A conversation on trust and tech with #OMN projects

Remember the #fedivers is built like this, no geek in their right minds would do this, yet we use it every day

All our existing code is based on #feudalism master (admin) surf (user) this is why it is defenceless vs capitalism (#dotcons)

There have been attempts to build democratic code, early #wikis, think #indymedia

#geekproblem “common sense” shifted them back into feudalism.

We have a hard #BLOCK on democratic code, if you want to change/challenge then this blocking needs to be removed.

The #OMN is a project for this, it’s an uphill battle to bring democracy into our coding.

This is the media project (text needs a update” https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network/wiki OFFLINE

Governance for horizontals to talk to “vertical power” https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/01.-Online-Governance OFFLINE

And a video for you https://visionon.tv/w/jqTdss1qrdk4yEZi OFFLINE

We get into the details, of the #OMN you would get Boleyn tag changes on import, so you can auto translate guardian issued tags and add your own tags with both rules and manually.

These tags would flow out of your instances and could flow back to the guardian if you trusted each other.

The idea is to turn news stories/videos into “commons” objects with rich flowing metadata… done in a #KISS way based on trust/moderated link/flows

RSS bring in the legacy objects #activitypub is the main transport protocol.

It’s the news part of the #fediverse, our first implementation of this would be #indmediaback

The idea is to decenter the server, the data is in a soup that flows… #activertypub is two-way this is need to build the horizontal network, so the soup does not ONLY flow one way.

Nobody is in charge, no slaves, no masters. Only trusted or moderated flows. It needs to be two-way, though you are right people being human meany will be one way. BUT we are not building it that way 🙂

RSS brings the legacy in, and it’s a simple display format for embeds and passive news feeds etc.

I think people find the “nobody is in charge” bit a very hard thing to understand, even though we have built meany networks/social groups on this idea, and still do.

In the realm of tech, I call this #blocking the #geekproblem and to get anywhere we need to take the “problem” outa “geek” or we are left with the mess (in a bad way)

#KISS

People BLOCKING the needed process, or simply ignore it

If you keep doing the same thing, there will be the same outcome. Different worldviews produce different processes, and sometimes entirely different outcomes. This is the core lesson people miss when they treat radical #openweb projects like just another app or fluffy #NGO pitch deck.

All the #OMN projects grow from a different worldview – that comes from the lived traditions of the commons, the early Internet, and grassroots organising. It’s a worldview that has already worked: from the early #indymedia network the global voice to the anti-globalisation movements, to the early #wikis and #blogospheres that built collaborative knowledge before #closedsocialmedia captured it, to #Fediverse platforms like Mastodon continue to prove federation can scale without #dotcons corporate control. These are working proofs that decentralised, transparent, and trust-based systems do build society. They have scaling limits – yes – but these limits are part of their strength: they push diversity, autonomy, and accountability at human scale.

The challenge now is that most people entering the tech and activist spaces have no knowledge of this lineage, or worse, have knowledge of only one half of it. Developers who understand federation but not community process end up building silos with nice APIs. Activists who understand horizontal organising but not open standards end up trapped inside Facebook groups, Google Docs, and Slack workspaces – all walled gardens that feed the #nastyfew systems they claim to oppose.

When people have no grounding in subcultures, that underpins our civil rights, free software, and creative commons, they apply their all-knowing #mainstreaming “common sense.” They block the processes that make trust possible, dismiss open governance as messy, and treat openness itself as a threat to control. The result is stagnation: yet another “platform for change” that centralises power, burns out volunteers, and silently collapses when the funding ends.

The #OMN is an answer to this trap. It’s not a single tool, but a shared soil, a technical and social framework designed to connect and compost all the half-built projects and forgotten ideas still scattered across the #openweb. By combining the social scaling limits of grassroots organising (trust, transparency, and accountability) with the technical scaling power of open protocols (ActivityPub, RSS etc.), we rebuild the conditions for a real public commons. The tools are already here, what’s missing is the cultural memory and the courage to use them.

Let’s talk about the hashtag story

Hey, changemakers! Are you tired of shouting into the void on social media? Frustrated with the endless noise and the lack of impact? It’s time to harness the power of #hashtags to fuel a movement that can actually make a difference. And guess what? The #openweb is our playground for this revolution!

Check out The Hashtag Story https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=the+hashtag+story it’s more than just a guide; it’s a blueprint for building something big, something real. If you’re passionate about activism and ready to step up, this is your chance. This isn’t going to be an easy or comfortable path, but hey, who ever said change was easy?

