The difference between struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.

Power in tech isn’t neutral, and our issue over the last 20 years is that we have allowed the #dotcons to hoarded and weaponised it. The answer to our failer isn’t to retreat or seek more “ethical” enclosures, it’s to reclaim our power through radical, commons-based networks like #indymediaback and the #OMN.

This argument is #nothingnew, we don’t need endless reinvention, we need continuity. The #openweb isn’t about mimicking #dotcons; it’s about breaking their privatisation model and returning power to collective hands. Hashtags, metadata, and federated networks help on this path, but the real strength is social, not just technical.

Examples of this: #Indymediaback isn’t just a project, it’s a continuation of a proven model that worked before the #dotcons stole the narrative. It was a social technological project embedded in radical movements, used real-world trust systems, and functioned outside of state/corporate control. Rebuilding it isn’t nostalgia; it’s a practical step toward rebalancing power.

We need ongoing arguments about power, opting out or running to “better” #dotcons just dodges the issue. Power is always there. The question is who holds it, and for what purpose? Right now, the #dotcons wield it for social control, profit, and policing. The #openweb flips that, if we build it as a “native” path.

The fight isn’t about making people “feel good” about tech choices, it’s about removing power from enclosures and putting it back into the commons. That’s the difference between real struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.

Paranoia is one of the biggest blockers in alt-tech and radical spaces. It breeds mistrust, isolation, and internal sabotage, making collective action impossible. While some caution is necessary, too much just feeds into stasis and control, mirroring the systems activists are trying to break away from.

The #4opens is a direct antidote to this. Transparency counters paranoia, when decisions, processes, and networks are open, there’s less space for suspicion to fester. Trust isn’t built by secrecy but by consistent, open, and accountable action.

The irony is that a lot of these paranoid actors think they’re resisting control, but by shutting everything down, they’re just self-sabotaging. The solution isn’t more walls—it’s more flows. The #4opens provides the framework to move past the paranoia blockade and rebuild trust in practice, not just theory.

The victimhood narrative is often a trap, weaponised by the right and co-opted by the #fashernista left to shut down alternatives. It can be used as a tool of control, not liberation. Composting the mess, in part, by refuse to play their game, victimhood, is in part real and in part is used to create moral authority without real action. If we engage on those terms, we just get dragged into performative battles.

Expose the power dynamics, by asking who benefits from this? In the negative sense, it’s often gatekeepers who want to control the narrative. NGOs do it for funding, #dotcons for engagement, and #mainstreaming activists for status. A path out of this is reclaiming direct action, which sadly meany in the left abandoned, and the right picked up. We need to take it back, not through reactionary purity politics, but by actually doing the work outside their controlled spaces. A healing path is shifting from identity to process, the current model is all about who is speaking, not what is being built. That’s a dead end. We need #4opens process-driven organising, not personality cults or gatekept “safe spaces.” Make failure visible, one of the biggest weapons against alt movements is pointing out their failures, while #mainstreaming projects hide their rot. If we embrace messy openness, we take that power away.

Breaking the cycle:

The right weaponises grievance → to mobilise.
The liberal left weaponises grievance → to control and suppress real challenge.
The alt-left needs to weaponise transparency → to break gatekeeping and rebuild trust.

So the question is: how do we make “openness” an effective tool in this? The #4opens is a step.

Public Social Media: The Choice is Clear

As the #fashernista and #geekproblem “debate” over social media platforms intensifies, the choice between public, decentralised networks and corporate-controlled #dotcons has never been clearer. Let’s look at a simple example:

Mastodon is owned by no one and everyone (community-driven). Its structure is public non-profit. Number of distributed nodes are in the thousands (fully decentralised). Post length: 500 characters and more. Can edit? Yes. Mastodon represents the native #openweb. It’s built on decentralised principles, where people and communities own and control their spaces. There’s no central authority dictating rules or exploiting for profit.
Bluesky is owned by Venture Capitalists, Its structure is corporate for-profit. Number of “distributed” nodes: One (centralised in practice) Post length: 300 characters Can edit? No. Bluesky, despite its claims of decentralisation, is owned and operated as a for-profit venture. Its structure centralises power and prioritises profit over people’s control, offering a polished but limited alternative to #mainstreaming paths.

The choice between #Mastodon and #Bluesky reflects a broader conflict between decentralisation and #dotcons corporate control. It should, but often is not easy to see that networks like the #Fediverse are native to the #openweb where Bluesky is an interloper, though they are both #4opens. Projects like the #OMN, #4opens, and the #Fediverse itself, offering freedom, community ownership, and transparency. Bluesky, on the other hand, represents the same closed, profit-driven ethos of the #dotcons, repackaged in a new “shiny” wrapper.

When you choose a network, you’re not just choosing where to post, you’re choosing what kind of internet you want to build. The open, public internet is still within reach. The choice should be clear.

