The Open Media Network: More Than Just a Tech Project

At first glance, the #OMN (Open Media Network) might look like a technical project, a collection of code, standards, and protocols. But to think of it only this way is to miss the point entirely.

What we’re building is a social and technological fabric for the #openweb, woven together by shared values and practical needs. Yes, there’s tech, but the tools and standards we develop are not neutral. They lean, by design, toward openness, transparency, collaboration, and grassroots control, the principles of the #4opens.

These standards are not delivered from on high by lone developers or institutional committees. They emerge from the lived, everyday use of technology, from how communities interact, what they need, and how they grow together. They evolve from practice, leading to theory.

The code is nothing without people. The protocol withers without participation.

So, we’re not only building tech, we’re growing a community, and that community gives the technology life. It’s a symbiotic process: the social side shapes the tech, and the tech enables new social formations. One cannot thrive without the other. If you treat it only as a technical solution, it will fail, no matter how elegant the code. If you treat it only as a social project, it will stall, no matter how good the intentions. We have to hold both in balance. In that balance, real change becomes possible.

In this spirit, the #OMN is not just an infrastructure project. It’s a call to those who want to reboot the web from the grassroots up, reclaiming the digital commons from #dotcons and #deathcult systems. Let’s get to build it together, simple, federated, and open.

We all know the current state of independent and grassroots media: scattered, under-resourced, and mostly invisible to the wider public. While the content exists, the connection between producers, platforms, and audiences is too often broken. Meanwhile, corporate platforms like #Failbook, Google, and YouTube work for a few, they continue to dominate how people access and experience media and use this to push down any real radical change.

We need a reset, not by building shiny new silos or reinventing the wheel, but by connecting what already exists into a living network. This is where the Open Media Network (#OMN) comes in. The core idea is to link together the fragments of the #openweb. Rather than replace everything, OMN builds bridges between existing activist sites, blogs, podcasts, and alt media using open standards and simple, low-barrier tools.

The idea is simple: Producers publish content on their existing sites (blogs, podcasts, etc.). Aggregators bring it all together, curating, tagging, and redistributing content through RSS, ActivityPub and metadata flows.

What this means for people is easy discovery of relevant content on the topics they care about. A gateway back to the #openweb – away from algorithmic manipulation and ads. A better browsing experience than siloed social media.

What it means for media producers: Syndication, content appears on dozens or hundreds of relevant sites. More traffic, more engagement, and better visibility without having to chase algorithms. Simple tools to embed rivers of content from others, so you give back to the network while benefiting from it. In short, publish once, appear everywhere, no need to grind content for each individual silo.

Why this works, all content remains owned by the original publishers. The system simply connects and enhances what’s already there. It’s not a new platform, it’s the missing glue between platforms. Why this matters socially, we’ve been burned by both: The #geekproblem of over complication and privacy tunnel-vision and the NGO/foundation/brand-washing of horizontal, activist culture

OMN avoids both by hardcoding openness and cooperation into the foundations, using the #4opens as a social and technical guide. This isn’t a system that can be easily captured or siloed. It’s designed to move faster than co-option, and built for people who want to do, not just talk.

If this sounds old-fashioned, that’s because it is, and it works, we don’t need innovation for its own sake, we need media compost, not just another layer of glossy tech bling. We’re creating the soil for tomorrow’s social movements. Want to help us shovel the #techshit and start planting?

Join the project: https://unite.openworlds.info
Learn more: http://hamishcampbell.com
Spread the word: #OMN #openweb #4opens #grassrootsmedia #reboot

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.

The Spring OMN: The River of News Project

Originally Published 3/15/2016 — Updated 07/2025

“A river that needs crossing: political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance; on the geek side, there is naivety and over-complexity.”

This project builds from a simple truth: we’re failing to communicate across divides that matter, and the #openweb continues to decline in the face of #dotcons like Meta (#failbook), Google, Amazon, and Apple.

