The mess we need to compost is that the verticals are unthinking in their hierarchies, which turns the “value” of horizontals into a negative thing. Meanwhile, the horizontals despise the “power” plays of the verticals and take every measure to block their outcomes.
The world, however is one of balance. Both perspectives have roles and shifting values depending on the problems we collectively need to address. For those pushing #BLOCKING – a few sips to quench your thirst.
The conversations sparked by these flows are what truly matter. Grassroots structures grow from this collective perspective, feeding into shared social knowledge. The #hashtags act as a net, gathering working groups ready to embrace change and challenge.
In the end, all change and challenge is practical. People who only talk without action are naturally carried to the side streams, mingling until they either join the flow of practical work or fade away.
Yes, in your arrogance, you might call this arrogance – and from a different perspective, you might be right – but still blind. If you’re from the same perspective, I’d say nuts and nutters are only useful as part of a balanced diet. Maybe meditate on that before cracking more nuts. (I’m still refining that metaphor).
If you enjoy playing games, you can spot the word magic in the #hashtags. If you’re more practical, you can translate them into traditional definitions, for example, #deathcult = neoliberalism, #dotcons = the boom-and-bust cycles of the dotcom era, #fashernista = someone fashionable in any subject, i’s not complex at this level.
The complexity lies in the perspective that weaves these elements into a coherent story. Yes, this storytelling could be seen as arrogance – if you choose to view it that way. But that judgment itself makes you a “nut” from the very perspective you critique.
The #openweb tools do not have the control that the #Eurocrats need to move onto our tools and be a part of our community. This is going to lead to a “invisible” fight, as they are increasingly funding development we face a crisis in the #fediverse A Sheldon crises talking the language of our crew.
Q. Yes, we should keep things people-to-people and avoid getting involved with large hierarchical organizations who will try to appear friendly but will move the development into a more centralized mode which they can then influence and have control over.
What the EU people want I think is a Silicon Valley in the EU. A digital portfolio from which they can project influence internationally and a vehicle for venture capital and new digital markets. If you read their blurb this is what they say, and I don’t have any reason to disbelieve them.
Obviously something like the fediverse doesn’t really fit with the cunning EU plan (fits like a fish riding a bicycle) and so at some point there will be an ideological parting of lovers (perhaps it has already happened, I am not following the NGI conversations).
A. The #mainstreaming funding of the #fedivers is already completely dominated by the #EU all the big projects are funded by #NGI
This is more #fuckup than conspiracy though am shore conspiracy is growing as people see the levers of power and control which comes with money agenda.
It’s an “invisible” hot war, standing aside is not an option.
Q. Maybe there should be a plan for whenever the EU launches some venture capital fediverse product. I expect it would be like what Trump is doing, but under some EU branded “incubator” and maybe with centralized moderation.
Something like that would create a tug-of-love between the revenue of projects and a centralizing agenda. I’ve been around the bloc enough times to know it’s bound to happen. These things are so formulaic.
A. I think that’s jumping ahead of were we are for the next year or two. Most of the People at #NGI pushing this agenda simple do not see the damage they do. Only a tiny number are actively “evil” currently.
We have a opening http://hamishcampbell.com the last few posts are a way to step away from this “crisis”.
Q. It’s like you can see the truck driving towards the cliff edge.
“If you go in that direction, you’ll fall off the edge”.
The driver says “Nah mate, it’s different this time”.
And you watch the truck as it reaches the precipice, and then falls off.
A. yep but need to look in the back of tuck as it’s filled with much of the #fedivers infrastructure that’s going to go over the cliff.
Actavisam is to sit down in front of the truck and refuse to move, while talking to the “press” about the issues #fluffy
Or pour sugar into the truck fual tank in the night #spiky
Standing and watching while shrugging shoulders is kinda #mainstreaming 🙂
Getting a good outcome is hard… And this current influx of EU funding risks doing more damage than good to the health of the #Fediverse, if it continues along its present agenda. Yes, the #Fediverse already has its own lifestyle-driven mess, but we can try to mediate the damage driven by funding first. If we succeed there, maybe the lifestyle drift can self-mediate in time.