Seed from a toot and image from @FediTips

The pushing of doomed projects

We need real and sharp critique’s of the current mess pushing of #mainstreaming in the #openweb and #NGO tech-for-good spaces. The challenge is of cutting down obviously pointless projects from 99% to 90% which is a both realistic and necessary. How can we achieve this needed shift, focusing on impactful subjects, better implementation, and strategic approaches in programming development.

The developing of alternatives to corporate platforms is a first step we have taken in the #Fediverse, with most of the current #mainstreaming projects simply replicate corporate models while branding themselves as “ethical” or “decentralised.” The next step is to create genuine alternatives, by focusing on “native”tools for community governance, people-first design. Then it’s key to mediate the many #NGO tech projects that keep reinventing the wheel instead of tools for the change and challenge we actually need and use.

We need to rethink funding paths for #openweb projects, as the current funding ecosystem drives pointless or doomed #geekproblem and #fashernista projects. Many of these are designed to chase grant money, not solve problems. To mediate this, we need to push for more cooperative grassroots funding pools.

A persistent issue is the disconnect between what developers think people need and what people actually need. Shifting away from the current paths can be done by testing ideas in real-world environments before scaling them, ensuring they’re practical and usable. Stop chasing the startup-style obsession with scaling at all costs. Building federated systems designed to thrive in small, resilient communities. Encourage slow, thoughtful growth that prioritises depth of engagement over breadth of reach. Simplifying over-engineered solutions and avoiding adding complexity for its own sake; the simpler the tool, the more likely it is to succeed.

How do we achieve the 9% Difference? Getting from 99% pointless projects to 90% will require, stronger public scrutiny to slow the pushing of doomed tech projects. This needs to focus on realistic, grounded ideas, on doing, not talking by encourage people to start small and prove themselves through action, not the normal empty big vapid #NGO promises.

By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that currently wastes time, focus and resources. It’s not about erasing failure altogether, that’s impossible. It’s about creating a culture where thoughtful, practical grassroots work has the space to thrive and grow #KISS

The wall of funding silence

#OMN demonstrates the values that dead ideologies refuse to acknowledge

The #fashernista common sense path, driven by trends, appearances, and surface-level thinking, is always a reflection of the dominant ideology. In today’s world, this means it perpetuates the neo-liberal #deathcult, which pushes profit over people and the environment. This ideology a motivation of #stupidindividualism, where the focus is on personal gain, consumerism, and competition rather than solidarity, cooperation, and collective well-being.

This same mentality is mirrored in the #geekproblem, where technologists to often design and promote tools and systems that replicate and reinforce neo-liberal values, rather than challenge them. By framing technology as “neutral” or purely functional, they ignore the broader social impact of their work, allowing it to serve as an uncritical extension of the #deathcult’s values. This is why so much of modern technology amplifies isolation, surveillance, and exploitation instead of fostering connection, community, and empowerment.

Challenging these people and their ideas is crucial if we want to break free from the current cycles of destruction. However, ignoring them and focusing our energy elsewhere may be the more practical and effective path. Engaging with them to often leads to frustration and burnout as their ideological framework is deeply ingrained, and their reflexive defensiveness derails productive efforts.

As with composting, when there’s too much “shit” to shoval, the resulting stink can make the change we need feel unpleasant and off-putting. The sheer negativity and hostility of challenging entrenched ideologies creates a barrier to engagement for those who might otherwise join or support transformative movements. If the alternative to the #deathcult seems unappealing or toxic, it risks alienating the very people and communertys we need to build a better path away from the current mess.

Instead of wasting time trying to convince the entrenched or defending against their reactionary attacks, we could focus on building practical, grounded alternatives? By creating spaces, tools, and communities that embody the “native” #openweb values, we can offer a tangible, appealing contrast to the hollow shadow of the #deathcult worshipping. The goal is to show—not just tell—that another world is possible, and that it is not only necessary but desirable.

By doing this, the stink of the current dead ideology will become irrelevant. When people experience the benefits of living and working in paths that lead to commons, mutual aid, and flourishing, the death spiral of #stupidindividualism and the #geekproblem will lose its appeal. In the end, it’s not about fighting their ideas directly, it’s about making those ideas obsolete by building something far better.

To dive deeper into this , we need to look at the underlying mechanisms of how the #fashernista mindset, the neo-liberal #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the #geekproblem perpetuate themselves—and, more importantly, look at how this interlocking mess hinder progress while pretending to advance it.

The #Fashernista mindset is a reflection of dominance, as it operates as a mirror to dominant ideologies. By nature, it does not challenge power structures but absorbs and reflects their values, often in a more palatable or “trendy” form.