The #OMN (Open Media Network) path is more than a simple call to action. Core to this is that the hashtags story can be more than just noise; it can be seeds for a movement, a way to connect, organize, and grow. But this only works if we make the commitment to turn those hashtags into something more than just digital graffiti. We need to take that extra step, turn talk into action, and make the #openweb a place for real, meaningful activism.

The #hashtags cover technology and society from a progressive view and are very simple, on a surface level, but full of complex conversations when you lift the lid and talk in the context they grow.

#deathcult = neoliberalism

#fashernista = fashion in relation to social political relations

#openweb = the original ideals of the WWW and internet culture

#closedweb = is the pre internet computer networks and the post #openweb networks, the #dotcons grow.

#4opens = the workings of FSF and open-source development with the addition of transparent process.

#encryptionists = all solutions need more encryption, this is often unthinking technological fascism.

#dotcons = the transition to for profit internet, and the social con this embodies.

#geekproblem = an old discussion on freewill and determinism, also a cultural movement, think of “two cultures” as a path to start to understand this.

#techshit = is a part of the composting metaphor, shit as a core, important, part of the ecological waist (social) cycle.

#techchurn = the technological outcome of the #geekproblem

#nothingnew = a polemical way of slowing and reversing #techcurn in a non-dogmatic way.

#OMN = open media network

#indymediaback = rebooting the dead altmedia project that was in its time the size of the #traditionalmedia on the #openweb

#OGB = open governance body

#BLOCKING = refusing to look/averting eyes/eyes closed

They are complex and interlocking, telling a wide story and world-view, to show a path out of our current mess.

#deathcult is relevant because of #XR forcing us to look the truth of ecological and social decay in the eye, good to ground this in real historical experiences, think of the Irish Potato and Bengal famine.

#Fashionista is about consumer capitalism, looked at as social illness.

#openweb is about building code for anachronism rather than capitalism

#dotcons are feeding social illness, we cannot keep building this sickness, the step away metaphor is a positive path away from this.

#closedweb is a form of technological slavery, we often choose.

#4opens is a tool that can be used to guide us on to the better humane path and, it gives us the power to JUDGE and thus decide, it is POWER.

#geekproblem is a group of people lost in darkness, blinded to humane light, they inbreed monsters in code #techcurn #techshit

The #geekproblem hashtag is not simply negative, it’s taking obvious “problem” out of “geek”.

The problem is obvious look at #failbook and Google both “geek” projects of domination/control, and yes you are right it’s geek culture shaped by capital in both cases.

What does #openweb geek culture look like? Looking back at early #couchsurfing and #indymedia you have healthy non “problem” examples. Look at both projects late in their decline, we have strong examples of the “problem”.

#techcurn the world is full of me to projects, everyone has the same ideas, few if anyone links.

#nothingnew is a question, do we need this codeing project.

#techshit is when people do not ask this question and build it anyway agen and agen

#encryptionists are in the end way too often about artificial scarcity (web03), this is not actually needed. To be clear this is a minority need for this technology, but as a limited use case not as a dominant way of thinking, codeing. #encryptionists is about the feeling of total control that encryption gives the #geekproblem this is key because all good progressive society are based on trust, which is about giving up this desire. The problem in geek is the problem of socialization… a known geek issue 🙂 in itself is fine, am not judging. BUT this is embedded in code that shapes society, it becomes a “problem”. Good to think a bit more on this one. With power comes responsibility.

This list only touches on the meanings and subjects. Next question, what is the story and world-view that these #hashtags embody?

Feeding a vampire class of #fashernistas for 20 years

When people do not understand/respect the value in keeping the fluffy/spiky debate in place you end up like this https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/francesca-bria-on-decentralisation/ This is the problem, not the solution.

Worth a read to see the issue of feeding off the state and the VC poison that shapes the #fashernista ploughing over grassroots by the #deathcult These people are adding to the #techshit and shifting the focus to pointlessness, I have seen no good outcomes from their work.

But they were “our” people at one time, our old friends in activism took the heathy internal stresses that were braking projects like #indymedia to feed a #fashernista vampire class, to built careers feeding on and draining grassroots corpus for 20 years.

It’s not a good look, but people like these are the gatekeepers you talk to when you talk to “power” #indymediaback

Influx of EU funding into the Fediverse – all together push through, the HARD block crumbles

Getting a good outcome is hard… And this current influx of EU funding risks doing more damage than good to the health of the #Fediverse, if it continues along its present agenda. Yes, the #Fediverse already has its own lifestyle-driven mess, but we can try to mediate the damage driven by funding first. If we succeed there, maybe the lifestyle drift can self-mediate in time.

Aiming for a better outcome, what we’re looking for is social change and challenge with less mess. This page looks at some of the best funding we’ve found http://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects Not an attack, but opening a conversation on an obvious issue.