The inspiration, the technical model draws from Dave Winer’s long-standing work on RSS, OPML, and “Rivers of News” feeds, simple, powerful tools that made the early web thrive. On the social and activist side, it’s grounded in the decades of grassroots media work by Hamish Campbell, through projects like Undercurrents, VisionOn.TV, and now the Open Media Network (OMN).

The gap, at the heart of the OMN’s mission, is bridging a difficult and persistent divide:

On the political/activist side: there is often arrogance and ignorance of tech.

On the geek/tech side: there’s a naïve faith in software as the solution, often built with little understanding of real-world social context.

We need projects that cross this river, building trust, tools, and practice between these worlds.

The metaphor: Springs, streams, and rivers. To make sense of the information ecosystem – and its decay – we use a flowing water metaphor:

Springs are individual sources: blogs, newsletters, independent media sites, the point of origin. Examples: Bella Caledonia, OpenDemocracy, personal activist blogs, or radical local sites.
Streams are subject-focused aggregators: curated flows around a theme or community, often mixing automated and human input. Examples: Mastodon feeds, PeerTube channels, activist email lists, thematic tag clouds (e.g., #climateaction), or OMN’s tag-based flows.
Rivers are the broad distributions of media: where most people actually consume content. Right now, these are dominated by enclosed, manipulative platforms. Examples: Meta’s Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, mainstream news websites, these are algorithmically filtered and socially isolating.

Currently, most alt/progressive content dies in the spring, never even making it to the stream, let alone the river. We’re left isolated, while the #dotcons dominate minds and discourse.

What the #OMN offers is a humble, yet radical, technical and political attempt to build open streams and rivers from our independent springs. The core Ideas:

Use RSS/Activertypub (open standards) as the glue for data portability.

Build lightweight, user-friendly tools that work with existing websites and platforms, not against them.

Encourage tag-based aggregation and curation, so we can collectively build shared narratives.

Keep it KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to avoid the usual geek over-complexity.

Embed #4opens principles: open data, open source, open process, and open standards.

Why this matters (More than ever). We are living through a polycrisis: #climatechaos, rising fascism, digital enclosures, and mass social isolation. Our existing media channels are captured, and many of our alternative channels are either siloed or slowly dying off. We can no longer afford to just make “better content”, we must fix how that content flows.

The OMN is not a silver bullet, but it’s a shovel, a filter, a river guide, simple tools to help rebuild the #openweb and empower people again.

“The link is the currency of the web. In this, we all become richer.”

Want to help? Add tags to your posts. Start linking to other sources in your niche. Or just ask your favourite alt-media project to connect with others. Let’s replant the roots and reroute the rivers.

More: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network

Everything we build sits on standards

An example of the #geekproblem is the refusal, or failure, to engage seriously with standards. In tech, as in life, nothing exists in isolation. Every app, every protocol, every line of code rests on a foundation of inherited agreements: protocols, languages, schemas, and governance systems. These are the invisible scaffolding of the digital world, we call them standards, and whether people like it or not, everything you’re building is already part of an industrial web of standards.

Now, here’s the issue, some people like building sandcastles, it’s fun, creative, and ephemeral and that’s fine for a beach. But when you’re trying to build something social, collective, public, sandcastles don’t last. Tech built without engagement with standards is just that, fantasy castles doomed to wash away with the tide. The #geekproblem is this tendency, to act like you’re inventing from scratch, when you’re just ignoring the foundations that are already holding you up.

So, what is an “Open Industrial Standard”? Think of it this way:

An industrial standard is a shared agreement that enables interoperation. Think HTTP, HTML, RSS, USB, SQL, IP, ActivityPub. These let different things talk to each other, without asking permission.

An open standard means anyone can read it, implement it, and improve it — without a license fee or gatekeeper.

When it works well, it becomes a public commons — infrastructure we all use without even thinking about it.

That’s the real power of the #openweb, these boring, beautiful agreements that allow radically different people and machines to cooperate at scale. And yes, the process of defining them can be nebulous and political. There are gatekeepers, old boys’ clubs, turf wars (just ask anyone who’s fought through the W3C or IETF). But without engaging with these processes, you’re not doing tech that scales, you’re doing cosplay.