Aesthetic over substance, the prioritisation of appearances—what looks progressive, innovative, or ethical—over what actually is. For example, this neo-liberal “common sense” can be dressed up in “sustainable” or “inclusive” branding, while the underlying paths remain exploitative.
Tokenistic activism leads to shallow forms of activism, where symbolic gestures (#dotcons posting, slogans, memes and corporate-sponsored campaigns) replace meaningful systemic action. It gives the illusion of progress while leaving the core issues untouched.
Gatekeeping change is more about chasing trends rather than structural transformation, the #fashernista mindset creates a kind of cultural gatekeeping. True progress, which often appears “messy” and challenges comfort zones, is sidelined in favour of ideas that are easier to sell to the mainstream.

A Devotion to self-destruction, at the core of the neo-liberal mess, is the worship of market forces as the ultimate solution to all human problems. This drives society toward environmental collapse, social disintegration, and increasing inequality, all while proclaiming itself as the only rational way to organise the world.

Market “common sense” holds that markets are inherently efficient, fair, and inevitable, even as they consistently fail to address systemic crises like climate change, economic inequality, and resource depletion.
Individualism as control, framing individuals as isolated, rational actors responsible for their own success or failure, the #deathcult deflects attention from structural oppression. This isolates people, making collective action more difficult and reinforcing the system’s power.
Growth at all costs is an obsession with endless economic growth, even on a finite planet. This suicidal drive underpins its “deathcult” nature: it sacrifices long-term survival for short-term profits.

#StupidIndividualism is isolation masquerading as freedom

Alienation is growing with the idea that people should rely solely on themselves, #stupidindividualism leaves people disconnected from community support systems. This alienation feeds despair and reinforces compliance with the status quo.
Consumerism is identity, with people being encouraged to define themselves by what they consume rather than what they contribute to society. This distracts from collective struggles and entrenches a culture of passivity.
Weaponised identity politics, while this postmodern movment started as a way to empower marginalised groups, in the hands of #stupidindividualism, it becomes a tool of division. Individuals focus on personal grievances rather than uniting across identities to address systemic oppression.

The #geekproblem is often technology without politics, which emerges from a belief that technology is inherently neutral and that its development can exist separately from politics, ethics, or social power structures. This naivety—or wilful blindness—results in tools that perpetuate the very problems they claim to solve.

Apolitical engineering, where technologists focus on building “innovative” tools without considering their social impacts. For instance, surveillance technologies are marketed as safety solutions while eroding privacy and empowering authoritarianism.
Centralisation in disguise when #FOSS, open-source and decentralised projects replicate centralised power dynamics as their creators fail to address underlying social issues. A decentralised system run by a different few is still elitist.
Failure to address root causes as the #geekproblem thrives on quick fixes and clever hacks rather than systemic paths leading to solutions. It too often assumes that technology alone can solve problems like poverty or climate change, ignoring the need for social, political and economic transformation.

We do need balence, why ignoring these messy forces may be the smarter path as confronting the #fashernista mindset, neo-liberal #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the #geekproblem head-on often feels like trying to swim against a tidal wave. These ideologies are deeply ingrained, and challenging them directly can result in burnout, frustration, and thus further entrenchment of the status quo.

The “shit-to-compost ratio” is a thing when engaging with these entrenched paths we end up uncovering a lot of “shit”—toxic debates, defensive reactions, and wasted energy. If this overwhelms the capacity to turn these challenges into productive change, the effort can become self-defeating. Sometimes instead of fighting these paths on their terms, it may be more effective to focus on building alternatives like the #OMN. By creating functioning, appealing models of community, solidarity, and sustainability, we can then push to make the current systems obsolete, this is “our” path not theres

Building alternatives is a #KISS path to counter the destructive ideologies and to demonstrate the viability of better paths. This means focusing on practical, community-driven tools and solutions that embody the values we want to see in the world.

An important question is why people can’t see this? The inability to recognise these dynamics stems from decades of cultural conditioning and structural manipulation.

Simple propaganda, The priest’s of neo-liberalism has spent decades shaping public perception, presenting it as the only viable path. Its dominance is so pervasive that many cannot imagine alternatives.
Cultural individualism, when people are taught to see themselves as isolated individuals rather than interconnected members of a society. This blinds them to the power of collective action.
Distractions built into consumer culture, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle keep people distracted and disengaged from any real systemic issues and paths.
Fear of change with the unknown being scary, and the idea of steping away from entrenched paths can feel overwhelming or even impossible.

To shine light we need to compost the stink of the dominant ideologies — reflected in the everyday #fashernista mindset, neo-liberal #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the #geekproblem. But yes this needs to be balenced as directly fighting these entrenched paths can often feel futile and counterproductive. Instead, we need to also focus on building the alternatives we want to see, like the #OMN, cooperative, community-driven, and grounded in solidarity.

By creating working paths of a diffrent future, we make the failures of the current path self-evident and offer a clear, appealing alternative path. The change won’t come from confrontation alone—it will come from living and demonstrating the values that these dead ideolgys refuse to acknowledge.

The wider #OMN project from a more #mainstreaming prospective

Sifting the wheat from the chaff in our technological and social mess is an important challenge. This is why the #OMN approach of leveraging work across communities and utilising multi-tag aggregation is an elegant and powerful solution. It would be useful to look at this from a more #mainstreaming prospective.

