Tag: fediverse

ActivityPub is an accidental reboot of the openweb

#ActivityPub is, in many ways, an accidental reboot of the #openweb. It came into existence because the #dotcons (#mainstreaming platforms) showed up to a World Wide Web Consortium meeting and didn’t find anything useful for themselves, so they walked away, leaving the “weirdos” to get on with it. Working with the #4opens as a foundation, this loose group managed to hold things together long enough to develop the ActivityPub standard and release it to the world.

From commons to cats, has in recent years seen a shift toward the familiar “libertarian cats” dynamic of fragmented, individualistic and hard to coordinate paths. As a result, this #openweb reboot is now being partially consumed by the same forces it set out to move beyond. That might not be the outcome many hoped for, but it’s not the end of the story.

There are still active efforts to build on this native path – alternatives to strengthen grassroots infrastructure to keep moving away from #mainstreaming. The focus isn’t on reforming the mainstream, it’s on composting it.

Why this matters – This story highlights key tensions in the #openweb – Grassroots vs institutional power, commons vs control and culture vs capital. It also shows the importance of:

  • #DIY culture
  • resourcefulness under constraint
  • communities that build without permission

The “accidental” nature of ActivityPub is important as it reminds us that real innovation comes from the edges, not the centre. So what is ActivityPub? It is a decentralised social networking protocol, standardised by the World Wide Web Consortium in 2018. It enables interoperability between platforms, forming what we now call the #Fediverse. It builds on earlier #openweb technologies:

  • RSS / Atom
  • ActivityStreams
  • OStatus
  • Pump.io

The goal is a unified, federated #openweb communication layer based on #4opens principles.

Historical Milestones

Predecessors (2007–2014)
Early work on RSS and decentralised social tools like StatusNet, OpenMicroBlogging, and Pump.io laid the groundwork.

W3C Development (2014–2017)
The Social Web Working Group developed the protocol (then called ActivityPump).

Standardisation (2018)
ActivityPub became an official W3C Recommendation.

Adoption (2018–Present)
Mastodon provided critical mass as a Twitter-like entry point.

Diversification
Other platforms followed:

  • PeerTube (video)
  • Pixelfed (images)
  • Lemmy (links)

#dotcons Interest (2022–2025)
After upheaval at Twitter/X, mainstream interest surged:

  • Threads began implementing ActivityPub
  • WordPress added federation support

The Fediverse is now approaching a decade of growth, ActivityPub continues to expand because it allows people on one server to interact with others in decentralized communication without walled gardens. It is a return to simpler (#KISS), interoperable networking. But the open question, tension, remains:

  • Will this reboot stay rooted in the #openweb?
  • Or will it be absorbed back into #CONTROL systems?

——————————————————————————-

OLDER DRAFT

#ActivityPub is an accidental reboot of the #openweb. It came into existence because the #dotcons (#mainstreaming platforms) attended a #wc3 meeting but did not find anything useful for themselves. As a result, they left the “weirdos” to build an approach based on the #4opens principles. The “weirdos” managed to keep things together long enough to develop the #activertypub standard and release it to the world. However, in recent years, there has been a shift towards the normal “libertarian cats” path, and this #openweb reboot is being consumed. While this outcome may not be what many desired, there are efforts to build real alternatives and shift away from #mainstreaming. The focus is on composting the mainstream approach rather than reforming it.

This is interesting because it provides insights into the dynamics and challenges of the #openweb movement. It highlights the tension between #mainstreaming platforms and grassroots efforts, showcasing the passion and dedication of communities working towards an open and decentralized web. The accidental nature of the #ActivityPub reboot adds an element of serendipity to the story, emphasizing the power of #DIY culture and the resource constraints faced by #openweb technologies. The recent shift towards a “libertarian cats” path and the potential consumption of the #openweb reboot raise important questions about the future of alternative platforms and the need for continued resistance against #mainstreaming.

ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol, standardized by the W3C in 2018, that enables interoperability between different platforms, growing the “Fediverse.”
It originated from earlier #openweb protocols (like RSS, atom, activitystreams, OStatus and Pump.io) to provide a unified, #4opens standard for federated communication.

Historical Milestones

  • Predecessors (2007–2014): Its started with RSS then latter attempts at decentralized social networking, such as StatusNet, OpenMicroBlogging, and Pump.io, laid the groundwork for federation protocols.
  • W3C Formation (2014–2017): The W3C Social Web Working Group began developing the protocol, then known as ActivityPump.
  • W3C Recommendation (January 2018): ActivityPub became an official W3C Recommendation (standard), enabling consistent, secure communication between disparate servers.
  • Adoption and Growth (2018–Present): Mastodon the twitter clone microblogging platform adopted ActivityPub, providing the “critical mass” needed for adoption.
  • Diversification: Other platforms followed, including PeerTube (video), PixelFed (images), and Lemmy (links).
  • #dotcons adoption (2022–2024): Following changes at Twitter (now X), #mainstreaming interest in decentralized alternatives surged. Meta’s Threads began implementing ActivityPub as did WordPress.

The Fediverse is now nearly ten years old and #ActivityPub continues to grow in use as it allows people on one server to #KISS interact seamlessly with people on another for decentralized, “walled garden” free networking.

NGI Zero open source funding talks about the @sovtechfund

NGI Zero open source funding
The @sovtechfund is offering grants to people who contribute to a sustainable open source ecosystem. Grants go up to €300,000 per application and cover three main topics:

1. Improve FOSS Developer Tooling
2. Securing FOSS Software Production
3. FOSS Infrastructure Documentation

With this program, the Sovereign Tech Fund seeks to stimulate an open digital infrastructure: fundamental technologies that enable the creation of other software.

https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/challenges/ #opensource
Three Challenges to Contribute Back to Open Source

UPDATE Looks like people are also arguing this point https://shared-digital.eu/statement/

We are pouring public funding down the drain agen, these criteria are feeding the #geekproblem not actually trying to take the “problem” out of our geek paths. The people who PUSH this agenda are the problem – please POINT at them and talk about this mess, thanks.

Can we get a link to the people making the agenda, thanks, will try polite conversation #4opens

I worked with the guy who used to be behind the #NGIzero account, we did good stuff with the #EU outreach.

The replacement, I have no idea who they are and getting #blocking

This is a #4opens fail.

In all these toots am talking past “people” to talk about things/social/groups and not directly to individuals, they are second in all these conversations. This is the place where social value lives. The problem is, we don’t have hardly any of this… which is the subject am talking about.

#blocking is not seeing this, addressing this, the is a lot of blocking going on 😉

Am happy to talk to “individuals” as a first step.

Pouring money down the drain, because the majority of the problems in the #Fediverse and the #openweb are social not technical – if they only fund technical parts of this culture they are feeding the “problem” and this problem is going to pour the resources down the drain.

I understand this is a hard conversation to have, we have to try.

First step is #4opens, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE PUSHING MESS while doing “good”, step into the light please #openprocess

Ignoring this basic #openprocess is #blocking, this is why conversations are done in public #4opens

yes, I understand the fear this creates and the desire to #block, but this then makes the #4opens fail more visible if people wont to use this for the needed change and challenge if they don’t yes it’s more noise what are you signal or noise 🙂

Signal vs Nose.

I find #mainstreaming people to be actually mad and increasingly bad. When do we get more #4opens people pushing change challenge in these #openweb spaces, please?

Am increasingly seeing this #blocking as a culture of fear, or more real as a culture of fear pushed as power politics.

Am thinking meany people will be confused and likely mix signal with noise on this subject.

Who are the bad people, the powerless pushing the #4opens on the #openweb or the powerful Burocrats worshipping the #deathcult while protecting these thin careers in the #mainstreaming

If you find yourself agenst the first and defending the second, then you are the problem.

