism without solidarity. We’re told: brand yourself, hustle alone, curate your reality. But without community, there is no resilience. Without cooperation, there is no change.

#stupidindividualism is the cultural poison that tells you “you’re on your own.” It weakens us from the inside.

#deathcult – Forty years of neoliberalism. The last four decades have been shaped by a ruthless ideology, that markets solve everything, government should step back, and people must compete, not care. This is the #deathcult – a term for the deadly logic of late-stage capitalism. It’s taken over politics, media, even our sense of self.

Climate denial, gig work precarity, housing crises, mental health collapse - these are all symptoms.

#geekproblem – The failure of trust in tech. Even our allies, the people building tech to fix things, fall into a trap. The #geekproblem is when developers replace trust with control, more permissions, more encryption, more complexity. Instead of building with people, they build over them. The result? More unusable tools, more silos, more #techshit that ends up needing to be composted in abandoned GitHub repos.

#4opens is a way out of the mess, we need this new paths, based on simplicity, humility, and openness, a compass. If a project doesn’t pass the #4opens, it’s not building for the commons, it’s just making another silo.

#OMN, shovels and compost, we already have the tools, projects that build media flows, not platforms. To connect blogs and podcasts into open rivers of content, using simple tech instead of complicated “Web3” vaporware or #dotcons mess.

We’ve built up piles of #techshit. It’s time to pick up our #shovels, compost the waste, and grow something new.

Hashtags = Soft tools for hard times. We use soft metaphors because we live in soft systems: culture, emotion, trust. You can’t “solve” these with code alone. You need care, community, and storytelling. Yes, many demand hard, scientific “proofs” or “frameworks.” But if someone can’t feel the metaphor, they’re probably not ready for the work of rebuilding. We need to focus on those who can, who’ve seen that a different world is possible.

If you can understand that different ideologies shape different realities, then these hashtags will start to speak to you.

Let’s recap the key tags in the story:

#dotcons – Corporations that own and fence in our web

#failbook – Facebook and its culture of manipulation

#openweb – The decentralized, people-powered internet

#4opens – A compass for ethical, sustainable tech

#geekproblem – Tech that controls instead of empowers

#stupidindividualism – Isolation sold as freedom

#deathcult – Forty years of neoliberalism and its collapse

#OMN – Building networks, not silos

#techshit – All the unusable tools that ignore real needs

#shovels – The work we must do

#compost – Making good soil from past mistakes

We don’t need heroes, we need gardeners, grab a shovel, let’s build a future please.

What do you mean by “mainstreaming”?

At its core, #mainstreaming is how we, often unconsciously, uphold and reproduce the values of the dominant system. In our time, that system is #neoliberalism, or what I metaphorically call the #deathcult. It’s the air we breathe: shaping our politics, our economics, even the food we eat and how we relate to each other.

In activist terms, #mainstreaming too often means pushing this dominant worldview into alternative spaces, building careers and institutions that play progressive on the surface, but ultimately reproduce the very system that’s driving the crisis. It’s what happens when people take grassroots energy and repackage it in #NGO boxes or #dotcon business plans. The result? We end up feeding the monster we’re supposed to be fighting.

This is the path to #stupidindividualism, where neoliberalism “common sense” didn’t just attack unions, welfare and public goods – it atomized our very identities. Over the past 40 years, we’ve been trained to act as isolated economic units. Individualism replaced solidarity. Competition replaced care. This is what we metaphorically call #stupidindividualism – the corrosive belief that the only way forward is by looking after yourself, even when your actions are part of a system that destroys community and climate. And as history has shown us, when communities collapse, what rushes in to fill the vacuum is fear, resentment, and authoritarianism, in a word: #fascism.

In real-world examples, let’s take @NovaraMedia. They produce great content. But their distribution strategy is rooted in #dotcons (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram), and their cultural aspirations are aimed at becoming the next @Guardian – a new node in the old system. They’re playing inside the media ecosystem of the #deathcult. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow an audience. But if we don’t also invest in building and sustaining #grassroots alternatives, we’re just treading water in the mainstream’s tide.