Aggregated work across communities of subjects, the first step in the #OMN path involves gathering and organising work created by various communities around specific subjects or interests. Subject-centric hubs, decentralised indexing, curating content based on subjects (e.g., #ClimateChange, #TechEthics). These hubs wouldn’t rely on centralised algorithms, but instead draw from a network of community-curated sources. Community moderation by trusted communities who moderate and curate content within their subject interested. This ensures quality and reduces noise while resisting gatekeeping tendencies of centralised control.
Reputation by contribution by encourage subject-focused communities to reward contributions, promoting collaboration and surfacing valuable work naturally.

Dynamic and live updates, newsfeeds, can be feed by aggregating real-time updates from communities working on the same subjects using open protocols like ActivityPub. This would provide a live pulse of discussions, innovations, and trends across diverse groups and subjects.

Multi-tag aggregation, the next step is to create a system that enables the mash-up of multiple tags to filter and organise the aggregated content dynamically. Advanced multi-tagging allow people to filter aggregated work using combinations of tags, e.g., #ClimateChange + #IndigenousRights + #CommunityProjects.

Visualisation of tag relationships, tag webs, implement visual tools that map relationships between tags, communities, and subjects. People can explore how different concepts connect and navigate the network intuitively. Trend overview, within tag intersections to help people identify emerging areas of focus and overlooked intersections.

Tools for aggregation and mashing, to make this work practically, we need powerful, accessible tools that build on the #OMN ethos. Open aggregators, open-source aggregators that collect data, metadata, and content flows from diverse platforms and formats, such as blogs, Fediverse instances, wikis, and video platforms that can be made compatible with the #openweb, we simply ignore the #dotcons which are to #closedweb to be worth plugging in to these flows, they will wither in the self-sustaining destruction of their own #techshit, sadly taking a part of our communities with them, we do not have the focus to rescue everyone as we push this shift.

Community buy-In and participation, To build the #OMN path in an effective and relevant direction, it must gain support and participation from the communities that create it. This needs: Simple, intuitive interfaces for tagging, curating, and contributing to subject hubs. Guides and incentives to help non-technical people engage with the paths. Decentralised decision-making, with democratic governance paths like the #OGB. Education and outreach, with educational campaigns to teach people how to use multi-tag aggregation and curated subject hubs that work.

Guarding against pitfalls, while the #OMN approach is promising, it’s essential to mitigate potential risks. We need to keep vigilance on balancing noise and redundancy. Centralisation risks, by keeping to decentralised and open paths to avoid reliance on any single platform, database, or organisation. Bias in curation is kept in check by the networks being inherently leaky, people will see other points of view – we do not subscribe to the #blocking inherent in #fashernista safety culture.

What would this look like, the end goal: Collaborative Knowledge Commons. The aim of the #OMN path is to create a living, breathing commons of human knowledge and action. By aggregating community work and enabling meaningful mash-ups through multi-tag aggregation, we create a powerful tool to cut through the noise, enabling better collaboration between communities, richer understanding of complex, intersectional issues, stronger foundations for the native #openweb.

A call to action, clear diagnosis

What a waste of public money, this #fashernista career-building projects.

When you think using social media is “natural,” remember you’re feeding #dotcons—platforms built on the worst parts of human nature. If you want civilization and society to have a future, you cannot keep supporting this. The #encryptionists sit at the heart of our current grassroots media tech disaster, while careerist #mainstreaming pisses from the other side. But shit makes good compost—and we have the shovels.

OMN is a path forward. Pessimism may travel faster than optimism, but only optimism holds the potential for real change. Feed the problem or solve the problem. There is no mythical “third way” out of this mess. What we have are shovels, #OMN, and shit for compost. Work hard enough, and you’ll get flowers and tasty vegetables. 🌸🥕

It’s well past time for composting. Let’s grow flowers. 🌱

Meany of our old friends in activism took the healthy internal stresses that once challenged projects like #indymedia and fed them to a #fashernista vampire class, building careers by draining the grassroots for 20 years. This is not a good look, and these are likely the people you have to talk through when you talk to “power.”

First step, clearly #stepaway from the #dotcons and return to the #openweb for our communication and news. #indymediaback and #OMN are solutions worth posting about, worth sharing, and worth doing. The #openweb lacks addiction algorithms. It will only thrive if you make it work. Gather like-minded people outside the #dotcons—it’s a solid first step.

We must stop pouring energy into pointless #techshit if we want a chance of surviving #climatechaos and escaping the grip of the #deathcult. Basic #KISS statement: What are you doing today that isn’t pointless?

On this, #indymediaback, #OMN, and the #4opens need more crew to make the rollout work. For decades, we’ve allowed the #dotcons to dominate our communication. Trump and Brexit aren’t the causes—they’re symptoms. We made this mess together, fuelled by unhealthy digital feedback loops.