This makes your behaver noise, and what you do very likely to be more #techshit to compost.

I wonder if people understand what activism is on the #openweb any more?

You talk to people to explane why they are doing WRONG, and at the same time you push them as HARD as you can to change their wrong behaver.

This works best with the #fluffy #spiky debate as a core part of this process.

People who keep saying “why can’t we all get along”, and “wouldent it go better if we were nice to each other” and the PROBLEM blocking the activism from having the needed affect…

Mainstreaming “common sense” insanity

I’m starting to get the feeling we’ve really fucked up on the #Fediverse… It was always coming – but has it arrived?

I went to a geek meetup yesterday, and walked away with a heavy sense that the problem runs deeper than I’d hoped. The habits, the assumptions, the “common sense” people bring with them – it’s hard to see how we shift it. For those of us who actually want change and challenge, that’s a real issue.

Because in the era of #XR and #climatechaos, this isn’t abstract anymore. The stakes are real, and yet the thinking often feels… detached from that reality.

What worries me is that people are, once again, undermining the #openweb without even realising it. It’s not malicious, it’s ingrained. Forty years of absorbing the logic of the #deathcult shapes how people think, what they see as “normal,” what they accept as inevitable. So the same patterns keep reappearing, dressed up as “common sense.”

And in the current mess, “common sense” keeps winning. That’s bad. Really bad. Come on people – #4opens isn’t just a slogan, it’s a way to push back on exactly this drift.

So the question is: how do we deal with this? How do you work constructively with people who are reproducing the problem without seeing it – especially as #mainstreaming pulls everything in that direction?

Genuinely interested in thoughts, especially from people with experience in mental health, group dynamics, or social change.

A project outline for the OGB

Project description

The Open Governance Body (#OGB) project is a set of software tools that encode a governance model structured on traditional grassroots activism.
Further, the OGB – for which the code base is named – is a decentralized and democratic system for “governance” of any collective/community consisting of (generally speaking) #1 – Producers and #2 -Consumers.

The #Fediverse is used as the example herein.

To explore and develop better ways of having trust-based conversations and governance within the #openweb. To utilize comprehensive experience gained through greater than 5 years active, “on-the-ground” organization of instances within the #Fediverse as a technological toolkit for horizontal scaling of social
power.

The #OGB is a #Fediverse native process of working that emphasizes voluntary cooperation and collaboration with a standard #KISS approach.
The #OGB prioritizes focus on sortition and “messy consensus” in order to achieve decision-making and equitable power distribution.

The project is not about creating a single organization that dictates what protocols and standards to use within the #Fediverse. #OGB is about developing better processes for healthy, trust-based conversations and forging governance
accessible and equitable to all

Project results

Developing/creating a framework to demonstrate improved ways for “trust” based dialogue/conversation and “trust” based governance within the #openweb.
Building a true cooperative, a collaborative alliance that is native to the #Fediverse and #openweb.

Emphasizing the importance of recognizing where power originates in the context of the #Fediverse and #openweb.

Developing/creating improved technological tools as a solution to problems arising through social organization enabling problem-solving in a native #openweb manner.

Removing current hard coded defaults by providing an alternative standardized set of #KISS framework tools to empower active body members a space to utilise said tools deeply and to begin proficient instruction of their use.

Developing/creating a permission-less structure that is open to and for all. One which enables the active group through organic process, a framework of tools to decide who is a part of their group/groups.

Emphasizing that there is no exclusion and that there will always be diversity, making it an organic piece for the #Fediverse.

Building governance where the “way”, “rules”, “norms” and “actions” are structured, sustained, regulated, and held with accountability

Benefits to the Community

There are challenges and conflicts that arise within grassroots organisation or #DIY governance. In developing/creating a #KISS standard such as the #OGB framework to address said problems, we will enable a more true democratic and equitable process that benefits any and all involved.