Most NGO agendas follow this same mainstreaming logic: speak in respectable tones, aim for policy tweaks, never rock the boat too hard, and above all, protect your funding. This echos my experience of doing media training and its limits, i’ve spent 25+ years training thousands of people to create radical, grassroots media, through projects like #Undercurrents, #Indymedia, #visionontv, and now the #OMN. Here’s what happened: Most of those trained went on to have careers in mainstream journalism or #NGO communications. Almost none stayed with grassroots projects. And honestly, I kinda don’t blame them, it’s hard to survive outside the system. But that’s the problem: without long-term support for non-mainstreaming work, there’s no soil for alternatives to grow.

We trained them to change the world, but the world trained them to change careers. So what do we do? If we don’t build real, working alternatives, then the only future left is one where billions of people die or are displaced over the next 100 years, from accelerating #climatechaos, and the rise of digital authoritarianism and political fascism. That’s why we need to push back against mainstreaming, not with purity politics or infighting, but with tools and structures that offer real alternatives.

The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one such tool:

Technically solid

Politically grounded in the #4opens and #PGA hallmarks

Designed to resist co-option by the #NGO sector or #dotcon logic

Rooted in peer-to-peer cooperation instead of hierarchical control

This path is a seed of something better, not perfect, not finished, but growing from decades of experience. We can’t blame people for trying to survive, but still we can and must build and defend spaces that nurture something, different, better.

Otherwise, the #deathcult “wins” by default.

Talking about grassroots media as a step away from the current #techshit

Hamish Campbell, a veteran in radical media for the past 30 years, discusses the failure of current technology and mainstream culture. He highlights how the #dotcon boom commodified our data, resulting in closed technology silos like #Facebook and #Instagram that capture our attention and data for their own profit. Campbell argues that alternative technology built around an #encryptionist agenda has gone nowhere and that the world is dominated by these tech giants. He argues for the importance of the #openweb, which was born open but is dying closed over the last 20 years, and advocates for rebooting grassroots media as a solution. Campbell uses the Oxford #IMC as an example of how a simple federated network can work by sharing content, using trusted link flows, and allowing content to be moderated or rolled back. He believes that the beauty of the #openweb is based on free flowing links, unlike the #closedweb of our current dominating technology. Campbell concludes that the #OMN project is more important for what it does not do than for what it does, and highlights the need to take small steps towards a solution by rebooting grassroots media as a example project.

What you can do

In the last few years there have been events and gatherings in the US, Portugal, and Madrid, discussing the possibility of #rebooting #Indymedia. The current history of Indymedia has been primarily written by academics and is very Americanized, so there is a need to retell the stories and provide a wider perspective. To successfully reboot Indymedia, I think it needs to return to its open and serendipitous roots, rather than the bureaucratic and closed structure it became. Fortunately, most of the technical tools needed for a decentralized and federated system, such as ActivityPub and Scuttlebutt, already exist. To maintain its radical grassroots philosophy, the #4opens principles should be used to ensure openness and accessibility. To get involved, one can search for #indymediaback or “reboot Indymedia” and find useful links #OMN

Seeding video on the openweb

Published Date 3/8/18 12:32 PM

We are #rebooting the #openweb side of http://visionon.tv project based on https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/wiki in early/middle of April.

The idea is to run this as decentralised as possible, that is to only temporally store the large videos files on the central server and rely much more on seedboxes in peoples homes and business.

Am looking for a few people to help set these up and host them for the first roll-out.

Basically:

* A low power computer (raspberry pie, old laptop, desktop)
* With a big external usb HD
* Running a torrent app configured to pull the video files down and seed them ver RSS from
the visionontv server.
This APP can be rate limited depending on your internet connection to stop your ISP complaining.
Then this is left online and dues its thing, you become a core part of the #openweb and OMN

We have to move nearly 2000 videos with more than 30 million views off the #dotcon and back onto the #openweb

Be a part of this.

