The are few if any working humane alternatives to the current #deathcult worship, thus for meany stepping away from this mess is simply not an option. The #OMN is about proof of concepts to build off what we know works combined with the new technology of federation (activitypub) to scale these small scale to wider social projects. The #OGB#indymediaback#4opens are stepping stones to a different, sustainable world.
Interesting to think about why people put so much energy into #BLOCKING
All #OMN projects are based on grassroots organisation that we know works, the innovation is in using “technological federation” to scale these working social projects using #activitypub that the fedivers is based on, which we know works.
Mainstreaming people who spend energy #blocking the fedivers are the same people who would come into a protest camp and reject and try and force change on the working process.
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 are planted in.
#BLOCKING = refusing to look/averting eyes/eyes closed
The stroy is complex and interlocking, telling us 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?
Q. A lot of evil stuff happens via the cyberweb, no doubt. But I would encourage anyone who still knows how it works not to give up on it. Instead, try to work around the BS and design systems which are resilient to adversaries. As conditions of life get harder and the oligarchy turns the screws we need channels of dissident communication, even if they are no longer mainstream ones. Even retro stuff may go under the radar.
A. This is a social tech problem, a #geekproblem and the solution is social tech that steps away from the #geekproblem we cant just keep doing the same #techshit it’s time for composting #indymediaback#OMN are example of this that are currently blocked.
Q. As far as I could understand from what you said, what would then be exactly the social related problem to solve ? Are you referring to the way spying agencies like the CIA that is dominating the hacktivist scene, are creating “trends” on how to be safe online, which have most of the time no true impact regarding the possibilities of such agencies to continue spying and having social control? So you mean it’s a matter of being good at creating counter propaganda to cancel
A. You are describing the problems, then adding a layer of self-destruction to the problem, that’s not helpful. The #openweb has been “destroyed” by some forces you name. But we have also played a role in destroying it ourselves in refection to the real problems you highlight. We have little power over the first and more power over the second. It’s hopeful to think about this #geekproblem
Q. The #openweb wasn’t destroyed exactly. If you look at the numbers of websites over time, the open web is still there, but what happened is that almost all of the attention got captured by a small number of enormous corporate sites. The corporate sites made themselves critical conduits for search and discovery of news and views, such that the notion of “web surfing” has become almost obsolete. Google search increasingly won’t show much of the open web, because it’s not within the targeted ads business model.
A. yes my point, the #openweb is under a thin veneer of corporate crap. The #fedivers is a tiny break out of this that seceded because it was “accidentally” anti #geekproblem we need to be hardcore anti #geekproblem is the is to be HOPE 🙂
Q. The success of the fediverse did have a very large element of luck to it. Before 2017 it was doing very badly, and I remember unsuccessfully trying to persuade people to try GNU Social instead of going on Facebook. Even people who hated Facebook were reluctant to try the fediverse. Also my interpretation is that ActivityPub was originally a corporate idea but that the corporates lost interest, leaving its development to a few remaining grassroots activists. If the corporates had stayed that ActivityPub would probably be something quite different.
A. Yep, gave me hope, though it’s failing now – we have to stop fucking up this grassroots tech. A start is #4opens talking about the #geekproblem and using these to start composting #techshit
Q. The fediverse isn’t failing as such, but is becoming an established technology and so is no longer shiny or something which a clueless tech journalist would want to breathlessly scribble about as a new phenomena. Like XMPP and other previous protocols it is getting into the “plateau of productivity” where it mostly “just works”. There are complaints about lack of spec development, and some of those are justified. But ActivityPub doesn’t need to do all the things, it only needs to do one job well – that of being a social network protocol.
A. yes, it’s not failing in its own terms. But it is not heading to success in the bigger picture of being a alt to the #dotcons I should know being involved for the last few years outreaching it to the #mainstreaming that understands it has a #closedweb problem. The #EU outreach is interesting in this and likely also going to fail in the wider mission. It’s hard to push #openweb in a era controlled by #stupidindividualism and capitalism/alt diesper.
Q. It depends on what the EU’s wider mission is, but I expect that it’s not really a grassroots type of mission anyway. Whatever the machinations or motives of the EU, we do need to maintain a viable space for people who actively don’t want to be stuck in the corporate hellscape. And we shouldn’t assume that the EU will continuously bankroll some projects.