Let’s compost this mess and seed real change. 🌱

The clear and urgent challenge, to step away from entrenched thinking

There are deep cultural and structural problem in our social world, here I concentrate on the #openweb and tech spaces, which are shaped by entrenched hierarchical thinking (#feudalism) and the inability to embrace horizontal governance models. This #geekproblem represents a persistent resistance to the solutions necessary for the meaningful change we need, and defaults to patterns that reinforce the status quo (#deathcult worshipping).

Horizontal solutions have proven foundations, community-driven models like #OGB (Open Governance Body) reflects a grounded understanding of what works. The last five years of work in the decentralized #Fediverse shows that horizontal technology can scale without succumbing to the mess of centralized, hierarchical control.

#Nothingnew is about combining what works. The creative task now is to integrate these proven social and technical approaches into cohesive systems: #OMN (Open Media Network): A decentralized framework for building media networks based on trust, transparency, and shared governance. #OGB: A governance model for the open web, ensuring horizontal decision-making structures that resist co-option by hierarchical or neoliberal influences. #Indymediaback: Reviving radical, grassroots media projects that embody these principles, amplifying voices outside the mainstream.

To do any of these project we need to break the #blocking cycle, when discussions about radical or progressive changes are met with #blocking, the result is to often a stagnant cycle of unresolved issues that eroded goodwill. This stagnation is a direct threat to the social commons. To break this cycle, we can use, and, think inside the Fluff/Spiky debate to encourage broad, inclusive paths while not shying away from hard truths and unpopular calls for accountability. Reject #fashernista worship to push back against superficial trends that align with neoliberal and #mainstreaming values, which are ultimately harmful to the #openweb.

The language trap, #liberalism, and by extension #neoliberalism dominate conversations, we need a constant low level critical examination of this misalignment with the goals of the #openweb. Then calling this out is uncomfortable but necessary, to recognize and challenge how these frameworks perpetuate the #deathcult. The question remains, will others step up to help make this happen? Are they ready to take on this challenge?

Looking at some of the issues we need to fix

#NGO-driven approach to activism are a part of the challenges of #mainstreaming agendas in both tech and social movements. NGOs at best aim to “make the mess work a bit better” without addressing root causes of anything in an affective way. This band-aid path aligns them too much with the mainstreaming agenda rather than fostering a systemic change agenda. This need for maintaining “relevance” leads to shallow solutions rather than transformative action.

With activist projects, half entangled in this #NGO world, struggling to build shared objectives, collaboration becomes fragmented, and efforts fail to scale horizontally or vertically and sustain much impact. We have historical paths to mediate this, like the #PGA (Peoples’ Global Action) that aligning around clear hallmarks galvanizes collective action. With grassroots tech and user engagement, projects fail without people and communities. If people remain tethered to #dotcons, our work on grassroot projects die before they take off. Activists criticize dotcons but often fail to leave them, perpetuating the paths and systems they oppose, a symptom of the #deathcult worship.

Many radical/progressive tech initiatives focus on aesthetics (#fashernista) or isolated #geekproblem goals without contributing to broader movements like rebooting grassroots media, these efforts become distractions and dead ends, they waste time and focus. What is needed is to provide compelling alternatives to the dotcons that people can genuinely use and build upon to step away, so activism can play a bigger role. Leaving the #dotcons and embracing decentralized, ethical platforms is itself a form of activism, it’s a #KISS path that undermines the #deathcult and creates space for alternatives to thrive.

Composting pointless projects, we need to identify and “compost” projects that fail to contribute meaningfully to broader goals. This isn’t about cynicism, but about redirecting energy toward initiatives that matter. Use the energy of critique to inspire better efforts rather than dismiss entirely. Key question, how do we bridge the gap between critique and action to avoid losing people and momentum in the current mess, and not just create more mess? A first step is to challenge activists to step back, think critically, and act boldly, with a reminder that inaction—or misguided action—is a victory for the #deathcult.

Q. how do you envision the #4opens and #OMN evolving? What can you do to make this happen?

Grassroots Radical Media: A #4opens Path

To revive radical grassroots media, we need to return to the basics, and that means embracing #FOSS, #opensource, and the #4opens. These aren’t just technical choices; they’re political ones. The 4 opens: open data, open standards, open process, and open licenses act as both a key and a lock. A key to unlock collaborative, transparent networks and a lock to keep out the dilution and co-option that comes with #mainstreaming.

Activism vs. Mainstreaming. Activism seeks to challenge and change the system. Mainstreaming, often via NGO channels, seeks to manage and defuse resistance. One leads to transformation. The other leads to stable careers, conferences, and incremental tweaks. If we’re serious about building change, we must know the difference and act accordingly.

The #OMN Mission is to support that activist path. We don’t chase shiny toys. We focus on the 1% of tech and workflows that actually help people. That means filtering out distractions and rooting projects in shared ethics: the #PGA hallmarks, the #4opens, and a clear commitment to anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, grassroots-oriented collaboration. We don’t need more “disruptive innovation.” We need human-centred tools that support collective work, transparency, and trust.

