Capitalism is a hostage situation -Not an economy

Our current #mainstreaming path of paywalls stacked on paywalls isn’t life, it’s a trap, we need a way out. In our everyday lives, we’ve come to accept the absurd:

You pay to eat food grown on land you don’t own,
Pay to sleep under a roof that someone profits from,
Pay to drink water privatized by corporations,
Pay to breathe, because the air is poisoned by industries that sell you both the problem and the solution.

And if you miss a payment? Game over (inspired by). That’s not a functioning economy, it’s not freedom, it’s a hostage situation, where every basic human need is held behind a transactional barrier, and the meter is always running.

This #deathcult is late capitalism: an endless stack of paywalls enclosing what used to be public, shared, and free. It isn’t just about money, it’s about control, dependency, and isolation. It’s a system that engineers artificial scarcity, so a #nastyfew can profit while the many just try to survive.

But it wasn’t always like this, for most of human history, people lived within commons-based paths, where land was collectively stewarded, food was grown and shared within communities, tools and knowledge were passed down, not patented and governance was often local and participatory.

The last 200 years of “common sense” capitalism is an enclosure of these commons, first the physical ones (land, water, food), and now the digital and social ones (communication, culture, identity). The #openweb, like the open land before it, is being fenced off. Platform by platform. App by app. Cookie banner by paywall.

This enclosure now defines much of our tech infrastructure, every scroll, click, and share is now mediated by profit-driven platforms. Even activism – once vibrant and messy – is being swallowed by slick interfaces and the same throttled feeds. Resistance is filtered, shadowbanned, deboosted, and pushed to monetize. And “our” #NGOs fighting platform power… are doing so on those same platforms.

It’s an absurdity, and worse: it’s a trap. We need alternatives, real ones. We’re not going to “ethics workshop” our way out of this. We need to rebuild the tools of everyday life – economically, digitally, socially – from the grassroots up.

Commons-based systems, let’s turn some “common sense” on it head, instead of private ownership: stewardship. Instead of scarcity: abundance through sharing. This is where projects, like The Open Media Network (#OMN) come in as a practical framework for grassroots media infrastructure:

Built on the #4opens: open data, source, standards, and governance.

Designed to decentralize publishing, and return control to local communities.

Uses both client-server and P2P bridges for accessibility and resilience.

Encourages trust-based networks over extractive platforms.

OMN is not just theory, it’s active code, messy dev, and practical tools for people to tell their own stories, host their own content, and build alternative knowledge systems outside corporate media. These technologies make community hosting the default – not the exception. They reduce reliance on fragile or compromised #dotcons infrastructure. They’re imperfect, but they’re a step out of the enclosure.

The point isn’t just tech, It’s power, capitalism doesn’t just gate resources. It enforces relationships of power. That’s why rebuilding tech without addressing governance, ownership, and access won’t get us far. The #geekproblem is real: tech that nobody can use isn’t liberation, it’s just another dead-end.

The alternative? Keep it #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), prioritize social usability over technical elegance, build bridges, not silos, return to shared ownership and open processes. Capitalism is a hostage situation, but we can walk out the door – if we build the exit together.

You’re not powerless, and this isn’t about purity or escape. It’s about building real infrastructure for real life, so when the capitalist system keeps crumbling (as it will), we’re not left scrambling. We’ll already be living differently.

#OMN #MakingHistory #4opens #openweb #p2p #indymediaback #geekproblem #commons #decentralize #cooperative #foss #degrowth #resilience

UPDATE the seed of this post was from a toot, but can’t find the original to link to due to the #UX of mastodon updating and no functioning search on my instance to find history, sorry, add in comments if you find the original. Updated

Real world tackling the #geekproblem

With rebooting the #openweb we run headfirst into the #geekproblem, a recurring pattern where: Technically brilliant people build powerful tools …but those tools remain socially unusable …or solve only geek problems, not the needs of actual communities. It’s not malice, often it’s idealism, but it creates a dead-end culture of endless prototypes, abandoned standards, and empty tech demos. Meanwhile, the real-world crisis deepens.