Aiming for a better outcome, what we’re looking for is social change and challenge with less mess. This page looks at some of the best funding we’ve found http://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects Not an attack, but opening a conversation on an obvious issue.
We can also look at funding that is being completely wasted, but that’s likely outside our influence. Lets keeping it positive (When We Can), I like to keep things positive… if possible. But let’s be honest — a lot of people are BLOCKING, and that’s going to cause fire and a LOT of smoke. This is what real social change/challenge looks like: murky. Focus on #KISS — Keep It Simple — to see through the smoke.
Transparency matters, it’s hard to imagine how you can do a left-wing project without showing your workings:
Open/Trust = left
Fear/Control = right
That’s the core framing this page is about.
#Dotcons & poisoned agenda, Yep, the whole #dotcons side of the EU funding agenda is poison. It only feeds the mess. And as I’ve pointed out before, most funding ends up poured straight down the drain. Sadly, that’s the default outcome.
#IndymediaBack – Learning the right lessons, one thing to keep in mind: I think we (the #Indymedia crew) learned the wrong lesson from the repression and state raids. We pushed fear/control as the solution, and this added to the #closedweb mess. But as the #Fediverse now shows, the path should have been open/trust — That’s the #openweb path we abandoned. That split ripped Indymedia apart, and we’ve been stuck in the #dotcons mess ever since.
Simplicity as Strategy, when making judgments, keep it #KISS — Simplicity is what cuts through the mess. Shovels and compost, is the #OMN approach.
Trauma, Repression & Healing, Yes, trauma is real. That’s why I lean into basic ways of looking at these things. From there, it’s up to people to build up, DIY style — a real grassroots approach.
Practical approaches, watch the film:
I made this for the legal support crew of a major campaign. The repression was ongoing and intense — But the healing came through mass participation, like walking calmly through police stop and search zones. That likely helped to mediate a lot of growing trauma.
Final thought: #Openweb – all together push through, the HARD block crumbles. We’ve got work to do. Let’s keep it grounded, open, and as clear as we can through the murk.
Facebook is nothing to do with anarchy, it was set up to sell people’s attention to advertisers, so it’s actually about social control as are all #dotcons
#failbook algorithms are defined to create divisions and arguments, so best not to talk about core activist things on here.
Just give the clear, simple outreach messages with links to the #openweb and tell people to ask questions in on the #openweb posts.
It’s crazy that many activists still think this is a good place and that people still keep creating new #failbook activist groups.
I start to understand the misunderstanding, blocking many of the people outreaching the #OMN. It’s a DIY project there is the assumption that people will see the need and fill in the missing bits. The “missing bits” have a function, to be filled in otherwise we would be pushing clean non-messy #dotcons world view which is a very different project.
Maybe this is hard to see, but we would be doing something utterly pointless if it is not messy. So people pushing clean are not helping, rather they are #BLOCKING
Must stress the utterly pointless here, as people have done slick/controlled alts many times over the last 30 years and in the medium term this has always proven to be pointless.
It’s a world view problem that’s going to kill us, well lots of us.
Meany people reply to outreach by telling the #dotcons story as if it were common sense… where the outreach is telling DIY, so communication is missing/past each other.
The #OMN is offering tools, people are generally looking for shiny toys a different world view. From the DIY prospective shiny toys are just rubbish to add to the landfill were tools you can build a new world if you are motivated and have care and focus.
To put this bluntly, its #DIY or death as #XR says in the streets. Hope this #KISS aproch helps to build a bridge – up to you guys to hold this bridge in place.
#OMN projects are tools for YOU to change/challenge the world we live/die in.