A. At the #EU it’s a power politics fight between the need for #open in a organization that is all about #closed people know they need to change but are only brave to pretend to do this. Am interested if a little crack of #open might be enough to undermine the monolith. Problem is everyone is up for selling out #open to grab a bit of #closed so only weak #open PUSH is all we have, needs to be sharper and harder push. Think stake and vampire level of PUSH with a few blows of a mallet to drive the point home. #open has power over closed, just like light over darkness.
It’s good that people try not to push pointless tech projects… And the majority of new tech projects are obviously pointless. To get an idea of what to push do a #4opens review and publish this, let’s build a community of useful tech together. We need to do better.
#techchurn has made so much #techshit over the last 10 years. There are piles of #mainstreaming and alt tech that needs to be composted to grow a more humane world. Focus on what we CAN change and what we do have directing (social) power over, our mess.
From a grassroots prospective, we don’t have alternatives as they have been devoured and turned into shit by #NGO#fashernistas and social #deathcult worshipping (40 years of neoliberalism)
Thus, your/our lack of motivation, in my lifetime there were meany anarchist/ecological/socialist alternatives which kinda worked in imperfect ways.
Let’s use federated #4opens tech to reboot these from before they were killed and eaten by this mess, and innovate om this.
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
It’s obviously true that society/ecology is sick from this blinded worship.
From this dogmatic liberalism, one thried is our society’s moving to corporate socialism. That is “law” and norms are shaped to value a tiny number of the nastiest people at the “top”.
Data and metadata is privatised, increasingly “National socialism” is the “common sense” #mainstreaming we code for and agenst.
To address this #geekproblem some of us need to step away and code outside “liberalism” and not in reaction to fascism.
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.
The#IMC project is an affinity group – so we are planing to work through consensus and diversity of strategy to move the project past where it was ripped apart by internal stresses after 10 years of running as a successfully worldwide radical grassroots media project.
Of course this can and will be updated as needed, but we have a “chicken and egg” issue that we need a working affinity group/s to reach consensus on where we go. The #indymediaback project is a way of bootstrapping this code/process in #4opens way.
To keep “diversity of strategy” in place, we are using the #OMN framework.
The #OMN is about building #KISS bootem up trust based media networks for publishing and soughing content with enriched metadata flows. In the end you have a “stupidly simple semantic web of media object “cauldrons” and flows build up from a local level. What you/we do with this is up to the users/producers… this is held to radical politics by #PGA
Initial projects are media #indymediaback and archiving #makeinghistory with the resistances’ exhibition. There are likely lots of other things you can build as its just pipes and flows – the internet as a “open/trust” database of humane objects/people.
How this fits into traditional or Alt economics is not rarely up to us – but bounded by #4opens and #PGA so up for “connections” based on opendata flows – #RSS or #activertypub are good starts.
And we have chat/wikis, bots and other projects. The running cost of all This is currently just over £500 a year as we have upgraded the visionontv server to host lots more video.
Feel free to use/support the #openweb projects and get involved in running them, become a mod, its #DIY
let’s start with history. The editorial workflow of #OMN is based on #indymediaback which is based on basic grassroots journalism growing from radical anarchist traditions.
The newswire is made up of original content published to the site and aggregated flows from a trust network of #4opens sites built out of a community of interest/affinity groups.
Using the #5W and #4opens we start the step away from “post truth” by grounding this flow in a community of action bounded by physical locations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
The “news” value of “this happened” Who, What, When, Where, Why.
From this a feature flow is built by the core affinity group to show the #5W storeys from different views as a “consensuses” centre column articles.
These articles are then aggregated to other subject/geographic instances newswires.
In this the small streams/flows build a strong river of “social truth” that feeds into seeding a more humane world.
The wider #OMN network, using the fresh newswire and aggregated features to build wider features – these “social truth” networks links the humane world from a grounded real grassroots action/communities.
We build society from the bootem up rather than the old top down of #traditionalmedia/governances.
This itself shifts and moves solutions by aggregation and drives social economics to #4opens humane agender. In the end we play/build a new more humane/ecological world.
To move this part of the project on:
We need “news” a flow of subject/geographic 5W newswire posts on the 3 test instances – then we need to cross-link these by turning the instance based flows into feature articles.
These are aggregated across to the other instances and pushed out to the #fedivers for comments and feedback which then flows back into the #indymediaback instances to the newswire. This new flow needs to be cross-linked into articles, all linking back to the source.
From this we can flesh out the training resources and start the outreach of the project properly, build the power of different voices.
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.
The 