Why the right is winning (And how we catch up). Let’s be honest: the right wing has outpaced the left on #openweb coordination. They’ve built propaganda farms, community hubs, and direct action tools, while we keep getting lost in over-academic jargon, fractured efforts, and endless reinvention.

We need to reboot and federate, not fragment. Let’s pick up where successful movements left off. Think: #Indymedia, updated for today, grounded in the #4opens, and governed with #KISS principles, to avoid the #deathcult, build for the Commons

Most mainstream tech is built on 40 years of #neoliberal assumptions: that people are selfish, fixed, and controlled. That’s the core ideology of the #deathcult, and most tech just reflects it back at us. Grassroots media must reject that. We build from a belief in people’s potential. That means tech designed for trust, collaboration, and autonomy.

Ask yourself:

"Does this serve the commons?"
"Does it align with the #4opens and the PGA hallmarks?"

That’s the filter we need to apply — especially as we face burnout, co-option, and the churn of #fashernista tech that solves nothing. We don’t need to start from scratch. We need to compost the mess, reuse what works, and rebuild the rest. That’s what the #OMN is: A shovel, A seedbed, A place to federate purposefully. Let’s stop spinning wheels and start building something that lasts.

Join the effort. Shape the future of radical media and open governance. Learn more at OMN on this path, the resurgence of grassroots radical media projects requires a return to foundational principles, particularly the embrace of #FOSS and #opensource practices. These principles align with the #4opens framework, which acts as both a lock and a key for building sustainable and accountable media networks.

The #deathcult: 40 Years of neoliberal poisoning the #openweb path

For forty years, we’ve been steeped in a dominant, and largely invisible ideology I call here the #deathcult, which is a metaphor for the relentless spread of #neoliberalism that has reshaped our social, economic, and technological systems in very destructive ways. Alongside this, the rise of #dotcons (corporate, centralized tech platforms) over the past twenty years has distorted the path of the internet and #openweb, steering it away from #4opens collaboration and into monopolized, extractive business models. We’re have been living the fallout now for the last ten years: a fractured digital landscape built on artificial scarcity and closed systems of control. This article explores the roots of this ideological mess and touches on the return to community-oriented solutions, rooted in collective ideals, through projects like the #fediverse and a renewed #openweb.

Neoliberalism, is the driver of our current crisis, is anti-social at its core, cutting shared resources and social spaces in favour of so-called “efficiency” and profit, leading to what I call in the hashtag stories the #deathcult – a mindset where profit pushes over life, social well-being, and environmental health. This ideological control permeates our sense of “common sense,” bending it to fit a world where exploitation is not just tolerated but expected. With our head down worship, we’ve been pushed to accept social and environmental sacrifices as the price of “progress”, instead of recognizing them as a sign of systemic failure.

The #dotcons and digital enclosure of our commons, has changes the path of the internet, which was originally built to be an open and decentralized platform. Yet, the past two decades of “#dotcom” culture transformed it into a centralized, corporate-controlled ecosystem that discourages innovation and subverts people’s and community autonomy. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon thrive by enclosing the commons, creating walled gardens where data and attention are commodities for sale and control. This shift, which we all played a role in, has stifled alternative voices and projects, pushing out grassroots initiatives in favour of profit-driven silos.

The dotcons path exploits not just users’ data but the very concept of community, turning every interaction into controlling people for private profit. At long last, we’re now seeing a response in the form of projects like the #fediverse and #activertypub, which decentralize and reclaim digital space from these corporate giants. However, without collective action and a shared vision, this new path remains under threat of co-option from these corporate interests, with #dotcons and #VC funded #threads and #bluesky both being pushed into this “commons” we have spent years opening.

On a parallel path of the last 20 years, we have been suffering from a #geekproblem: a cultural fixation within the tech community on solving social issues through purely technical means, in ways that exclude non-technical people. Encryption, for instance, is a valuable tool for privacy but isn’t a universal solution to all social or technological issues. The “more encryption” mindset neglects the importance of building trust and understanding in online communities, focusing instead on individual security in isolation.

For example, with projects like #nostr when encryption becomes the end-all solution, we’re left with technology that is impenetrable to regular people, creating more barriers than it removes. The challenge isn’t just technical, it’s social. We need to mediate the geek-centric approach with practical, accessible solutions that empower people, not only a few tech-savvy minorities.

A basic #KISS and #nothingnew path, can help to mediate these issues, they are concepts that encourage us to revisit old, tried-and-true solutions rather than reinventing the wheel in ways that add complexity. Complexity and “innovation for innovation’s sake” leads to, too much, #techshit, overly complicated tech that serves no one but its creators. The KISS path reminds us that simplicity growes inclusivity. If we want more people to engage with the #openweb, we need to create tools that prioritize accessibility and usability over complex features. The #nothingnew philosophy supports this by encouraging us to look to the past for inspiration, reviving old ideas that worked instead of constantly chasing the latest #fashernista trends.