Tribalism vs standards, some geeks mistake tribal loyalty for technical innovation. They reject standards because they didn’t write them, or because they’re seen as “corporate,” or because it’s not their language/community. This is understandable, but it’s also deeply destructive when building shared tools. This tribalism can be:

Beautiful — as identity, passion, and solidarity.

Problematic — when it blocks interconnection, growth, and real-world relevance.

And yes, nationalism is another form of this, some #dotcons are more powerful than countries, so perhaps it’s a useful metaphor. If Amazon or Meta can out-legislate half of Europe, then tribal structures and state structures start to blur. The violence of exclusion, whether through passport or platform ban, operates in similar ways.

The #geekproblem is a 20th-century hangover, a part of the tech tribe that’s clung to personal purity, control, and isolation. But this path is real damage: #climatechaos worsened by inefficient or extractive systems, #failbook dominating sociality through centralised design, #diaspora outreach falling apart from internal ego wars.

The #geekproblem refuses the hard, messy work of social coding, open standards, federation, collective governance. It prefers to build new silos rather than inhabit and improve shared space. We see this constantly. New protocols, platforms, forks. Few links, no bridges. We need to talk about this, as it’s not personal, it’s structural. But people get very personal when you point this out, that’s the #stupidindividualism talking. Instead of building relationships and cooperation, they build sandcastles and expect others to admire them from afar. Meanwhile, the world burns, and tech could be helping, but mostly it isn’t.

In Summary: Open industrial standards are the foundations of anything that actually works at scale. The #geekproblem is a block when it pretends these don’t matter. Sandcastles are nice, but you can’t build a future on them. Let’s engage, not isolate. Link, not fork. Share, not hoard.
That’s the path to a real #openweb, that resists the #deathcult and has a shot at making lasting change.

I’ve been fighting this for 20 years. I wrote this in 2005, and it still holds:

“It’s going slow but we are getting there… One of the main problems seems to be a dysfunctional idea of division of labour – ie. Everyone seems to think I should do everything – as I am pretty useless at many things it’s no wonder it is going so slow… If you wanna see something miraculous happen you gotta wave your arms around a bit and mutter some arcane words… Go on you can do something… Just look at the blog page to see what.”

What is journalism in a dotcons community space?

Ten years ago, I posted photos of a police raid on a boat in Mile End Park to a local Facebook group. What followed was a storm of critique from fellow community members, particularly around privacy, ethics, and the nature of local news. That exchange came back through the memory algorithm on #failbook, it’s interesting because it sits at the heart of a question we keep coming back to. What is journalism, and where does it belong? The debate wasn’t just about a photo or a post. It was about the role of information in shared spaces, and the tensions between community care and the need for a clear, public record. Some key lessons I’ve drawn from that time:

Good community needs good information. Silence and rumour leave space for gossip, fear, and abuse. Visual storytelling, when done well, can be part of an antidote.
But journalism is not neutral. It requires ethics, context, and responsibility. Publishing a photo of someone’s home under police scrutiny, even if taken in public, isn’t just about facts, it’s about the emotional and social consequences.
Community groups aren’t newspapers. They’re often treated as such, but they don’t have the editorial process, protections, or purpose of basic media flows. This makes them fragile spaces, especially in conflict. They blur the line between personal and public.
#Dotcons social media is already a news platform. Like it or not, #Facebook become a place where people get most of their information, discuss local events, and form opinions. Pretending it isn’t is naive, but using it without thinking is dangerous.
There’s a memory hole problem. Local journalism, when left to #dotcons social media or more #traditionalmedia, is temporary, shallow, and hard to archive. And when community moderators remove posts under pressure, that history is lost. The next generation then repeats the same debates.

In hindsight, It is important to do basic, grassroots journalism rooted in the #4opens with transparency, open data, open process, open standards. But as you can see from the #failbook thread – without shared understanding of what journalism is and why it matters, such interventions can and do feel more like intrusion than contribution.