Through empowering a more diverse scope of voices, decision-making is made more collectively. These tools utilize a greater range of voice, preventing polarization from smaller groups using perhaps limited perspectives and or values.

Additionally, through a strong ethical foundation, decision-making is ensured a more progressive development. With a focus on the primary needs of the community as a whole, rather than individuals or polarized groups.

As a social coding project, the #OGB is neither a traditional top down distribution of power or project derived of a normal #mainstreaming agenda. Rather, it is a bottom-up grassroots empowerment for sharing of knowledge and power. An example of what is found in many of the 20th century social movements,
movements responsible for the birth of what is said to be today’s best current progressive mainstream.

Through the #OGB project the “we” will facilitate the forming, communication and governance.

Timeline and important milestones

Upon securing foundation funding, negotiations for immediate ICT services will begin with respected clients for future partnership to cement project longevity and sustainability.
As described above within the KPI outline, the progression of timelines is a basic and #KISS standard
project operation where in all tasks/tiers are realistically achievable to ensure project success.
The following is an initial outline – it can be extended when possible:
9 months to Alpha testing with #Fediverse
12 months to Beta testing with #Fediverse
12 months to Beta testing with offline communities
24 months to public launch

Key Performance Indicators

Tier 1 – Source code development from base developers and progressive training through the scaling of
outreach servers through the use of MOOC LMS training platforms.
Beginner – Test Community… Local Distribution – Flea Market,Sunday Market – APP Progressive Code
9 months to Alpha testing within Fediverse
12 months to Beta testing within Fediverse
Tier 2 – Test Community… #Fediverse – Web Code
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Intermediate – Test Community… Local Distribution – Boating Community,Hiking Community – APP
Progressive Code
Tier 3 – Progressive Web App
12 months to Beta testing with offline communities
24 months to public launch
Tier 4 – The below distributions are escalations through our developed outreach scheme.
Advanced – Test Community… Local Distribution – Schools/classrooms

Project publicity

Utilizing the recent promotion of approximately 10 million people encompassing 1 million active Twitter migration users to #Mastodon to further bring awareness.

The continuance of our work within #SocialHub will continue to build on the origins of #OGB Promoting publicity through the building “governance” through #ActivityPub

Why you

We would like to reboot the #openweb and the way we communicate, interact and govern as a whole.
We know what works socially… grassroots movements
We know what works technologically… #Fediverse
We are the people developing the symbiosis for all to utilise for our futures

Activities that will benefit

FOSS and open-source frameworks are facing a continual social challenge of balancing their grassroots paradigm within corporate parameters. #OGB aims to develop/create a set of tools to encourage and aide balance.

The efforts of the #Fediverse community have been successful in shifting the EU closer through our outreach to promoting a more humane internet. #Mastodon and technologies like #ActivityPub have become important players in the EU’s initiatives for a more inclusive and equitable online environment.
The huge growth of Mastodon, one of the most popular social networking platforms in the #Fediverse, due to the #Twitter migration attracted a large and diverse, vibrant community of users from across the EU and
the world. This growth helped to validate the importance of decentralized internet and its potential to shape a more humane world by relieving the community of hosting burdens so we can focus on collective
governance and the formation of a collective governing body for decentralized efforts

The #OGB project is an initiative aimed at developing better ways of having “trust” based conversations

The #OGB project is an initiative aimed at developing better ways of having “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the open web. The project is built on a voluntary cooperative and collaborative alliance that is native to the fediverse, which is a decentralized network of interconnected social media platforms. The #OGB project is not about creating an organization that tells everyone what protocols and standards to use in the fediverse, but rather about developing better ways of having good “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb. The project is based on hundreds of years of on-the-ground organizing that has shaped every “freedom” we enjoy and is done in a #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach. The #OGB project emphasizes the importance of recognizing where power comes from in the context of the fediverse and building with this difference rather than trying to drag the #fediverse back to the #mainstreaming path.