Lets look at some alt projects from the perspective of the 4opens Themediafund

Lets look at some alt projects from the perspective of the #4opens – Themediafund

https://themediafund.org

Open data – the site has no visible RSS its likely wordpress so maybe has a hidden feed. Copyright content so the data is closed and locked vier copyright.
1/4 open

Open source – The site is likely wordpress so opensource but everything else is copyright. All the media is stored in #dotcon so not a open. Give them 1/4 open

Open “industrial” standards – Well wordpress is kinda a standard, but they do not openly support RSS, podcasting and all media is vier #dotcon so no.

Open process – The is no visible process (likely hidden bureaucratic open’ish). For tech dev I cannot fined the code anywhere.

Escaping the dotcon worldwide

Published Date 11/4/17 2:40 PM

UPDATE this is in process.

Escaping the #dotcon worldwide

Terms of services – based on the #4opens

* Activist – based on PGA hallmarks

* NGO – find a big org and use that’s TOS

Copy the mastodon TOS and refocus to the above

* Names x2

* Domains x2

Then setup Github sites with these names to run the tech side of the project and provide a on-line organizing space.

We need a list of outreach orgs and contacts in this likely all ready exists.

Funding document writing for LUSH

Open letter to 4 alt grasssroots media groups about the openweb

Published Date 6/27/17 5:15 PM

DRAFT (please comment)

Building up alt/grassroots media would be nice to get a reply 🙂

NovaraMedia

The Canary

Reel Media

Real News

Hi guys,

Good to get a reply about this project from you.

OMN is a network of Open Media Sites. Its a push to #reboot the openweb that most “value” you currently use has been built upon in the last 20 years. Your careers were built on the destruction of the digital commons its time to pay this back. The cost to your career is light and the openweb can and should be run in parallel to your current use of the #dotcon distribution.

The currency (value) of the web is the link without linking content (no matter how good) has little/no value online and will likely not be seen offline.

Left wing and progressive sites DO NOT LINK and share content with each other. This leads them to have little or no value outside the bubble/echo chambers. And we are surprised and depressed when we keep looseing, there is nothing surprising about this, but there is something depressing about it.

Why is the OMN different to all the other activist tech failed projects.

The top 5:

1) It’s based on the #4opens, meaning it doesn’t have the buy-in (sell out) issue of NGO’s and dotcons and can spread as wildly as the original world wide web (www) if people start to use/build it out.

2) It’s KISS, that is simple and standards based, so open to be built-out in unseen directions and open to wide creativity. It galvanises and empowers openweb projects.

3) It’s not under the control of one group and is a “universal/standard based so can build and link many niches to link and thus build a real alternative.

4) It solidifies a morality of co-operation and trust rather than fear and compation. Its left wing rather than right wing. All current projects are products of right wing thinking in structure and expectations.

5) It gives the tech/grassroots #fashionista’s something useful to do and promote at their events. Its hard to express the pointlessness of all the current alt-tech.

——————————————

reply from one of the alt-media/grassroots groups

Aren’t “existing” doing this anyway, linking all media groups together? Afraid I’m not techie enough to understand what OMN is, how it’s different, or any of the points you’ve made, but I’m happy to go along with what everyone else decides if it can be explained in plain English!

—————————-

We have done some “user story’s” https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/OMN/wiki/user-storys hope this helps get away from the tech 🙂

This is a part list of current working roll-out https://github.com/tomspost/OMN/wiki your content already appears as links on all these sites as you post it.

All current successful projects are networks or in the case of the #dotcon social networks (closed) sudo networks.

Currently the OMN is the only bud of a network we have in place in the alt/progressive.

What dues the OMN mean for the your org

Nothing has to change in what you do if you don’t want to do more.

To be part of the network you add a easy OMN sidebar/section/page to your existing site with the content flow you are interested in from any OMN site. You control what appears on your site.

At the moment the is just the one/first that covers the best of grassroots media from a UK and a bit of globle news focus so use that one http://omn.openworlds.info:8080

That’s it, you can do more if you like but don’t have to.

What this means is that your site will link and share content with other grassroots/alt media sites on there sidebar/section/pages.

