Why most #geekproblem software fails: Trust vs. control

Almost all of our #geekproblem software fails because it’s built with a mindset of control.

Control over users.
Control over systems.
Control over outcomes.

But all good societies, and all durable communities, are based on trust. When we ignore this, we don’t just write bad code, we produce #techshit that nobody uses, that burns out developers, and that confuses users. Then we start over… and call it “innovation.” That’s #techchurn.

Control-driven projects: Examples of failure

Diaspora
Touted as a Facebook alternative, it focused too much on cryptographic control and data silos — and forgot the social UX that makes people actually want to use social media. It never recovered from this early design flaw.

GNOME Online Accounts
Supposed to be a bridge between the desktop and online services. Instead, it became a privacy puzzle with unclear consent and broken trust. Control was enforced without social understanding.

Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB)
A radical peer-to-peer network, very promising. But became increasingly unusable due to overcomplicated trust mechanics and lack of simple social pathways for onboarding new users. The community stalled.

Matrix / Element
Still pushing forward, but has constant friction because it replicates many centralised “control” models in the name of “choice.” Powerful, yes. But still struggles with real decentralised trust outside geek bubbles.

🌱 Trust-Based Systems: What Works?

Fediverse / Mastodon
It works because it’s socially familiar and based on human trust over algorithmic control. You choose who to follow, what server you trust. And it grew because of this — not in spite of it.

Signal (Early Days)
Before turning more into a consumer app, Signal succeeded by focusing on trusted networks — your phonebook — and making end-to-end encryption invisible. It was about trust, not just security.

The real problem is in part to do it money and the funding of the wrong side of tech, in that most funding goes to things that feel safe:

Protocol development

Core backend infrastructure

“Governance” initiatives run by “neutral” NGOs

These are important up to a point, but this “safe” money ONLY reproduces the #geekproblem:

Building tech without communities

Tools without culture

Features without stories

When we do try to fund the social side, the interfaces, user onboarding, documentation, actual relationships, it too often gets handed to parasite #NGOs with no grassroots accountability. Just look at the endless pilot projects by digital rights NGOs that are abandoned 18 months later. Or the “governance frameworks” that never go anywhere. It’s a cycle of buzzwords over boots-on-the-ground.

The people with shovels, in a messy world, the only thing that might work is messy people with shovels, people who compost the shit, clean the broken tools, and patch the networks to keep things going.

These people are rarely funded.
They’re not “scalable.”
They don’t write grant-friendly proposals.
But without them, none of the tools work.

Who funds them?

A call to action: If we want an #openweb that survives the coming waves of #climatechaos and #mainstreaming sellouts… We need to fund trust, not control, to support social infrastructure, not just servers and specs, to back messy doers, not polished whitepapers. We need to talk about this, fund this, and build on this, or we’re just making more compost for the next #dotcons to grow from.

A conversation about money and the #openweb

#NLnet #NGI #NGIzero #EU #funding

A conversation about money and the #openweb

Let’s talk about the tension at the heart of the modern #openweb, and why so many grassroots builders and radical technologists find themselves on the outside looking in. Scene: A typical “open internet” conference in Europe. Excited NGO-funded attendee toots:

“Just booked my place for ePIC in Lille! My first Eurostar trip! It’s where I started 10 years ago with Mozilla. Time flies. #OpenBadges #VerifiableCredentials”

Me (a social tech outsider):

“These things are hopelessly expensive. To attend you have to worship the #deathcult. Hard to know what to do with these two-track approaches. Kinda can’t be #openweb if they’re locked behind temple walls.”

PS. It’s a metaphor. But not an empty one.

Two economies, two Internets, the #mainstreaming of the #openweb means that most so-called “open” events are inaccessible unless you:

Work for a #NGO, startup, or university with a travel budget

Have a career track aligned with #neoliberal frameworks

Can spend hundreds of pounds on accommodation, tickets, and travel

That’s not grassroots, not radical, not open – it’s branded openness for the networking class. The Reply:

“I think that’s a complicated way of saying you can’t afford to go?”

No, it’s not, it’s a social critique, and a common one from those of us who have spent decades building grassroots tech infrastructures and activist media, unpaid or underpaid, mostly ignored. It’s about asking: Who is the #openweb for, really?