The challenge ahead is to build new forms of sustainable open, ethical journalism, ones that hold truth and care in tension, not in opposition. And that means creating bridges between community media and professional media, activists and residents, openness and protection. We can’t just say, “don’t post.” We have to build better ways of witnessing together.

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

This is a mess which has been clear to see for 20 years, but people still keep falling into the same traps instead of stepping off the cycle of conflict leading to control. Yes, we had something, we lost it, but as I talk about, we are still refusing to face why.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We made this mess, it’s pastime to clean it up

For the last 20 years, our own crew have played a big part in shaping the digital world we see today. The outcome is what began as a space of radical possibility has been enclosed, exploited, and transformed into a corporate-controlled dystopia of #dotcons. We now lived inside this algorithmic trap, and in many ways, we still do, fighting, trolling, and feeding the very system that keeps us addicted.

Most of us are still trapped inside the algorithm, these platforms we use don’t exist to foster community or critical thought; they thrive on division. They keep us locked into emotional reaction loops, rewarding outrage, amplifying conflict, and turning us into performance artists in an endless identity war.

Take as an example #Failbook and the rise of victim culture. This isn’t an accident, it’s by design. The algorithm doesn’t care about truth or justice; it cares about engagement, and what gets the most clicks? Anger, Fear, Outrage. The result is a world where people react instead of act, trapped in cycles of performative identity rather than building any of the needed real alternatives.

What we don’t need is more “ethical” #dotcons. Repackaging the same centralized control under a new brand of “ethical” capitalism, is not the solution. We don’t need another walled garden with a friendlier #PR campaign. We need an independent, federated media ecosystem, one that #KISS values community, autonomy, and the public good over profit.

This is why the #OMN (Open Media Network) path exists. It’s not just another platform designed to extract data and profit, it’s a network of trust-based spaces, where people interact as humans, not as data points. The #Fediverse and #ActivityPub offer the foundation for this, but we need to push much harder. Right now, these alternatives still carry too much of the #mainstreaming liberal baggage that makes them fragile to inrushing capitalist capture.

We need to build spaces that resist corporate logic from the roots, not just replicate centralized control under new branding. To avoid repeating todays mess making, we need to remember how the capitalists capture of the #openweb in the first place. To understand how we got here, we have to look at capitalism through the lens of the #dotcons. The enclosure of the #openweb was not inevitable, it was a deliberate shift from public good to private profit.

Capitalism broke the web, with commercialization & enclosure, the originally was built as an open, decentralized space for information sharing. Capitalism transformed it into a marketplace, where value is extracted rather than created. Now we have the #mainstreaming exploitation of users, platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon don’t sell products, they sell you. Your data, your attention, your behaviour, all harvested, manipulated, and monetized.

This leads directly to the current monopolization & centralization, the most ruthless companies buy out competitors, stifle innovation, and consolidate power. What started as an open system is now controlled by a handful of corporations. Surveillance capitalism, the term, popularized by Shoshana Zuboff, describes the commodification of personal data for profit. What was once a tool for communication is now a weapon of manipulation.

With this move, we have erased the public sphere. Corporate algorithms don’t care about truth, knowledge, or democracy. They prioritize profit-driven content, promoting misinformation, sensationalism, and division while destroying any sense of a shared public space. This leaves us in a world of short-term gains for the nasty few over long-term vision for the meany, this stagnates progress and accelerates environmental and social collapse we now face.

We made this mess, now let’s fix it, the logic of the #dotcons is the problem. We can’t keep being prats about this. We’ve spent 20 years making this mess, now it’s past time to clean it up. Decentralization alone isn’t enough. We need alternative media spaces that reject control from the start. That’s what the #OMN is about. If we’re serious about breaking free, we need to use the #4opens as a shovel to compost the #techshit we’ve currently drowning in.

Time to stop only talking, let’s build. We don’t need another debate. We don’t need another corporate-controlled “alternative.” What we do need is to step outside the algorithm and start building trust-based networks that work for people, not profit. We do need to reclaim the #openweb before it’s too late. So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get to work.