The work we need is bridges building, let’s try this ere “P2P news app” built on #dat Hypercore/Hyperswarm is exciting. Yes, it’s similar to Nostr in structure: distributed relays, client-side aggregation, unstoppable flow. But as with Nostr tech isn’t enough. We are social creatures. A usable system needs:

Clear use cases rooted in human relationships – not just tech possibilities.
User-facing front-ends that invite participation, not gate it.
Interoperability with existing protocols (ActivityPub, ATProto, etc.) to avoid siloing.
Bridges between architectures – e.g. client-server ↔ P2P – so that real-world adoption is gradual and survivable.

The good news, the wider #OMN project is already a sane path forward, with a #KISS hybrid path. The plan is in bridging #P2P and client-server as a way out of this. Something like:

A lightweight server bridge that serves data to client-server users (ActivityPub, fediverse, legacy web),

While simultaneously feeding a P2P mesh, with each peer storing and distributing redundant objects,

So that over time, client-server becomes the bootstrapping layer, and #P2P becomes the long-term archive + resistance layer.

“Data is just object flows – how the user gets the object is irrelevant technically.”

This is the kind of thinking that gets us out of the traps, by moving from protocols to people. This isn’t just about code, it’s about culture. The #geekproblem won’t be solved by more architecture diagrams, it needs movements that embrace imperfection and prioritizes social use, visible, working front-ends people can contribute to and understand, documentation and tooling that builds capacity in others, not silos around the brilliant few.

What next? For the devs:

Can the p2p-news-app codebase be modularized to plug into #OMN projects as a data backend, even in a basic way?

Can we bridge shared data objects across protocols (e.g. post metadata flows from P2P → ActivityPub), even if janky at first?

Can we prototype a simple but cross protocol usable frontend, the examples is the work on #makeinghistory and #indymediaback, that lets non-geeks see and touch the network they’re part of?

Yes, for the movement, keep things messy but moving. Avoid dead ends by always asking:

"How does this empower non-technical users to organize, document, and publish together?"

Keep the tech grounded in the social fabric, the activists, journalists, organisers, and rebels this is all meant to serve. If you’re reading this and thinking, “I can help,” please step forward. There’s space in wider tech/social #OMN and #MakingHistory for everyone, coders, writers, designers, testers and storytellers.

Let’s build bridges, not silos, let’s build tools people can use, not just tools geeks can admire, let’s do this together.

First step: Stop being a prat

We have strong passive #blocking forces stopping the real change and challenge we need before we have any hope of changing the world, thus we as a community have to change our stance towards this blocking. And the first step – the most important one – is painfully simple: Stop being a prat.

That means:

Stop pretending you don’t understand the stakes.
Stop making perfect the enemy of good.
Stop whining about how broken things are while refusing to touch the tools that exist.
Stop treating radical, working alternatives like they’re someone else’s hobby project.
Stop waiting for someone else to do it.

You don’t need a degree in political science or coding, or anything to see what’s happening, from floods and fascists to boat evictions and mass precarity. You don’t need permission from a foundation or a blue tick to take part, you don’t need a five-year strategy. Simple, you just need to stop being a prat, and start doing, so, what does “not being a prat” look like?

Instead of doomscrolling, publish one thing that matters using #OMN tools or paths.
Instead of performative politics, help document what’s actually happening around you in a #4opens way.
Instead of building personal brands, build open #Fediverse infrastructure that your community can use.
Instead of hiding behind cynicism, show up and collaborate – messily, imperfectly is fine, just try not to be a prat.

Why it matters, because the #nastyfew people seizing power right now, from JD Vance to the canal eviction bureaucrats, aren’t being prats. They’re serious about building institutions to shape futures. The tragedy is that our side, the ones with the heart, the vision, the history, are too often busy being clever, passive, cool, and precious, kinda like prats….

The first revolutionary act in the 2020s isn’t heroic, it’s just showing up, not being a prat, and doing the obvious things, together. This is simple, most importantly #KISS please don’t be a prat about this, thanks.

The #mainstreaming is talking about the #deathcult – So why are you still waiting?