In the face of growing #climatechaos and our attention being trapped inside the #dotcons, I see most people as complete fantasists and see the worship of the #deathcult as their main motivation.
In the next 5–10 years, I see a lot of BLOCKING and lots of blowing of smoke to cover this behaver.
I live on a lifeboat, it’s not a metaphor.
The start of this post is the BLOCKING and the smoke blowing I am talking about on this blog.
The end is “feel good/bad”, which is just the chatting classes talking to the chattering classes.
There are people who are not a part of the chattering classes who have agendas, as the blog post says in the end.
Diversity is a good (ecological) thing, and the chattering classes as the blog post says are VERY bad at noticing their active role in our social poverty on this one.
Looking at this event https://2021.ngiforum.eu the is way to meany stuffed shirts, technological fantasists (#blockchain) and a lot of #EU money what could go wrong…
Spent an hour looking through the list of participants opening in new tab all that said something interesting. Of these more than 2/3’s had the tag blockchain, so closed them, and then looked at the rest, then closed them… as we all know the is little hope in places like this, but worth a look, sometimes you find something useful. Someone has to turn over the tech shit pile to make compost.
Last week attended the online event by the Knight Foundation (huge #openweb funders for the last 10 years) in the USA on #reimagining the Internet. It was 100% about the #dotcons kinda nutty, how bad things are in the funded #NGO#openweb world.
Please add to this, sign up for the site and add more or just publish them on your own #openweb site with the hashtag #4opens
UPDATE
Why go to these events? It’s about connection to people building bridges and resources for bridge building. The problem is all the resources at these events are poured down the drain and/or consumed by social parasites – the chattering classes.
I spend a bit of time going to the events every 10 years to see if this has changed. COVID-19 and the on lining of the events is a time to do this. This time, like last time, I am feeling an “opening” but think the parasite classes are going to be stampeding through it. For a useful outcome we would need a soughted #openweb group to take up space, without this the opening is not going to have any good outcome.
This mythical group does not exist, there are individuals scattered about, but nothing that has much social power to be able to work with/bridge the power politics.
This strategy can work (up to a point) to get resources, the last time, 10 years ago, I got a big chunk of dosh to set up http://visionon.tv which the remains of is funding the #OMN infrastructure. But this is another story – you can likely find articles about this back on this blog.
UPDATE
In any burocracy there are always a few people trying to get out, It’s what bridges are for, and there will likely be lots of people on our side who want to get in, also what bridges are for http://hamishcampbell.com/2021/04/16/outreaching-activitypub-to-the-eu-draft/ a post that touches on this bridging subject and why it has value.
UPDATE
Only now reading up on the background of this #EU stuff. “What is Horizon Europe? Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation, with a budget of €95.5 billion.” No wonder the is such a feeding frenzy of pigs at the trough was wondering why this sudden interest in the #openweb
UPDATE
This comes to mind when talking to just about everyone on subjects like this today, “They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.”
Coding projects that come from the humanity’s general fail as they are not technically coherent and build out from abstract ideas without real relevance to lived humanity, they are too disconnected to become relevant to communertys of use.
Coding from science tend to fail because they are inhuman, and are built for mashions. They serve abstract ideas based on numbers and thus can reach only tiny numbers of people and can build no outreach social groups of use being irrelevant to “real/normal” people.
Coding from life has a better chance of success BUT only if balanced with a science based discipline and some academic rigour of soiled social thinking
Let’s look at examples:
Knight News challenge was captured by academics and thus has produced a slew of irrelevant projects – the money and focus was poured down the drain.
Diaspora was a pure geekproblem project so found few humans to use it, the resources were poured down the drain.
Mastodon came from a computer scientist but is a human project based on an existing need/use with competent technical agender. It worked and outreached to normal-ish people. Mastodon for filled an existing human need. Thus has real social change/challenge action and potential – we should/need to learn from this.