Hashtags are a useful tool for #DIY community organization, but in this era of #stupidindividualism, hashtags get dismissed as tools for self-expression or “fashion statements” (#fashernista). Yet, hashtags can serve a deeper purpose in organizing and connecting people around shared ideas and goals. Instead of using hashtags to show off, we can use them to build flows of mutual support and collaboration. The DIY ethos is central to this: organizing from the bottom up, using digital tools to strengthen offline communities and collective action.

Embracing collective paths, one of the main issues that fractured early movements, like #indymedia, was the inability to work collectively. The culture of individualism championed by neoliberalism crept into activist spaces, weakening them from within. Reclaiming the openweb means reclaiming collective processes, where shared resources and collaborative decision-making are balanced with individual control. We need native digital spaces where communities work together, rather than being siloed into “users” isolated by individualistic platforms.

Moving forward is now about composting the #techshit, a path to compost the tech detritus of the past two decades, the techshit accumulated through#NGO funding of misguided projects and closed systems. Just as composting turns organic waste into fertile soil, we can take the lessons of past failures to create a thriving, resilient commons reboot. By fundamentally abandoning the pursuit of artificial scarcity and focusing on shared abundance, we foster this better, more humane path.

For this to work, we need to address the #geekproblem by placeing as much value on social solutions as we do on technical ones, to create tech that supports community needs rather than hindering them. This path values process over product, relationships over transactions, and social well-being over profit.

Ultimately, the choice is clear: continue worshipping at the altar of the #deathcult, or support the “native” path with the openweb. The former is the path we are on now, of escalating, isolation, environmental destruction, and social disintegration, while the latter offers a chance at connection, collaboration, and resilience. This path won’t be easy, but it’s worth the effort to avoid being subsumed by the dominant, #deathcult story we repeat to oftern to ourselves.

As we work to reboot old systems and build better ones, let’s ask ourselves: What are we helping to reboot today? By choosing collective action over individualism, KISS over complexity, and cooperation over control, we can step away from the current mess and plant the seeds for hope and survival.

Lift your head, dirty your hands we have a world to plant

Navigating the Postmodern Confusion and the Case for Common Sense

From a left-wing perspective, identity politics and class-based politics feel like competing ideologies. Identity politics focus on individual identities (race, gender, sexuality, etc.), while leftist movements emphasize collective struggle against class-based oppression under capitalism and neoliberalism. Both approaches aim to address inequality but through different paths. For the #geekproblem we can view them like competing tech standards (e.g., #Bluesky, #Nostr, #ActivityPub), in that they risk fragmenting movements unless there’s an effort to bridge them, balancing specific identity struggles with broader systemic change.

An example of this is #Postmodernism, which often leaves us questioning even the most basic aspects of life, and frankly, it can be exhausting. A recent example is the ongoing debate around biological sex. While it’s true that some people are born with disorders of sexual development, these cases are rare, just like being born colorblind or with physical disabilities. However, the overwhelming majority of the 80 billion humans that have ever lived were born from the combination of an XX and XY chromosome pairing.

The postmodern argument blurs these distinctions unnecessarily, but common sense tells us that reproduction still fundamentally relies on this biological reality. It’s not about denying people’s rights to live as they choose – people should love and live however they wish – but recognizing that certain basic truths shouldn’t be muddled by this long dead ideology. We need to move past the confusion and return to a clearer understanding of biology, while still fostering respect and dignity for all different people, regardless of how they choose to express themselves. Let’s focus on a healthier balance between respecting diversity and understanding the realities of the world we live in.

This is just one example, alongside #neoliberalisam in the economic path we have has 40 years of this mess shaping us, we need to step away from this #fashernista mess making. What would this look like?

Stepping away from the 40-year #fashernista mess shaped by consumer culture involves rejecting the shallow, surface-level trends and embracing deeper, systemic change rooted in sustainability and community. It means focusing on long-term, grassroots action instead of the trendy or performative activism that shapes us now. Practically, this would mean rebuilding independent, open media (#OMN), fostering, commons, collective ownership of resources, and rejecting the commodification of everything. It’s about creating social paths based on trust, openness, and shared values rather than profit-driven, corporate-controlled structures.

This path emphasizes:

Local Action: Rebuilding local communities around shared resources and sustainable practices, ensuring they operate autonomously from mainstream corporate structures.
Open Processes: Utilizing the #4opens as a framework to ensure transparency and collective engagement in both technology and activism.
Resistance to Co-optation: Staying vigilant against the dilution of radical movements by “common sense” #fashernista #NGO “market-friendly” paths which push for wider acceptance by abandoning core values, we need.
Education and Awareness: Promoting knowledge-sharing and political education to empower people to resist superficial solutions and embrace affective and meaningful changes.