Introduction

Hamish Campbell is an #openweb organic intellectual and a core contributor to the #OMN (Open Media Network). He publishes at http://hamishcampbell.com, where he documents decades of radical media work, social tech projects, and reflections on activist culture. You’ll find him across the #Fediverse, on the #dotcons, and #YouTube – pushing for open dialogue around politics, technology, and media.

Over the years, Hamish has been central to meany grassroots tech and media initiatives, including:

  • Undercurrents – video activism documenting direct action and alternative culture.
  • Ruffcuts – Copy left (before, Creative Commons) licensed video CD-ROMs project distributed across UK and global activist networks.
  • UK Indymedia – part of the global Indymedia network, building open publishing platforms for activist journalism.
  • VisionOnTV – producing and distributing social movement video through peer-to-peer networks and open tools. Now in its fourth generation of FOSS tech, the project has been running on and off for nearly 20 years.
  • The PeoplesTV Project – creating low-cost, live-edit, and video aggregation tools for real-time, mobile grassroots reporting.
  • 4opens – a framework for ethical #FOSS tech development, demanding openness of code, data, standards, and governance.
  • OMN (Open Media Network) – building a trust-based federated media infrastructure for alternative publishing.
  • ActivityPub and the Fediverse – working with native protocols and community to develop open, decentralized publishing tools and outreach them. 
  • OGB (Open Governance Body) – prototyping grassroots governance models tailored to activist and Fediverse cultures.
  • Rebooting Indymedia – re-energising grassroots media infrastructure with fediverse tech and horizontal process. This Fediverse tech got to roll out before covid but did not survive the pandemic
  • MakingHistory – a new project under active development, exploring collective memory and storytelling.

Hamish approaches all of this through a political lens – believing that code is ideology made real. He is sharply critical of tech shaped by capitalism, which he sees as systemically extractive, closed, and hostile to real social change. His approach to “humane coding” centres on designing systems that embrace complexity, emergence, and care – tools that reflect human relationships rather than enforce control.

Beyond the tech world, Hamish has been involved in hundreds of activist campaigns and alternative life experiments. He’s written academically on vagabond culture and hitchhiking, and has produced and edited over 1,000 videos and documentaries in the last 20 years.

For the past decade, he has lived aboard a semi-off-grid lifeboat, navigating Europe’s canals and coasts, a real-world metaphor for the digital values he champions: autonomy, resilience, and mutual aid. #BoatingEurope

“Look, these guys are covered in mess, we can’t work with them…”

In the #Fediverse we are going to have waves of #mainstreaming people coming into “our” #openweb counter currents, bringing a lot of non-native, unthinking blinded mess with them, they will push this blindness over us as “common sense” then they will retreat back to #mainstreming and point at us covered in mess… “Look these guys are covered in mess we can’t work with them…”

Yes this is bad behaver, ideas please?

The question I am asking is who is creating the mess, and the very “uncommon sense” obvuse answer is “they” are. Composting comes to mind, do you need a shovel #OMN

And yes, the “us” and “them” are in quote marks, to highlight the need for more composting.

Greater cooperation and collaboration between the different communities involved in developing #openweb protocols

The state of various #openweb protocols, such as #Bluesky, #Nostr, and #ActivityPub, and the challenges they face in terms of interoperability and communication between their different communities. I am advocating for a grassroots #DIY culture that focuses on building bridges between these protocols, rather than contributing to the “messiness” of the ongoing discussions.

All of these protocols are #4opens and #openweb native, which is a positive development, but their different cultures create difficulties in communication.

The UX (user experience) of these protocols is less of an issue now than it has been in the past, and that the #Fediverse is doing well in this regard. We will need new work on moderation thinking in anticipation of the “data soup” that is coming, with potential for information overload and the need for effective moderation strategies.

A bridge to #Nostr already exists (#Mostr), we need efforts to be made to create similar bridges for other protocols, such as #Bluesky.