What has worked for the fedivers to overcome the geekproblem is the copying of existing #dotcons as #openweb tools. This copying has mediated the gap between the humanities and the sciences by taking existing (bad) human technological relationships and building copy’s in the (good) openweb. In clear contrast peoples attempt to build both #geekproblem and academic #NGO tools has (obviously) failed in the fedivers.
We need to build out from this good/bad relationship and nurture the good and push down the bad – while avoiding the pointless ghettos of both geekproblem and academic dogma being pushed by captured funding agenders.
It’s an interesting challenge to have movement on/in. Current foundation funding agenders have been captured by academics on one side and the geekproblem on the other. Capital (#dotcons) funding agenders are dominating and pushing for aristocratic anti-humanistic outcomes and theological neo-liberal group think.
We need to step out of these #mainstreaming flows to push up the good and push down the bad. We are working to do this at the #OMN we’re trying to bring our lived experience (this is always were the value is) to rethink and re-emergence solutions to the old 4 estates thinking:
* The clergy – while being structurally irrelevant are still are at the core of the social condition – belief.
* The nobility – are a dangerous force for social destruction by control and play a bad role at every level, our #dotcons leaders are the new “nobility”.
* And the commoners – are all of us, we need to see this more, our best/worst governance is democratic – we need to embed this is all our social technology.
* The media – is the tools of social control and the path to social liberation we need to chose where we put our power and our intervention in media.
At the OMN we are practical working on the last two – while fighting for humanism is the first and fighting trench warfare agenst the second. In the end it’s a simple path made complex by the forces we are fighting agenst.
The answer is always #KISS the power is always human, the tools #4opens
To make sense of the social/tech #hashtags I’ve been using for the last decade, you need a simple but often avoided tool: ideology. This isn’t abstract theory for academics. It’s a practical way of seeing patterns in how people organise, build, and fight over the world. The idea has been around since at least Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and runs through modern political thinking via people like Antonio Gramsci. The core point is straightforward: large groups of people don’t act randomly. They cluster around shared assumptions, about power, about trust, about how the world works. Those shared assumptions are what we call ideology.
Over time, thinkers have “distilled” these patterns into rough categories. Left/right. Socialist/capitalist. Authoritarian/libertarian. These aren’t perfect boxes, but they’re useful shorthand. They let us quickly understand where a movement sits, what it values, and – crucially – how it’s likely to behave under pressure.
Now, here’s the bit people in tech often resist, this applies just as much to coding projects and digital communities as it does to governments or political parties. Code is not neutral, every project embodies choices: Who gets to decide? Who gets to participate? What is visible, and what is hidden? What is trusted, and what is controlled? These are ideological questions, even if developers don’t frame them that way.
Take a simple example – A project built around open standards, transparent decision-making, and shared ownership sits in a very different ideological space to – platform built around central control, proprietary systems, and user extraction. You don’t need to argue about labels to see the difference. But the labels – ideology – help you map it quickly. This is where the hashtags come in. They’re not random slogans – they’re shorthand for ideological positions:
#4opens → a practical framework for keeping things accountable
#dotcons → capitalism applied to network effects and data capture
#encryptionists → a drift toward fear/control when taken to extremes
#geekproblem → the cultural blind spot where technical people ignore social context
Each tag is a compressed way of pointing at a cluster of assumptions and behaviours. Once you see them as ideological markers, the landscape becomes much clearer. So why does this matter? Without this lens, people in tech tend to fall into two traps:
Naivety
They believe they’re building “neutral tools,” and are surprised when those tools reinforce existing power structures.
Confusion
They see conflicts – over moderation, governance, openness – but treat them as personal disagreements instead of ideological clashes. Using ideology cuts through both problems. It lets you say “This isn’t just a disagreement about features. It’s a disagreement about how power should work.” Applying it to real projects.
Let’s look at something like the #Fediverse – It leans toward decentralisation, openness, and community governance → ideologically closer to left/libertarian traditions. But it still contains tensions: moderation, funding, scaling → where different ideological pulls show up.