Your content as you publish it on your site will appear (you do not have to do anything for this to work) on many other OMN sidebars/sections/pages on other sites and blogs.

It will play a role in “aggregating” the viewership of alt-media, everyone gains from this.

—————————–

What we are talking about is building expanding distribution outside Facebook/twitter. You can, and should continue to use Facebook etc. what the OMN dues is start to build independent and horizontal alternative that run/expands in parallel, its working now and easy to use.

Am more than happy to help set-up the embeds in your website, will likely take 20 min.

——————————————

Just in case you are worried about security of your site all scripting is striped from the articles and links and the embed is a standard plug-in that comes from the dotcon markets that 1000’s of people have been using for years with out any issues.

Its mature and safe tech that just works.

——————————————-

Ps. if this outreach duse not work its looking like time for a bit of a kicking…. phwww….. crap.

Trying to unstall the roll out of OMN

Published Date 5/12/17 11:55 AM

Building up alt/grassroots media would be nice to get a reply 🙂

Hi guys,

Good to get a reply about this project from you.

OMN is a network of Open Media Sites.

The currency (value) of the web is the link without linking content (no matter how good) it has little/no value online and will likely not be seen offline.

Left wing and progressive sites DO NOT LINK and share content with each other. This leads them to have little or no value outside the bubble/echo chambers. And we are surprised and depressed when we always loose, there is nothing surprising about this, but there is something depressing about it.

Why is the OMN different to all the other activist tech failed projects.

The top 5:

1) It’s based on the #4opens, meaning it doesn’t have the buy-in issue of NGO’s and dotcons and can spread as wildly as the original WWW if people start to use it/build it out.

2) It’s KISS, that is simple and standards based, so open to be built-out in unseen directions and open to wide creativity.

3) It’s not under the control of one group and is a universal in its subject matter, so can build and link many niches to link a real alternative.

4) It solidifies a morality of co-operation and trust rather than fear and compation.

5) It gives the tech/grassroots #fashionista’s something useful to do and promote at their events.

——————————————

reply

Hi Hamish,

Aren’t Real Media doing this anyway, linking all media groups together? Afraid I’m not techie enough to understand what OMN is, how it’s different, or any of the points you’ve made, but I’m happy to go along with what everyone else decides if it can be explained in plain English!

XXXX

—————————-

Hi XXXX,

We have done some “user story’s” https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/OMN/wiki/user-storys hope this helps get away from the tech 🙂

This is a part list of current working roll-out https://github.com/tomspost/OMN/wiki your content already appears as links on all these sites as you post it.

The realmedia site/project is version of the visionontv project we were fund-raising and trying to build 10 years ago. Fine for the silo it is but the world has moved on.

All current successful projects are networks or in the case of the #dotcon social networks (closed) sudo networks.

Currently the OMN is the only bud of a network we have in place in the alt/progressive.

What dues the OMN mean for the XXXX

Nothing has to change in what you do if you don’t want to do more.

To be part of the network you add a easy OMN sidebar/section/page to your existing site with the content flow you are interested in from any OMN site.

At the moment the is just the one/first that covers the best of grassroots media from a UK focus so use that one http://omn.openworlds.info:8080

That’s it, you can do more if you like but don’t have to.

What this means is that your site will link and share content with other grassroots/alt media sites on there sidebar/section/pages.

Your content as you publish it on your site will appear (you do not have to do anything for this to work) on many other OMN sidebars/sections/pages on other sites and blogs.

—————————–

XXXX

What we are talking about is building huge distribution outside Facebook. You can, and should continue to use Facebook etc. what the OMN dues is start to build independent and horizontal alternative that runs/expands in parallel, its working now.

Am more than happy to help set-up the embed in your wordpress site, will take 20 min.

Be the first of the 4 alt/grassroots media sites to take the step 😉

——————————————

Just in case you are worried about security of your site all scripting is striped from the articles and links and the embed is a standard plug-in that comes from the wordpress market that 1000’s of people have been using for years with out any issues.

Its mature and safe tech that just works.