Greater cooperation and collaboration between the different communities involved in developing #openweb protocols, in order to create a more cohesive and effective ecosystem.

It’s less messy to see the “protocol wars” of #bluesky #Nostr #activitypub from a social understanding

Listening to the #mainstreaming of the 3 protocol mess, we have a building signal-to-noise issue. We need to push signal, so good to think before you share something that is likely more noise on this subject.

20338

As a way out of this, I have been pushing bridges for a while as they are the lowest common denominator and can be built and implemented “permissionless” to allow people to cross #4opens protocols. “Permissionless” is important as the is no way you would get consensus to do this, without adding much more mess. Technically, people coding the protocols are too busy with tribalism to focus on cross protocol interop… or they would not be building a new protocol

The advantage of a bridge is you do not have to get the codebase to change their project – it’s just a relay that connects one protocol to another, “permissionless”. Nobody has to federate, they can unfederated from a relay if they don’t like it.

It’s a BAD but good tech solution, and likely the best we can do to mediate the current squealing mess our #fahernistas make.

All the projects are actually kinda good, they are mostly #4opens and #openweb native this is a BIG move away from the #dotcons so good – TICK

I find it less messy to talk about the “protocol wars” of #bluesky #Nostr #activitypub from a social understanding.

They all share #4opens #openweb tech, so this is a win.

Where they differ is in the “culture” they come from and push.

#bluesky comes from surveillance capitalism, it’s from the #dotcons and has meany of the same assumptions, just “better”.

#Nostr comes from the #encryptionists and #bitcoin bro crew and suffers from being from this mess.

#activitypub is #openweb native and comes from the #4opens traditions the whole software world is actually built on.

#KISS

For us guys building on #ActivityPub, it’s important to keep focus that the #Fediverse was built on “trust” and will likely fail fast if we move to building it on “fear”.

Please, please, “don’t be a prat” about these thanks.

It is important for developers and marketers to be transparent about values and business models

The #Fediverse is a collection of decentralized social networking platforms that use #ActivityPub, allowing people to communicate and share content across different networks. These platforms are designed to be community-driven and to prioritize native #openweb culture, which is inherently unfriendly to capitalism.

In contrast, many new non #Fediverse protocols are being developed and marketed today focus on interoperability and working within the framework of capitalism. This means that they are designed to integrate with existing capitalist systems and structures, such as advertising and monetization.

These new protocols need to say more about their alignment, it is important for developers and marketers to be transparent about their values and business models so that users can make informed decisions about the technologies they use.

We need to make a clear step away from the #dotcons that have wasted our society for the last 20 years.

When a group of people come in to the #Fediverse with an imperialistic agenda and hide this agenda, we end up with lots more mess and a bad smell at best, or real damage to our commoners at worst. It’s important that we catch his early and try and mediate for a less stinky and damaging outcome.

They are often trying to help, let’s try and work with them if we can. But please PUSH back hard if we can’t, keep it polite #FULFFY is best.

An example https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/a-place-to-talk-about-spreadmastodon-org-and-wider-issues-that-this-brings-up/3130/17

The risk of co-optation or watering down of the original #openweb values and principles

Talking to the person behind https://spreadmastodon.org/ 

Had a look through his https://bluem.ventures/ list of projects, it’s all Slacktivism – Wikipedia 2 and #NGO pushing.

Asked him, “Have you taken a moment or two to think this might be seen, on balance, as damage rather than helping the #openweb culture of the communers who built the spaces you are going to be pushing at? It’s important not to be doing blinded Imperialism – Wikipedia coming into a “commons” space.”

Issues on this here Activism can we try and address these issues, to mediate the balance of damage/good before you push the project out, thanks.

#openweb culture comes from the principles and values of the early internet, where open standards and decentralized systems were prioritized over closed, proprietary ones. This culture is based on the idea of a free and open internet, where anyone can participate and create without the need for gatekeepers.