#4opens #nothingnew #deathcult #geekproblem #OMN #openweb

The stress of living in the remains of the commons, boaters in the UK

The boater community is in rapid transition, with the pressures from gentrification, corporate control (#CRT), and online group dynamics (#failbook) colliding with a long-established scruffy, self-sufficient, and often chaotic #liveaboard culture.

This can be seen in the #failbook London Boaters group which has shifted away from its activist roots into more of a “management” role, shaped by #NGO-style moderation and back-channel conversations with #CRT. The shift from grassroots resistance to passive mediation is a familiar story in many alternative and radical spaces, where energy gets siphoned away into “keeping the peace” rather than fighting for actual autonomy in what remains of our “commons”.

The cultural split is deepening: The divide between “scruffy” boaters and the more middle-class/posh newcomers is not just aesthetic; it’s a direct outcome of policy and economic pressures. And fear is creeping in, often a precursor to authoritarian responses.
The activist potential of #failbook is limited, big #dotcons groups rarely function as true organizing spaces, as they tend to get co-opted by NGO logic, mainstream narratives, and self-censorship.
The pressure cooker effect, with rising costs, more restrictions, and no real outlet for collective resistance, conflict is building. The lack of a strong, active counterforce means the CRT agenda is rolling forward fundamentally unchallenged.
Admin struggles, the LB admin team is focus on firefighting rather than any real direction. Without a broader base of radical, committed people in admin, the group moves to becoming a tool of pacifying #mainstreaming.

What’s Next? The current trajectory points to London’s waterways becoming sterile, managed, semi-privatized space, just like what’s happened in European cities. Unless a new, grassroots, real-world organizing effort is built outside #failbook, the “scruffy” boater culture may not survive in London.

Brainstorming London boater gentrification

Nationally we have the #NBTA which is an old school activist organising group, can we add up-to-date infrastructure and working practices. Would it be possible to restart a parallel #openweb platform (maybe something lightweight like a #fediverse instance) where people committed to actual resistance can organize without interference from NGO-style moderation? The boating community needs a space for counter-narratives and real discussion, rather than just a loop of buy/sell drama and soft social control.

What do you think, what’s the best way to push back while there’s still time?

For more on this LINK

Bridging the gap: Building a human-first #openweb

Many years ago, I wrote on my website sidebar: “A river that needs crossing—political and tech blogs: On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance; on the geek side, there is naivety and over-complexity.” Decades later, we still to often find ourselves standing on opposite shores of this river, struggling to bridge the understanding gap between human-centric communities and the techno-centric mindset of the “geek class.” This divide is a core challenge for anyone invested in building a better, decentralised #openweb.

This battle isn’t just about technology—it’s a deeper, unspoken struggle between openness and control. It’s about whether our social networks and communities will empower human trust and collaboration, or continue to be shaped by closed systems that reduce people to passive users.

To touch on this, it’s worth looking at a tale of two projects: Diaspora vs Mastodon

The history of the #openweb provides stark lessons. Consider #Diaspora and #Mastodon, two decentralised platforms with very different outcomes.

Diaspora had significant funding, public attention, and a large team of coders. Yet, it failed completely. Why? It was built with a #FOSS closed mindset—trying to replicate the control features of corporate platforms but within a decentralised framework.
Mastodon, by contrast, had no funding, minimal publicity, and just one dedicated coder. It succeeded because it embraced openness—allowing communities to organically grow and evolve based on shared principles rather than top-down control.

The lesson is clear: projects rooted in openness thrive, while those built on closed fail.

The #OMN path is human trust networks over algorithms. One of the core goals is to learn from these past successes and failures. From these focuses on growing federated human communities by prioritising openness, trust, and collaboration over technical “perfection.”

A counterintuitive path – Why Spam and “Bad Content” Matter. It might sound counterintuitive, but spam and irrelevant posts are a necessary part of building communities. Without the challenge of sorting and filtering content, there’s no reason for humans to reach out, form trust networks, and collaborate on moderation. Geeks often see spam as a technical problem to be solved with algorithms, but this approach misses where the value is.