——————————————-

Were is value online

Published Date 1/12/17 6:24 PM

Its interesting to think for a moment about how widely posts on the #openweb and #failbook are seen. On #failbook an average post on my time line might be seen/read by 10 people and a dog, a good shared post a few hundred people. On my blog an average post would be a few hundred people and a good post 10,000’s of people maybe more. its easy to forget that #failbook is a #dotcon in real terms not just in idealogical arguments. The value is on the #openweb – how have people forgotten this?

EC “Cos convenience and the software works”

Yep thats why am pushing the #OMN so the is a space to do something about this.

You do all know that posting polatics on failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness

Published Date 12/20/16 9:20 PM

You do all know that posting polatics on #failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness. Please stop and do something more usefull.

We have a clective Liberal fantasy in the is an idea that #dotcon can be social useful. Its not what the money (billions) was invested in. They “invested” into a silo/portal for capturing data and capturing users. Letting this “value” free is a liberal delusion in the sense it dues not payback for investment. Your talking an act of enlighten philanthropy or old fashioned nationalization to keep the value for the people who created it – the users.

We now have a problem that most of our best alt media producers are children of the #dotcon and have little or no understanding of the #openweb We need to express positive views of value. #linking #4opens etc all very basic stuff and not hard to do. I wont practical open ideas on were to start on this.

#moveon

Draft user storys

More OMN user stores

Tabs Troughton Richard Hering John Hoggett Thomas Barlow can you guys have a go at writing versions of these that are readable by normal people – then I can geek up the originals so they outreach to both worlds. if you wont to #reboot the media this is one way to play a role.

Here I look at wider uses than just alt/grassroots media.

Lucy has an old inactive blog about horses, since #failbook came along almost all activity has moved to a page on this #dotcon but fewer people are seeing her photos/posts and she is annoyed by the nagging adverts asking her to pay for distribution. She likes going to evening classes and sees one on blogging after her art class. Signing up she learns about this new thing the Open Media Network, during a practical part of the class the tutor gets the students to help each other add a “blog role” sidebar to their sites using OMN tools adding a few tags she soon has a list of local horsey sites and blogs linking off a sidebar widget. From this class she finds a group of new proto-blogers to help each other out, they have regular social meetings in her kitchen and after a few months they setup a local news site/noid linking all there blogs together.

Jim is a librarian who has always been interested in counter culture. He has spent the last 10 years collecting all the leaflets and pamphlet he can find on road protesting, climate change, GMO’s ect. One day he goes to his favorite activist news site and finds it offline. Asking around he find that the has been a problem with the server and nobody knows how to reboot it as the volunteer sys admin left 9 months ago. Because of “security” the is no working backup and the only redundant files are on an encrypted harddrive that nobody remembers the password for. All the work and connections of hundreds of people have been lost as well as the archive of media and articles going back 10 years. He had been to a public meeting about the OMN a few months ago and had been interested in how it could be used to create DIY backups of articles flowing through it. Setting up a noid/site is still complex so he has to get some atavist geek friends to help, after a few days its up and running and actively crating a data base of all articles flowing through the network with the tags he choices. In this if any site goes down he, like anyone, can have the full text backup. As text is small he can hold millions of articles on a cheap server and manages to set-up himself a RSS reading app to copy this taged flow to his local computer just in case he has server issues like his now defunct favorite activist website. From this experience he becomes an expert on open data flows.

Jasper is a fashernista geek looking to make a iphone app, he see news as a growth area, as a programmer he has no knowledge or skill producing news content so he is looking for existing sources he can find and use. Being a talent programmer he quickly knocks together a “cover flow” interface with a tag highlighting linking structure. He fills his app with content from a mainstream OMN aggregater noid and highlights the tags in the text to give a interface on this data flow. As his app is tool which data freely flows through he can sell it for $2.99 on the apple store. After a number of good reviews he sells 100,000 installs which allows him to give up his day job in the local council tax office.