#Slacktivism is a term used to describe online activism that requires minimal effort or engagement, such as signing an online petition or changing your social media profile picture. While these actions can raise awareness about an issue, they are criticized for being insincere and ineffective in creating real change.

#NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, are involved in social activism and advocacy work. However, they are criticized for promoting their own agendas rather than empowering the communities they claim to serve. This can create a power imbalance, where the voices and needs of the community are not heard or prioritized.

We need to think about the #mainstreaming of these issues’ due to the increasing visibility and attention they are pushing in the wider public, move back to the #openweb.

With this shift in attention comes the risk of co-optation or watering down of the original values and principles. It is important to be on guard and maintain a healthy balance, ensuring that the voices and needs of communities are prioritized and that efforts are not insincere or ineffective.

The new #spreadmastodon project needs to balance the damage with the good it does with its outreach project.

The wider #Fediverse relying heavily on a single platform, mastodon or instance https://mastodon.social, can have negative consequences. Leading to a concentration of power and influence in the hands of a few individuals and entities. This can result in issues such as censorship, lack of innovation, and a loss of privacy for users.

Additionally, if a single server or platform is responsible for hosting a significant portion of user data or activity, it could become a target for cyberattacks or data breaches.

 

A native path out of the mess people make on the #openweb

The Open Governance Body (#OGB) describes a permissionless process/structure that is open and allows the group that forms using the tools to decide who is a part of the group or not. This process can divide into a web of connecting instances of governance as a natural human process of group formation. The #OGB emphasizes that there is no exclusion and always diversity, making it a natural fit for the #fediverse.

The #OGB also shows that if people are stupid and focused on individualism, each governance instance will have one member and no power. To gain power, people have to work together, which is built into the code. The #OGB emphasizes that hoarding power is limited, and it flows through the community, energizing and solidifying the community and building horizontal power to challenge/change vertical power.

The #OGB focus is on the importance of keeping things simple (#KISS) and that some people will try to push for existing power structures before democracy. However, as the process is permissionless, it is not possible to stop them from doing this. The #OGB emphasizes the need to do better, and that being native to the #fediverse is a big help in this regard.

The #OGB emphasizes the importance of recognizing where power comes from in the context of the #fediverse. The fediverse operates differently from corporations, governments, courts, and police, and it is important to think and build with this difference rather than trying to drag the fediverse back to the #mainstreaming path.

The #OGB builds from the #fediverse works because it is different, and it is easy to forget this important thing when #mainstreaming agendas grab and hold. The #OGB suggests that the missing question in almost all conversations is “who are we empowering,” and emphasizes the need to do better in alt-tech.

The #OGB notes that there are problems in alt-tech and suggests that starting with the #4opens would remove 90% of the mess, revealing the real potential for good outcomes. The #OGB highlights that doing better in alt-tech would involve using shovels to make compost and planting seeds of the world we want to see.

The #OGB describes the process scaffolding for the governance body as a default effect, where the decisions on how things work will be up to the members of the body. The power of the governance body is only the power of default, and the #OGB is about removing all hard default choices and building in a small number of KISS tools, then letting the body members work out themselves how to use them.

The #OGB uses the example of #Couchsurfing, where the website redesign removed the #DIY tools active Couchsurfers had used to self-organize, leading to disappointment among members. The #OGB argues that letting members make their own process, open vs. closed, is necessary to overcome the #geekproblem and have hope for alt-tech.

The #OGB builds governance with the way, rules, norms, and actions are structured, sustained, regulated, and held accountable. this is to mediate that the #Fediverse currently has a “herding cats” governance, denoting a futile attempt to control or organize a class of entities that are inherently uncontrollable.

The #OGB codebase is not just a tool for the #Fediverse, but it can be used to democratically run any structures that have stakeholders.

The #OGB provides an example of how the codebase can be used to run a local street market, with each stallholder as a stakeholder, people who shop at the market as users, and the local council, events company, and shop owner’s association as affiliate groups. The #OGB approach and codebase will scale sideways, with street markets governed city-wide, and each of the markets becoming a stakeholder, users as users, and city-wide orgs and groups as affiliate groups.