Algorithms centralise power, when we rely on black-box technology to handle content moderation, control shifts to the people who design and manage these “boxes”. This creates invisible hierarchies, as seen with #Failbook and other #dotcons platforms. By relying on human moderation and trust-building, communities become stronger and more self-sustaining. People are motivated to engage, connect, and contribute to a path they help shape.

Spam and low-quality content must flow into the network as part of the process, but the network itself should flush this out to organically push valuable content to the top through human effort. Of course there is a balance here, this decentralised approach keeps power in the hands of the community balanced with the coders. With this flow of data and metadata established, we put some federated structure in place.

Scale through federation creates organic grow.

Base Sites: These are narrow, local, or subject-focused publishing sites where content creation happens. They are small and community-driven, and their true value lies in their specificity and grassroots community engagement.
Middle Sites: This aggregate content from the base sites, adding value by curating, tagging, and filtering. They act as the core of the network, sifting through content to ensure quality and relevance.
Top Sites: These are broad outreach platforms designed for #mainstreaming content. They are easy to set up and administer but add little original value. Instead, they highlight and amplify the best content from the base and middle layers. These sites are the change and challenge.

This structure reverses the traditional value pyramid, where top-down platforms dominate. In the #OMN model, the true value resides at the grassroots base, while the top merely reflects the collective effort below.

Moderation as a feature, not a problem, for the network to thrive, it must scale through human connections and trust, moderation is the fuel for building the trust networks.

Trusted Links: Content flows through trusted networks, where moderators ensure quality.
Moderation Levels: New contributors are moderated until trust is established. Over time, as trust builds, moderation becomes less/unnecessary.
Failure Modes: Without trust-building, sites will either become overwhelmed by irrelevant content or collapse under the weight of unmanageable workloads.

The only way to maintain a useful site is to build, either a large, healthy community with diverse moderators and administrators, or a small, focused group based on high-quality, trusted connections. Both outcomes are desirable and reinforce the decentralised ethos of the #OMN.

Why automation fails, the temptation to automate everything is a hallmark of the #geekproblem. While algorithms might make a network “technically” better, they erode the human element, which is the entire point of decentralisation. Automation creates middling-quality networks with mediocre outcomes, leading to Signal-to-Noise problems, reduced motivation, if everything is automated, why bother forming trust networks and engaging deeply?

Less is more should be a guiding principle. By focusing on simplicity and human collaboration, the #OMN avoids the pitfalls of over-engineering and maintains the integrity of its community-driven mission to build a better future. The #OMN isn’t just about technology; it’s about creating spaces where people can connect, collaborate, and build trust. It’s about empowering communities to take ownership of their networks and their narratives.

This road won’t be easy. We’ll need to fight against the inertia of the #dotcons and resist the urge to repeat the mistakes of the last decade’s failed alt-tech projects. But by embracing the #4opens principles, we can create a web that serves people, not corporations. The tools are already here. The open internet still exists, for now. The choice is clear, build for humans, not for algorithms. Trust people, not black boxes. Decentralise, federate, and grow organically. The #OMN provides a roadmap—now it’s time to follow it.

Mastodon, Meta and Threads

For people who focus on working with the #dotcons there are meany traps, and a lot of dead-ends. This is less of an issue for people fighting them, the problem here is “common sense” #blocking this second path which is a much less lucrative and a thank less task. So we will continue to have more people on the first path. A post that grew from a toot seed, I wonder if Mastodon is to Meta what Firefox once was to Google a small but significant project that big corporations can point to whenever regulators start murmuring about monopolies.

In the early #openweb days, #Firefox was seen as the open-source challenger to the #dotcons of Internet Explorer and later Google Chrome. The NGO #PR represented it as a scrappy, independent alternative, championing the openweb against the increasing dominance of corporate-controlled browsers. But over time, and a lot of funding, Firefox became a tool for companies like Google to gesture toward whenever their monopolistic practices were questioned., “Look, there’s competition! We’re not the only game in town.” The blotted NGO that Firefox became, let the dotcons who funded them, maintain the appearance of a healthy, diverse internet while consolidating power and control.