Tabs wrights an opinion news blog with hart-warming storeys covering powerful social issues. Currently she has few readers as her distribution is to friends on #failbook. She has known about the OMN since before it started booting up and her content was added ver RSS by one of the founding aggregaters. Since then she has seen her viewing figures more than double, encouraged by this she puts a sidebar widget displaying OMN content flow that interests her. With this in place a number of prominent sites feature her blog as she is now a part of the OMN, her viewing numbers go up by a factor of 10 and keep growing as the network expands.

Ana loves her cat pixi and wants to set-up a blog with photos and life stories she could set-up a tumbler blog like everyone else, but her friend told her about the OMN so she set-up a wordpress site and adds her RSS feed to the OMN aggregater Catlovers in this her posts are added to the OMN network. To make her blog more interesting and dynamic she adds two OMN widgets to the blog sidebar the first is a photo widget that she configures with tags “black and white” “cat” “fun” so that it has an updating image from the catlovers view of the OMN and the second is the latest articles headlines from this catlovers site view.

Janice has a family history website that she updates regularly. The is a group of history web sites that have setup a OMN aggregater to push out there content to a wider audience, Janice adds her RSS feed to this aggregater and the hits on her site jump immediately each time she publishes new content. She gets help to add a sidebar section on her site with a OMN flow based on the tags “family history” and “research” with this in place she become a member of the OMN and her site becomes more visible to people. She finds her self working with a group of interesting people.

Fabo has a bus in East London converted into a restaurant, he currently has a Facebook page but this only reaches a tiny number of people (3%) who like it. He is a member of London Hackspace were he goes to a workshop on booting up the OMN. Inspired by this he decides to set-up a (OMN) aggregating site covering events and food in East London, he gets a friend to do this for him using drupal and the OMN plug-ins. After spending an evening adding RSS feeds of all the restaurants and venues he can find. The next morning he has a website linking to content that regularly updates. He features his own content on this to promote his business, his site after a bit of design work becomes a place to find out what is happening in fashionable hackney.

Jeff has a band, he used to get contacts for gigs on myspace and more recently on facebook, but this had been drying up. He has a friend who is setting up a OMN aggregater in Manchester linking to the music seen. Jeff helps them out by becoming a volunteer tag moderator of the data flows, from the inside knowledge of these rich data flows he rebuilds personal connections that help to re-spark his music.

Feedback please.

Human beings are by nature social creatures, we link

“The Ring slowly but inevitably corrupted its bearer, regardless of the bearer’s initial intent. For this reason the Wise, including Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, refused to wield it themselves, but determined instead that it should be destroyed. The corrupting power of the ring was apparently stronger on individuals more inclined to evil and selfishness: it took almost immediate hold of the greedy Sméagol as soon as he saw it, and corrupted Boromir after a few months of near proximity, while its effects were only starting to be seen in the well-meaning Bilbo after his 60 years’ possession.”

On the #openweb the creation of blogging makes personal sites with in reach of a majority of people, the balance between community and individual began to shift. Blogging was about empowering the individual, many geek/fashernista attempts to rebalance this failed, as each tended to be an island, mirroring the individualism of the blogging network they were trying to link. Blogging declined into silo/portals with the growth of SEO and the resulting failer of linking that resulted from this.

In the openweb nothing stayed static, the first to secsede in bringing the social (community) back into this world were the first #dotcon ‘s and the most powerful grew from the worst parts of human nature:

“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring

This is the shadow of the role of #failbook currently on the #openweb

How to recover from this “capturing of the commons”? One step would be to #reboot the last steps of the #openweb by fixing the balance between individualism in blogging and the community of the human condition. This is surprisingly simple to do, we need to fix the failed  geek/fashernista linking and thus #reboot blogging as a core to the #openweb. Almost everything we need to achieve this already exists, it’s a question of an affinity group kicking it into motion. Who is up for building links?

Let the web of trusted links grow (as this is ALL THE OPEN WEB is) and let the data (#4opens) flow over these links. From this trust building, community comes back into both the online and offline worlds.

And if a Dark Lord (Mr Zuckerburg) and his minions (Mr Trump) offer you a shiny ring – don’t take it.