Or take corporate platforms – Centralised control, data ownership, profit extraction → clearly aligned with capitalist, top-down models
These aren’t accidents. They’re outcomes of underlying ideological choices. The hashtag story is a practical tool, not a purity test. This isn’t about forcing everything into rigid categories or arguing over who is “correct.” Ideology is a tool, not a weapon. Used well, it helps you understand why projects succeed or fail, predict where conflicts will emerge to make conscious choices about how you build. Used badly, it turns into dogma and pointless infighting – which is exactly the mess we’re trying to compost.
The #OMN path is grounded in a clear ideological stance of trust over fear, openness over control and commons over extraction. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or pure. It means the direction is explicit. And that’s the real value here: clarity.
Because if you don’t understand the ideological ground you’re standing on, you end up being pushed around by forces you can’t even see. Once you do see it, the landscape changes. Suddenly, the hashtags aren’t just words – they’re a map.
funding to further this – we would need democratic structures in the #fedivers style to make this real rather than a Eurocratic/power politics dead-end structures.
Is the path with a good outcome – I have been involved in a number of groups/projects that have received Eurocratic money and the outcome has always been sub optional not to say a compleat disaster. I have seen no/little thinking to mediate this outcome.
So on balance good to do this BUT we do need not to go down unrealistic paths.
Am trying to shift the focus so that the story is more “interesting” and “representative” ActivityPub in the EU sense is a movement as much as a standard – standards by themselves have little/no value. If the story comes from the standard it is easy to ignore, and it will be ignored. A movement, with a bit of jingoism (the ActivityPub speck is maybe largely a European thing?) is an easer story to tell/hear.
Good points, the #fedivers while having a good community, as individuals we do tend to act like cats.
Prepping the presentation is going to be a “herding cats” so best to concentrate on #KISS and focus on the ordnance – what do they need to hear.
The second day we can reveal the all to human delight (and worry this brings)
securaty modeal for mastodon712×478 66 KB
Like the focus on European as this is true – the #Fediverse mirrors the federated European dream and clearly moves away the US tech imperialism (soft power) of the #dotcons something that is a #EU agender.
My thoughts/feelings are pragmatic on a good outcome.
We have a clash of languages and assumptions for example “surveillance capitalism” and the “social dilemma” both come from inside business and Silicon Valley thinking – so they are not good examples to use for an ActivtityPub presentation which itself is COUNTER Silicon Valley thinking and has its own way of expressing these issues. Just use natural descriptive language instead of quoting the terms.
I don’t have an issue with web01 and web02 yes they are not correct, but they do communicate.
The first question is why – It’s a good fit both strategically, in challenging the big US tech corporations dominance and tactically, in it being simple to implement and open to innovation as it is outside of anyone group control and agendas.
But we are unready as a community if a big institution like the EU takes up ActivityPub you can see this in what happened to RSS when it was taken up by the NYT.
#activertypub like #RSS and the #www came out of grassroots movements, they bring world views with them its WHY THEY WORK. Yes the world view are in part incompatible with #mainstreaming, so the is a strong burocratic desire to hide these world views and then push them out of view/existence.
Why work with big vertical organizations like the EU – The bridges, allow our careerists and wona get statues crew a way to cross over to the mainstream to feed. By doing this they strengthen the bridge by adding mainstream value to the bridges.
Then the refuges from the mainstream shitpile have an easy path to get to alternatives gardens when the stink becomes too much to live with.
The bridge shifts out “problems” and “brings” in resources, expirence and skills to build real alternatives.
We need bridges to the mainstream to build alternatives.
Though the process will likely not go well. When dealing with power politics/vertical orgs in the end the grassroots is ALWAYS shafted – it’s the normal outcome they can’t help this behaver. So we need to keep the bridges in place no matter how bad there behaver is, keep calm and carry on – their behaver is shit to shovel for compost to plant seeds to grow a better world.