Why this matters, when we raise issues like this, we’re not “being reply guys.” We’re making a point about the structural divides that are silencing and marginalising the very voices we need most in these spaces, the people actually building and defending the #openweb on the ground. You can’t build democratic tech by replicating elitist spaces and calling them “inclusive” just because the code is on GitHub. The pushback:

“You can’t live outside the mainstream, throw rocks at it, and complain when it doesn’t accommodate you.”

“I’ve never had a positive interaction with you. You wear that like a badge of honour. I’m muting you.”

Pause here, is this really the attitude we want? If you’re part of the #NGO world, if you have stable income and access to conference budgets, then you are in a position of power. When someone critiques that system, not you personally, but the structures you inhabit, and your reaction is to mute, dismiss, or mock them… something has gone wrong. This is exactly how we lose the #openweb. Not to tech giants, but to social silos within our own communities.

A different approach? Imagine this instead:

“You're right, many of these events are structurally exclusionary. I’ll raise this at the conference. How do you think we can bridge this divide without compromising either side?”

That’s the kind of solidarity we need, that’s how we stop #mainstreaming the death spiral, how we build together. If we want an #openweb that isn’t just another branded ladder for careerists, we have to defend the messy, painful, and vital presence of the grassroots, even when they come knocking without a conference pass.

Muting critique is easy, building bridges? That’s harder, but it’s the only thing worth doing right now.

#NLnet #NGI #NGIzero #EU #funding

Why most #geekproblem software fails: Trust vs. control

The wall of funding silence

In the sprouting landscape of #openweb infrastructure, it’s not just code that gets ignored, it’s the possibility of change itself. Projects like #makeinghistory, part of the wider Open Media Network (#OMN), aren’t asking for much. They’re not flashy. They’re not political in the #mainstreaming sense. They just quietly build the back-end tools that allow people to document their histories, publish from the grassroots, and hold space for the memory of struggle that shape our progressive liberalism. But that seems to be too much.

The wall of funding silence – We’ve submitted funding proposals – dozens over the years, to every channel supposedly set up to fund the #openweb non-mainstream side of tech. From #NLnet to #NGI, from “open futures” to the latest EU moonshots. Most of the time, the response is a polite no, a vague shrug, or silence.

Sometimes, we get honesty – “This kind of effort is very hard to seek grants for” or “I don’t have an obvious candidate for you.” What they don’t say is what’s really going on: The system does fund this kind of work, look at the bonfire fresco as an example, but only when it’s a shadow of the status quo.

There’s a path through this, if we’re honest about the rules of the game. One such route is the #makeinghistory project, a non-threatening, archive-based approach that doesn’t scream radical, but quietly lays the groundwork for deeper change. What funders may not realize (or perhaps they do) is that by supporting it, they also enable development on #indymediaback and the metadata “soup” back-ends of the OMN, the very infrastructure needed to reboot truly grassroots media.

It’s a shadow funding path. And yes, that might feel cynical. But if you’re unwilling to fund change directly, maybe you’ll fund the shadows of change. Sometimes the only way to sneak truth past the gatekeepers is through the side door.

We do need to get past this broken balance, the hard part is that many of these funders do think they’re doing good. And to be fair, they are, a little. But the balance is broken. That imbalance is invisible to most, especially those inside the comfort of stable institutions. When we push back, it looks like we’re hitting “good” people with little sticks. It’s messy, and it’s easy for them to just turn away. We get told to be grateful. To celebrate, the seedling being planted in the foreground, while bulldozers level the rest of the forest behind it.

Stick or Carrot? So what do we do? We talk about sticks and carrots. The truth is, our sticks are tiny, dwarfed by corporate lobbying, government inertia, and internal conservatism. The peaceful, hippy route changes nothing long-term, but conflict isn’t working either. We’re stuck in between, too radical for the boardroom, too polite for the barricades.

But here’s a thought: maybe it’s not about the size of the stick, but where we aim it. We’re not here to fight good people. We’re here to point out that a little good is not enough, not when the stakes are this high. If we don’t build space for change, it won’t happen. And if funders like #NLnet want to be the change they speak of, then they need to fund the infrastructure that makes it possible, even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s indirect…

What Now? We’ll give it a month. Then maybe we nudge a bit harder. But no shame, no blame. Just a call for balance, for trust, for a shift in what “doing good” really means.

The pushing of doomed projects

#OMN #makeinghistory #indymediaback #NGI #NLnet #NGIzero #openweb #4opens #deathcult #mainstreaming #funding #changechallenge