We can also look at funding that is being completely wasted, but that’s likely outside our influence. Lets keeping it positive (When We Can), I like to keep things positive… if possible.
But let’s be honest — a lot of people are BLOCKING, and that’s going to cause fire and a LOT of smoke. This is what real social change/challenge looks like: murky. Focus on #KISS — Keep It Simple — to see through the smoke.

Transparency matters, it’s hard to imagine how you can do a left-wing project without showing your workings:

Open/Trust = left
Fear/Control = right

That’s the core framing this page is about.

#Dotcons & poisoned agenda, Yep, the whole #dotcons side of the EU funding agenda is poison.
It only feeds the mess. And as I’ve pointed out before, most funding ends up poured straight down the drain. Sadly, that’s the default outcome.

#IndymediaBack – Learning the right lessons, one thing to keep in mind: I think we (the #Indymedia crew) learned the wrong lesson from the repression and state raids. We pushed fear/control as the solution, and this added to the #closedweb mess. But as the #Fediverse now shows, the path should have been open/trust — That’s the #openweb path we abandoned. That split ripped Indymedia apart, and we’ve been stuck in the #dotcons mess ever since.

Simplicity as Strategy, when making judgments, keep it #KISS — Simplicity is what cuts through the mess. Shovels and compost, is the #OMN approach.

Trauma, Repression & Healing, Yes, trauma is real. That’s why I lean into basic ways of looking at these things. From there, it’s up to people to build up, DIY style — a real grassroots approach.

Practical approaches, watch the film:

I made this for the legal support crew of a major campaign. The repression was ongoing and intense — But the healing came through mass participation, like walking calmly through police stop and search zones. That likely helped to mediate a lot of growing trauma.

Final thought: #Openweb – all together push through, the HARD block crumbles. We’ve got work to do. Let’s keep it grounded, open, and as clear as we can through the murk.

You can’t start a war if there is nothing to fight over

#indymedia was ripped apart by the war of open/closed

Build open tools without HARD coded defaults – yes you can choose where the switches are flicked on the default install, but that is as much power that the dev team should take in #4opens dev

“War, What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it agen…”

You can’t start a war if there is nothing to fight over.

Doesn’t OMN need to fit into some economic relationships?

The big #fedivers is run in the voluntarist economic model of patron and donations to cover basic costs. The technical federation allows this to happen at a humane scale. This was how #indymedia was run for 10 years – not without stresses that we do need to mediate. at the #OMN we have seed funding for 3-4 years and looking for sustainability here.

We are building “grassroots” at #OMN the is a role for #mainstreaming journalism and media. Projects like @novaramedia etc. they can be funded in different ways. Diversity is always a good thing, its were real humane power lays.

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia as a lot of the most shitty behaver was taken offline as a part of the ripping that tore the project apart. For the #OMN this is a problem that we strongly need to mediate when implementing “individualistic” rights/workflows. We need to keep metadata flows intact to build trust and history. This challenge raises questions on the balance between privacy and transparency.

The were internal and external forces… I tend to concentrate on the internal as it’s the area that we actually have power/responsibility to make work. The external is a harder task that we then have to fight to challenge/change.

A good (non-neutral) write up of the #death of #indymedia https://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2011/04/478397.html

The start of the end for #indymedia with the project splitting into open/closed and the growing intolerances on both sides https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391384.html

How do movement die. Some #indymedia crew trying to unblock the ossification and growing open/closed conflict https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/02/391385.html

We need to not repeat this mess for the #indymediaback project.

What should #indymediaback look like?

For some of my views from living/working through this mess

http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2020/03/17/a-look-at-the-internal-mess-of-the-uk-indymedia-project/

http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2013/03/28/a-brief-history-of-activism/

History’s of #indymedia are full of academic wank

The Problem of Academics Covering Activism, in activism, particularly within grassroots movements like #Indymedia, there is a significant disconnect between academic interpretations and the realities on the ground. This gap is not a matter of perspective but represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamics and operational mechanisms of activist movements.

The disconnect, academics gravitate towards more visible and vocal members of activist circles, the #fashernistas. These are, often passionate and articulate, but are not the ones making the movement’s wheels turn. The core of activism, the real work, is carried out by those who are too busy to engage with academia because they are immersed in the day-to-day efforts of driving change.

The history of the Indymedia project is a case in point. Indymedia was a pioneering effort in the early 2000s to create an open publishing platform for grassroots journalists. Its story is a rich tapestry of collaboration, innovation, and relentless dedication. However, much of the academic writing on Indymedia misses the mark, focusing instead on surface-level narratives. For a deeper understanding of the Indymedia project’s history from someone who was actively involved, you can read my activism stories.