Am thinking we need more structears “from chaos comes order” rather than “order over chaos” its trust or control.
In the internal process. It’s interesting that people coming into non #mainstreaming projects and spaces then push “common sense” #mainstreaming ways of working and outcomes can’t see that they are creating a problem.
You then inevitably get Clouds of smoke to cover up the mess. When it clears everyone is covered in soot. it’s not a good look for anyone.
We need ideas on how to mediate this without going down the #mainstreaming paths.
Think we currently have a pile of shit for home hosting tech. Might have to break my #nothingnew pledge as the is literally nothing normal people can use/do. Plan/idea/focus?
Nothing is useable – have tried them all. Good to start from where we are we need to stop going round in circles and start to look at why we HAVE FAILED and if the is a path to failing less badly. Or better how to build something that is not fail.
The is endless circulating in our #geekproblem communities – the subject matters, but we do nothing but circal failer. Good to start from where we are.
We are here… we need social tech that works for normal people…
Update
Maybe build a #KISS set of lightweight apps that use tor as the backend communications standard and talk to the tor browser as web apps so you don’t need the app to dip in, but the apps do the work of lifting p2p hosting. Feasible?
UPDATE (from a chat room on home web hosting)
A. calling everyone’s project a pile shit and not apologising even when some of those project devs sit in this room is not ok
Q. But obviously it’s all well shitty otherwise we would not be in the stinking mess we are with everyone (well 99.99% if you nitpick) on the #dotcons if that is not a pile of shit then we kinda need to start calling a rose a rose and a pile of shit a pile of shit… we are not sniffing roses in this chat i can say this as have been here in the chat for a while and here in the alt tech world for a very long time.
Maybe “wishing” shit way is no replacement for working sewers? We need working p2p tech that normal people can use. So lets compost the shit so we can smell the roses 🙂
A. 🙄 request for moderation plz thanks bye
UPDATE (from a chat room on home web hosting)
A. i concur with *** that the language is neither helpful nor respectful towards people trying to make things. So please mind it.
Q. Fair anufe, though shit in moderation makes good compost and compost is needed for beading seedlings and seedlings grow into everything that feeds life… and https://homebrewserver.club is about grassroots DIY life… some shit in moderation is needed for this cycle 🙂
Let’s water some seeds that “normal” people can grow.
The children of Thatcher and Reagan are limited in their world views – they have been brought up and nurtured in the neo-liberal #deathcult and have limited experience in the nurturing and socialisation of anything else. Academic and book learning are a poor substitute for evolving in a non #deathcult era, so it is no surprise that they find themselves trapped in the circle of #stupidindividualism
In this #deathcult era, individualism is stupid and individualism makes you stupid. This is a degrading circle that no “self-help” or “whoo spiritualism” can help you to escape.
This manifests like dark “social magic” in many areas:
In social movement we have the take-over of #fashernistas who push “alternatives” aside in their “commonsense” self-interest, building careers and grasping at the illusionists of fame and “influence” they are slaves to #mainstreaming
In tech the #geekproblem has pushed emancipation into darkness. The #encryptionists have dominated alt-tech and the #dotcons of the #mainstreaming path, both are born of this world view and the socialisation that keeps it from sight.
The mainstream is blind in its worship “there is no alternative” for #mainstreaming agendas in this era. Our words and actions are simply spewing shit while the world burns, our ecosystems die and communities implode in manufactured (for profit) infighting #failbook
It’s actually easy to step away from this mess, the issue is: are you brave enough to fall and WILL your community catch you when you do? (both valid worries i’m afraid).
We need hand-holding and most importantly we need alt-social/tech structures in place to build and bind – all human communities are built/bound with/from these structures.
The #OMN and the #4opens are there as shovel for the shit and binding for the community – neither of these have any power but the power you use them with – the steeping and away and dreaming and digging is all down to you and your community.