Today, Mastodon, the corporation, and new NGO projects like the #SWF are likely, unthinkingly, to end up playing a similar role for Meta (#Failbook). With #Meta’s monopoly and influence across social media, platforms like Mastodon offer a symbolic counterpoint. The wider #Fediverse, decentralized, federated model, the alternative “nativist” path, that rejects the data-harvesting, surveillance capitalism model perfected by Meta and the rest of the #dotcons. But in a world where Meta dominates user attention, advertising dollars, and social engagement, the existence of Fediverse when we push #NGO agenda, as people will, like most people did with Firefox could feel more like a token gesture toward competition than a real threat that it needs to be.

The danger on the NGO paths is that Mastodon, and the Fediverse becomes a shield for Meta, just as Firefox was for Google. With the regulators knocking, Meta points to Mastodon and say, “See? There’s healthy competition in the market.” Meanwhile, our grassroots #DIY path will continue to struggle with the challenges that come from operating, outside the #mainstreaming, on the margins, limited resources, scalability, and the constant threat of being drowned out by the sheer weight of the dotcons inflow into our grassroots #openweb reboot.

The truth is, while #4opens decentralized paths like Fediverse are vital to the change and challenge we need, not to mention keeping the spirit of the #openweb alive, they’re still pushing hard for space in a corporate-dominated internet. If we only take the #mainstreaming and NGO path, the existence of projects could be used by the dotcons to maintain their monopoly while paying lip service to “competition.”

The question, can we really afford to be only the ‘token alternative’ when the stakes are so high? Or do we need to find a way to build native projects that not only stands apart from the #dotcons, but also changes and challenges them on equal ground? It’s time to think beyond being the counterculture, and start focusing on how we grow and sustain real #4opens alternatives. If we don’t, if we cop out on #fluffy only paths, there is a danger that we’ll just keep serving as convenient props in mainstream monopoly charade.

Let’s try very hard not to be irrelevant in the fight for humanity and ecological sustainability in the era of #climatechaos and social brake down being pushed by the #mainstreaming mess making, we are composting.

The #openweb, a partnership, not a nasty walk over

On the subject of #NGO foundations for the #openweb what do they do with this money https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/262852431 this one is shutting down, and this one is in trouble https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200097189 This kinda funding could cover the costs of the #Fediverse hundreds of times over…. what do they do exactly?

The path out of this mess is in part social tech, we need to build this path

The current path of distraction’s and #stupidindividualism push the cycle of pointless noise that is feeding into our inability to focus on real change. People are busy, swept up in these distractions, and pointless pursuits to be the change and challenge they need to be. It’s a cycle of complacency with a bad outcome. Agitation, anger, and disturbance are powerful motivators, but we need to focus into something meaningful, to avoid drowning in the noise, we need to focus on what’s actually going on. But, in this mess, how do we push people to grow up and focus without falling into the trap of more #blocking or just offering more distractions or ‘better bling’?

The answer is simple and #KISS, by recreating collectives. We’ve seen first hand how hyper individualism (#stupidindividualism) isolates people, leaving them powerless against larger systemic issues. Rebuilding real, engaged, and active communities is key. Movements like #OMN, #OGB, #indymediaback, and #4opens are examples of initiatives that become the change and challenge we need. These projects draw from undercurrents of ideas that we know work, combining them with the best of #openweb tech to grow from small seeds into real change.

But it’s also essential to dig at the roots of the mess: #pomo (#postmodernism) and the #deathcult (#neoliberalism), ideologies that have shaped the mess we’re in, cynicism and cutting off collective alternatives. If we don’t address these root issues, they will keep returning, and we’ll remain stuck in the same cycles of decay.

The #geekproblem is real, it’s the problem of domination and control born out of geek culture shaped by “common sense” paths. Look at the decline of the #dotcons like #failbook and Google, where #fashionista optimism gave way to corporate greed. Then look at early days of #openweb projects like #couchsurfing and #indymedia, we had healthy, thriving native cultures that weren’t obsessed with control. The key is to recognize what went wrong and build on a path that doesn’t repeat those mistakes.