Academia push analyses that are often removed from the practical realities of activism. The theoretical frameworks and methodologies used serve more to fulfil academic desires for publication and recognition than to provide a faithful representation of activist efforts. This creates a body of work that can be described as “wish-fulfilling #fashernista wank,” offering little insight into the actual functioning of movements.

Consequences of this misrepresentation are significant. Historical records, influenced heavily by academic accounts, paint an inaccurate picture of how movements operated and succeeded. This not only distorts the past but also impacts future activists who look to these records for guidance and inspiration. The narratives crafted by academics sideline the contributions of the true workhorses of the movement, leading to a skewed and broken understanding of what is effective in activism.

To bridge this gap, we need academics to engage more deeply with the core activists, those whose hands are dirty from the work of making change happen. This requires a shift from seeking out the most vocal and visible to those who are often unseen but indispensable. Additionally, activists themselves must recognize the importance of documenting their efforts and experiences, ensuring that future narratives reflect the true spirit and mechanics of their movements. The is a project for this #makeinghistory, we do need more authentic dialogue between academics and activists, to build a more accurate and useful body of knowledge that actually honours and reflects the efforts of those driving change.

Q. I wish the hacker culture connection to anarchism was more thorough and consistent. It looks a lot more like privileged fuckery and pet insurrections. It could be that the academic scene wasn’t representative of the movement as a whole

A. I would largely ignore most existing academic history of anachronism and tech as it is extreme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism

In my view, a good place to start a project like this would be to look through the #indymedia email archives for an “original” anarchist workflow. I would not take much notice of the “official” history’s of indymedia as they are full of academic wank. The theoretical analysis of the time is all pushing agenders that ripped the project apart and killed it – these are interesting to see this process, but much less useful as exacting history of what actually happened. The who internal process is saved in open email lists now hosted on archive.org no other anarchist project is this well documented.

Best not to add to the activist “mannerism” in our history, it’s very bad all ready, if we are to have hope for “anarchism” fluffy and spiky playing a role in saving a humane/ecological world.

#indymediaback

Churning of pointless tech projects

Almost everything made in alt-radical tech is obviously pointless and only feeds #fahernista churn.

Why #indymediaback is not a pointless radical tech project.

#nothingnew mediates the churning of pointless tech projects by building things that already work.

In the #fedivers we use this tradition to replace existing #dotcons projects as new #openweb projects

This replicating the #dotcons with #openweb versions has its limits. All code is “ideology” so bringing in the #deathcult to the #openweb by direct copying has its own issues to work through.

We mediate this problem by recreating a widely used radical tech project #indymedia with good existing workflow and embedded in wide radical social networks/agreements.

The value balance in #indymediaback is not in the tech though that is needed. It’s in the #nothingnew social side of the project, without this continuity we have a pointless tech project.

Food for thought.

The #geekproblem is not actually interested in the #openweb as a human value network. Instead, they often feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Feeding off the dying #openweb is bowing down to the #deathcult

Looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.

The #OMN is a shovel to compost this inhuman mess.

What do you mean by “mainstreaming”

Q. what do you mean by “mainstreaming”.

A. we all worship the #deathcult (neo-liberalism) in polatics, economics, most of the food we eat, our jobs and social lives are all mediated/mostly created by this invisible world-view. In progressive terms #mainstreaming is pushing this agender to build carriears and social structures to further the personal #stupidindividualism created by the #deathcult we live in. This is a circle that is going to kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years from #climatechaos and the social feedback loop of political #fascism

#stupidindividualism is created by the social disintegration of the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, fascism is an outcome of this.

Examples from the UK groups @NovaraMedia while producing fab content its all distributed through the #dotcons and in the end they aspire to be the new @guardian to take the role of #traditionalmedia This is fair anufe but the wider “we” need to balance this with #grassroots media which is a non #mainstreaming mission.

Most #NGO agrenders are #mainstreaming this is an easy to see view.

I played a role in training thousands of grassroots “journalists” over the last 25 years at #undercurrents, #indymedia, #visionontv and now #OMN the majority that are still creating media went onto build there carriears in the mainstream and #NGO sectors few stayed in non #mainstreaming production missions. Cant blame them for this, though no alts were sustained from this which was why we did the training.

In each case grassroots/alt structures were devoured by the #deathcult pushing the need for mainstreaming survival – cant blame people for this.

BUT we need a working alternative if we are going to change the world that does not kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years #XR

learning for expirence the #OMN is a political/tech tool to mediate this issue.

Makinghistory a OMN project

DRAFT of #makeinghistory

This is exactly the same #OMN project and workflow as the #indymedia project – just a different template on top. We need to work to add this tag function.