Affective Protest vs. Effective Power: From Spectacle to Strategy

What can we learn from the current mess. The protests didn’t fail because people didn’t care. They failed because the system is not built to respond to protest, it’s built to absorb it. We’ve marched for climate justice, taken the streets for peace, rallied for gender freedom, and now we mobilize for Palestine. The awareness is unprecedented. The turnout is historic. But what has shifted?

Police powers expanded. Fossil fuel extraction accelerated, Gaza burns. The truth is: awareness is not power. That’s a bitter pill for many on the #mainstreaming liberal left, who still believe that if we just scream loud enough, someone with authority will finally listen. But listen to what? A million voices chanting through state-sanctioned routes, wrapped in #NGO branding, monitored and shaped by our mobile devices?

This isn’t failure by accident, it’s design. Modern post #neoliberal governance has perfected the art of managing dissent, it doesn’t crush opposition, it curates it. It schedules protest, builds fenced-off “free speech zones” tallies engagement for annual reports. It makes this work by funding the same nonprofits it pretends to oppose to push protest as a pageant, a performance of resistance that never practically interrupt the flows of capital.

Worse than this, it trains us into harmless routines: march, chant, selfy, hashtag on the #dotcons, disperse, donate, repeat. It pacifies rage by channelling it into metrics, and then sells those metrics back to us as success. It offers us vacuous victories made of smoke and mirrors: a viral post, a headline, a panel discussion.

But to put this simply, real power doesn’t care how you feel, it cares what you can disrupt. And right now, they know we can’t disrupt much, because power doesn’t fear signs or slogans, it fears logistics. We know this from history. The Viet Minh didn’t defeat the French colonial army with slogans. The IRA didn’t survive the British Empire through branding. The Zapatistas didn’t hold territory in Chiapas by waiting for permission. These movements did not rely on protest. They relied on operations. On strategy. On adaptability. On patience and planning.

What do we need, to shift from affective protest to effective resistance? This doesn’t mean abandoning public protest entirely, but it means recognizing what it is: a signal, not a structure. It’s the spark, not the engine. And too often, we mistake the spark for the fire.

So what does this shift look like? Stop chasing virality. Build networks that don’t rely on platforms owned by billionaires. Organize in ways that can’t be throttled or shadowbanned.
Don’t just protest; prototype. Create alternatives: cooperative farms, tool libraries, mesh networks, open media infrastructures (#OMN), community defence projects. Measure what matters. Track not followers or clicks, but mutual aid distributed, infrastructure built, people trained, tools replicated. Treat resistance like an ecosystem. Not wannabe famous (stupid)individuals shouting louder, but communities learning, adapting, and reproducing decentralized power.

In short, we need an operational culture, built not on outrage cycles but on daily commitment, iteration, and survival. This is prefigurative politics in action: we don’t beg the world to change, we build the new one inside the shell of the old. Yes, the current system will collapse. It is already collapsing. The question is no longer how to reform it, but at this stage, how to outlive it, and outgrow it.

This is where strategy matters, this is where affect must meet action. Because we aren’t here to perform resistance for an audience, we’re here to construct parallel systems in the cracks of empire. And that starts with understanding: protest alone is not enough. We must become ungovernable, not just in what we say – but in how we live.

#KISS

The problem of too big, Mastodon

I would start to say, with care, that #Mastodon is now heading in the wrong direction. Not because it’s inherently bad, or malicious, or “captured” in some conspiratorial sense. But because it’s become too dominant, tipping the scales far away from the diversity and messiness that a healthy #Fediverse needs.

This isn’t about blame, it’s about balance. To keep the #openweb alive and meaningful, we need to nurture other codebases, other, paths, cultures, and radically different governance paths alongside Mastodon’s dormant trajectory. Let’s acknowledge where Mastodon succeeded: It has been a gateway into the Fediverse, by mimicking Twitter, it provided a familiar experience that let mainstream users, journalists, #NGOs, and even some governments dip their toes into decentralization. It helped break the suffocating monopoly of Twitter/X. This was useful, necessary even. We needed a bridge.