What the #dotcons think the future is, from meta

The challenge is that many within geek culture can’t see the value of projects like #OMN, as it exists outside their narrow, “common sense” world-views. We need to help people see beyond the obvious, look for non-mainstream alternatives, and recognize that the solutions aren’t in the corporate web but in the decentralized, open spaces, commons, we create ourselves.

Now is the time to reboot our own media and to be wary of #fashionista agendas that hijack and dilute the change we need. The way forward is messy, organic, and rooted in collective action. What we can do:

Agitate and Disturb: Use media, art, and culture to push people out of their comfort zones and make them question the status quo. The hashtag story is a tool to do this.
Build Collectives: Recreate spaces where people can work together meaningfully, paths that empower communities to balance the current #stupidindividualism. The OMN are projects for this.
Focus on the Roots: Don’t only address symptoms, dig deep into the core ideologies that keep returning and haunting us, like #pomo and the #deathcult. This website is a tool for this
Reboot Media: We need to take back control of our media, using open technology to create alternatives that aren’t based on capitalist greed but on #KISS shared values. There is a native project for this indymediaback
Stay Wary of Distractions: Resist the temptation of ‘better bling.’ The solution is not to make the distractions shinier, but to focus on what matters.

The path out of this mess is in part social tech, which we need to build. It’s time to grow up, pay attention, and start building the world we actually want to live in. A shovel is need to compost the current mess #OMN. But I don’t have the focus to do this, we need a crew.

The key part of this is WHO decides, this is a political and democratic issue, not a tech “problem” we need to build with this strongly in mind.

Hashtags for Social Change

The Potential of #Hashtags as Shared Social Paths

#Hashtags have good and useful potential to be used for social change. They create connections between people, amplify voices, and mobilize communities. When used effectively, in a native way, they transform individual expressions into collective movements. However, the current #dotcons culture presents a very real and disempowering challenge to this.

The Problem of #StupidIndividualism

Today we are shaped by #stupidindividualism, on this path hashtags become acts of individual expression rather than collective tools for change. This individualistic approach hides the potential for constructive use. Instead of fostering solidarity and shared purpose, hashtags become fragmented and lose any meaning and thus impact.

#Dotcons as temples of the #Deathcult

Tech silos like Facebook (#failbook) and generally the dominant digital corporations (#dotcons) exacerbate this problem. Their business models and design promote individualism over community, a culture obsessed with profit and control at the expense of human values, creates a landscape where meaningful social change is impossible to achieve.

The Need for Collective Action

For #hashtags to regain their social function as tools for change, there needs to be a shift in the balance from individualism to collectivism. This requires:

Shared Understanding: Developing a common understanding of the issues and the role hashtags can play in addressing them.
Community Building: Using hashtags to build and strengthen communities rather than only expressing individual opinions.
Strategic Use: Deploying hashtags strategically to mobilize action, raise awareness, and create pressure for change.
Platform Accountability: Holding digital platforms accountable with the #4opens

The Role of Movements like #XR

Movements like Extinction Rebellion (#XR), though well on the #fluffy side, can play a role in this transformation. By emphasizing collective action and the power of grassroots mobilization, they could seed hashtags to build a global community, a common cause.

In conclusion, Hashtags have potential to be used for grassroots social change, but this potential is blocked by our #mainstreaming of individualism, which is pushed by our continuing use of the #dotcons. To harness the power of hashtags, there needs to be a shift towards native #openweb tools and a more collective agenda, community building, and strategic use. Movements like #XR could be a part of this path, as could projects like #OMN #indymediaback and #OGB

Talking about #hashtags

The #hashtags embody a story and world-view

The #hashtags tell a storie

Why use the hashtags?

Reminder about the hashtag family

Thinking outreach of the hashtag story

Let’s talk about the hashtag story

What is a hashtag

You can support this path https://opencollective.com/open-media-network