Ultimately, it’s about rewiring social values to cooperation, resilience, and ecological balance over competition, consumption, and power accumulation, It’s rebalancing our sense of self both individual and social.

From a left-wing perspective, the critique of identity politics, in the example at the beginning of this post, is that it fragments social movements by focusing on individuals or inward looking group identities rather than uniting around shared economic and outward class struggles. The #fashernista path is driven by the current mess emphasizes personal identity over collective action, leading to the dilution of the solidarity needed to challenge systemic structures like neoliberalism (#deathcult). This #mainstreaming path leads to division within movements, creating competition for recognition rather than fostering collaboration and addressing structural inequalities

Let’s share the activism fire place, rather than fight over it, leaving only a cold smoky damp mess. #KISS

People are often vilify and spend too much focusing on attacking people in progressive projects:

Fear of change: Radical ideas threaten the status quo, leading to backlash.
Internal divisions: Disagreements within movements about strategy, purity, or priorities cause infighting.
Co-optation and sabotage: External forces, including media and political interests, intentionally discredit or sow discord in progressive groups.
Fragile egos and clashing ideals: Differing views on identity, politics, and tactics spark personal conflicts, leading to attacks.

These reflect broader social divisions and insecurities. Both of these paths are kinda progressive, but one is based on fear and the need for control, and the other on openness and building of trust paths.

#KISS

The tension, grassroots movements and #NGO paths

The is a tension between grassroots movements and #NGO paths on the #Fediverse and wider #openweb projects. From a #fluffy point of view the NGO path, while often well-intentioned, can lead to forms of imperialism where outside forces-through funding, structure, and top-down approaches—unwittingly impose their agendas on communities. These actors often don’t realize they are replicating imperialist dynamics, but the impact can be profound: displacement of native grassroots efforts, co-option of local autonomy, and prioritization of centralized goals over the organic, bottom-up “native” development of projects.

Recognizing NGO Imperialism in the Fediverse:

Unconscious Imperialism: Many in the NGO sector fail to recognize the harm their actions cause because they see their work as inherently “good” or “neutral.” However, when they impose structures or funding models without deep collaboration with the grassroots, it replicates patterns of control and hierarchy. Imperialism here refers to a powerful entity, organization extending its control over others, often under the guise of ‘helping’ or ‘developing’ them. On our current Fediverse path, this manifest as NGOs exerting influence on decision-making, resource distribution and governance, overriding local or native voices in the fediverse.
Disconnection from native spaces: One telltale sign of this mess is the lack of linking to #socialhub or other grassroots-driven projects. If a NGO or organization is bypassing the platforms where the community itself is actively discussing and governing its own spaces, it signals a disconnect from native grassroots paths. #DIY spaces like #socialhub embody open, collaborative, and bottom-up approach to governance. Linking to these spaces signals an intention to engage with the community’s self-determination rather than imposing external structures.
When NGO-led initiatives fail to collaborate with the grassroots, the likely outcome is #techshit—technology that doesn’t serve the needs of the community, ends up being unsustainable, and ultimately becomes #techshit to compost for future efforts. The liberal history of imperialism, especially in the last few hundred years, is full of such failed interventions. This is part of the ongoing cycle in the openweb, where obviously crap and disconnected technological solutions (often driven by #fashernista agendas) fail and must then be broken down and repurposed by those still engaged in the space, composting techshit take time and focus which is the one thing in short supply.

Balancing NGO paths with grassroots movements that create value:

Creating Bridges is a good path, instead of rejecting the NGO path outright, there needs to be a focus on bridging the gap. NGOs can play a role, but need to be willing to diversify power to the community and respect the self-organizing nature of grassroots movements. This requires transparency, active listening, and a commitment to open process, the #4opens.

LINKING: Encouraging NGO Accountability a crucial step to make NGOs understand the historical context of their actions. By encouraging more self-reflection and linking their work back to grassroots spaces, NGOs can avoid falling into patterns of imperialism and instead work at balancing better openweb’s paths which is actually, often, there core stated mission.

Building Native Governance, native governance is currently a black hole in #DIY spaces, this is a problem we need to work on with projects like the #OGB. This is a space where the #NGO path with its access to funding could be a very real help to fill this hole.

For Grassroots, we need those involved in the Fediverse (at best with the support of the privileged #NGO crew) to create strong, independent governance models (like the #OGB) that are needed to push back against co-option. By making sure these paths are, built, linked and visible, it becomes easier to hold a healthy balance in place to bridge understanding without compromising autonomy. This approach preserves the Fediverse’s native path, ensuring it stays rooted in the ethos of trust, collaboration, and openness, the core values of the openweb itself.

By composting what doesn’t work and nurturing what does, we can continue to cultivate a healthier, more resilient network for the change and challenge we need for a liveable future. What steps do you think could be most effective in initiating this dialogue between NGOs and grassroots paths without compromising the integrity of grassroots spaces?