The #OGB shaping of the “body” comes from a long history/experience of horizontal activism, where “those who do the work have more say.” noisebridge.net/wiki/Do-ocracy

The #OGB pushes that the bulk of the voice comes from those who run the #Fediverse, the people who run/support the instances. The people who build the tools also get a say, as do support orgs and events, and the users who will be spread widely get a say, but their power is diluted by the much larger numbers involved.

This working practice comes from 30 years of building from The Tyranny of Structureless tick box list https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/03.-The-Tyranny-of-Stucturelessness That code being quite “anti-human” is an interesting challenge, and it’s important to figure out how to get the humane “mess” in a coding process that is based on being “exact” and in control #OGB

The #OGB project is grounded in lived experience, and it’s a way out of this mess. We cannot keep using traditional institutions. We have to stop the #techcurn if we are going to use #openweb tech for social/ecological change/challenge, and we need to think about this now.

The #OGB project is about developing better ways of having “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb. The project is built from hundreds of years of on the ground organizing that has shaped every “freedom” we enjoy and is done in a #KISS approach. The #OGB is a #fedivers native way of working, NOT a #mainstreaming way, and it comes from directly working, setting up, and solving recurring problems at hundreds of direct action protest camps.

The #OGB focus on what we know works, as at the moment, almost nothing works for social good. The #OGB project is what is needed, a voluntary cooperative and collaborative alliance that is native to the #fediverse.

The thinking is that we need to put a stop to the #techchurn as we have piles of #techshit already to compost, that #nothingnew is a hashtag for this.

It’s not the goal of the #OGB project to create an organization that tells everyone what protocols and standards to use in the #fediverse. The #OGB project is about developing better ways of having good “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb

To sum up, the current working models of “governance” in open-source projects are monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy. This is the rock star developer, the coders and the funders. It should be obverse to anyone that 99.99% of people are missing from this feudalistic ideal of “governance”.

Democracy is the basic foundation of our shared modernity.

WHY DO WE PUT UP WITH THIS MESS IN TECH?

Let’s take a different path, please #OGB

Q. that is an optimistic projection

A. I have no illusion that the normal shitty behaver of fucking people over and being a prat will happen, but the codebase is designed to mediate this crap behaver for better outcomes 🙂

#OGB “permissionless” is an important word that needs some thought. The body is made up of three different, balanced groups: stakeholders, users, and affiliate stakeholders. Anybody can become a stakeholder by setting up and running an active instance, and users are self-explanatory. That affiliate stakeholders are a little more complex and are treated differently, and it’s up to the body itself to decide if they play an active and useful role.

That nothing in this is top-down, elitist, discriminatory, or undemocratic, and it’s #KISS and looks safe to the “normal world” while being native to the #fediverse and its roots. All the coding is #4opens, based on #activertypub.

With #OGB, it’s important not to get lost in the #processgeeks and their dogmatic love of #formalconsensus, as that’s a dead end and has been for the 30 years of activism and coding tech. It’s important to keep the #OGB both #KISS and human, understandable. The #OGB is native “governance” and federates in the same way as the projects it “governs”. That this approach is counterintuitive to mainstream ideas and “common sense,” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This approach has worked to some extent, as seen in the “#Fediverse” as a living example, working to scale small to bigger. There will be lots of “smoke,” and help is needed to keep the project clear of this mess. We have to overcome our #stupidindividualism to have a hope of a better world.

#OGB To remind you that the need for “governance” came out of a practical problem where the #activitypub community is made up of “cats” who were doing seminars outreach to powerful #EU Eurocrats on why they should be interested in #activertypub. #OGB is designed to be messy and not tidy, and it’s a “governance” of a disorganization, not a traditional power structure. “governance” can cooperate with more formal models of governance like traditional cooperatives.