Talking about grassroots media as a step away from the current #techshit

Hamish Campbell on the #openweb and rebooting indymedia

Hamish Campbell, a veteran of radical media for more than 30 years, argues that mainstream technology and culture are failing us. The rise of the #dotcon platforms has commodified our lives: closed silos like #Facebook and #Instagram harvest our attention and data, locking us into systems that serve profit, not people.

Attempts to build alternatives around an #encryptionist agenda have gone nowhere. As a result, the tech giants dominate. For Campbell, the answer lies in the #openweb – once born open, but now slowly suffocated over the past two decades. His solution is to reboot grassroots media.

Drawing on the example of Oxford #IMC, Campbell shows how a simple federated network can thrive: content is shared through trusted link flows, moderation happens collectively, and mistakes can be rolled back. Unlike the #closedweb, the beauty of the #openweb is its free-flowing links, its openness to serendipity and collaboration.

For Campbell, the #OMN project is most powerful not for what it does, but for what it refuses to do: it rejects capture, centralisation, and gatekeeping. Change begins with small, practical steps, rebooting grassroots media as a living example.

What You Can Do

In recent years, events in the US, Portugal, and Madrid have explored the idea of #rebooting #Indymedia. So far, the history of Indymedia has been told mainly by academics, often through a narrow, American lens. To truly revive it, we need to retell those stories more widely, and more honestly.

A successful reboot means returning to Indymedia’s open and serendipitous roots, not the bureaucratic, closed structures it later became. The good news is that most of the technical tools we need already exist, from federated protocols like ActivityPub to peer-to-peer networks like dat.

To keep its radical, grassroots character intact, any reboot must follow the #4opens: open data, open process, open access, and open source. These principles ensure transparency, accessibility, and trust.

If you want to get involved, search for #indymediaback or “reboot Indymedia” to find links, projects, and discussions around the #OMN.

A look at the internal mess of the uk indymedia project

The project i like to point to as an example. The indymedia project, an early alt-media network that spread the use of open source software and #4opens organizing around the world at the turn of the century. In the UK the was a #geekproblem vs #openweb fight that became nasty over what we would now understand as “activertypub” the #Fediverse vs more centralized silo approach. In the UK you can see this stress point fought as a proxy war over #RSS

The #openweb aggregation side were sold a dud by the #fashernistas being swayed by the #geekproblem It was obvious that the project had to change and move away from central servers to a more aggregation model. BUT the movement was torpedoed by an obviously pointless open-source project instead of implementing an existing standards based RSS they created their BETTER, BRIGHTER flavour which was of course incomparable with everyone else.

This is an example of a “better” but obviously pointless open source project and also destructive behaver. The #indymedia project in the UK was ripped apart internally from this same divide in the end. A bad “open source” outcome. You can find similar behaver today in the fediverse if you look.

It’s a interesting thing to look at. Actually you can see 3 active sides in the internal uk #indymedia mess and important to see the outcome that they ALL LOST in the end.

1) #encryptionists (being pushed by the #geekproblem)

2) #fashernistas (being influenced by the #geekproblem)

3) #openweb being sidelined by the rest

1) The first resisted and blocked aggregation and #RSS from privacy and “security” issues.

2) The second is a obviously failed compromise by keeping control of “their” own better, non-comparable RSS format.

3) The last, the one the whole project was based on, were ignored and sidelined.

The #IMC project soon became irrelevant and died.

A look at how technology shapes progressive/radical media-looking forward-looking back

3 events at newspeak house this winter:
Session 1) Looking back – how technology shaped the production and distribution of radical/progressive media like #Undercurrents, #Indymedia etc.

Session 2) The current day – failure of radical media technology. The rise of the #dotcons and the new alt-media projects.

Session 3) Looking forward – The #activetypub meetup. This is an update on the state of current #openweb projects. A continuation of the very successful #Mastodon meetups that I set up last year, opening up to the wider projects like #Peertube, #Pleroma, #Pixalfeed etc.

What kind of format do you imagine?

First two would be presentation, with long Q&A sessions and feedback from other participants that arrive on the day. Following the successful meetups last year, the last session is a user group go round with a few lightening talks and Q&A.

Session 1) I’m planning to invite one of the founders of both Undercurrents and #IMC to speak. I was also involved in both, so we would have 3 perspectives. I would have to cover the expenses of these speakers.

Session 2) I’m currently looking for speakers. I can talk/guide on this subject to shape the agenda to the subject.

Session 3) We have a list of people to invite from our meetup group from last year, so it will be a continuity user group meetup with fresh outreach.

And who do you imagine as your target audience?

Session 1) People who were involved (a lot) in the production and distribution of radical/progressive media. Historians (a few), and people interested in the 3 workshops and the subject of tech and politics in general.

Session 2) The same people from the first session will come to the second one, plus next generation who built good things inside the #doctons (for example UK uncut, student protests, current radical media projects and their ordinances).

Session 3) The same people from the first two sessions, plus the people running the Mastodon instances. Both developers and users, as well as the new alt media producers to connect with the developers/sysadmins

For outreach, there will be two bites of the cherry, the publicity for the event and the publicity for each of the sessions.