But now? That bridge is being pushed/mistaken for the destination. And worse, it’s reinforcing the patterns we were trying to escape. Instead of blossoming into a diverse ecosystem and experimental tools, the #Fediverse is shaped by Mastodon’s design limitations and its pushing institutional gravity. That’s the problem, it’s not just a project any more, it’s becoming a bottleneck.

With #NGO-centric thinking shaping many of the newer Fediverse-adjacent events (like #NGI forums or EU funding discussions) which are now populated by the same #NGO/#dotcons crowd and comfortable liberal institutions that avoid risk, fear grassroots control, and domesticate the web for funding reports.

So, Mastodon isn’t “bad” and it played its part well. But its institutional path is now out of alignment with the nature of the Fediverse: the #4opens, radical transparency, permissionless innovation, and native grassroots culture. This is a poisoned balance, not because Mastodon is wrong, but because its gravitational pull is now preventing new paths from taking root.

What’s the alternative? Push for federation that supports collectives, not just individuals. Rebuild spaces for group publishing (like #Indymediaback) and shared authorship, not just influencer-following. Keep pushing the #4opens: Open data, open standards, open governance, open code – not just a logo and a code of conduct. Remember that a monoculture is always a point of vulnerability. Diversity isn’t optional, it’s the core strength of the #openweb.

So yes, Mastodon is a problem on balance, even as it was a solution before. But still, we don’t need to burn the bridge – but we do need to compost the monoculture and grow a thicker forest around it. Because decentralization means divergence, not convergence to one project’s roadmap #KISS

Trying to Remember: A Personal Reflection on Activist Histories and Memory Holes

The Mess We Make (Again… and again)

Ten years ago, I remember being told, often condescendingly, with smug certainty, that hosting in the cloud was the future. That what I was working on, #DIY grassroots self and community hosted tech was the dinosaur, a dead end, old obsolete thinking, out of touch. Despite spending years pointing out the obvious flaws in this pushing, for this I got only that my “native” path was irrelevant, for Luddites, they said. Legacy thinking, dead tech walking.

Well, here we are, a decade later. And guess what the cloud: It was expensive, less performant, less secure, and a gateway to increasingly exploitative pricing models. This isn’t hindsight bias, the warning signs were always there. But many #fahernista and #geekproblem people get caught up in the glossy surface and tech hype mess, repeating the same mistake we’ve made across generations of #geekproblem tech, believing scale and #PR buzzwords were synonymous with progress.

Let’s now be clear on what actually happened.

We handed over infrastructure to a handful of giant platforms that lock us in and bleed us dry.
We lost resilience, sovereignty, and basic control over our own data.
We normalized rent-seeking as a business model.
We pushed decentralization off a cliff and called it “abstraction.”

Meanwhile, local compute got cheaper, storage exploded in affordability, bandwidth costs continued to fall, #dotcons threats increased. And guess what? Running things locally started making sense again, just like it always does when the #PR smoke clears and mess composts.

The lesson, which we need to now bring to #crypto and #AI, just because something is fashionable doesn’t make it in any way real or sustainable. That tech #PR hype cycles aren’t innovation, they’re marketing. And when you stop looking at the core trends (cost, control, resilience) and just ride the buzz, you’ll end up where we are now, mess, bloated budgets, shrinking trust, and a growing #techshit pile to clean up.

We need to re-learn the value of #KISS grounded thinking, to remember that local, #4opens, transparent, and interoperable #openweb systems aren’t retro, they’re essential. This isn’t about nostalgia for the old paths, It’s about having power over our basic infrastructure again. The cloud, at the time and in looking over our shoulders, was smoke and mirrors, a detour, it’s now past time to get back on the real progressive #Fediverse path.

History has a lot to say on the peasant revolt vs. liberal half-measures

History has a lot to say on the peasant revolt vs. liberal half-measures

For thousands of years, the demands of the oppressed have remained startlingly consistent: Erase all debts, Burn the records, redistribute the land. These weren’t radical demands. They were and are common sense for those crushed by the weight of extraction, enclosure, and empire.

Compare that to today’s to often #fashionista “leftist” rallying cry of “Tax the rich.” Let’s be honest, this is moderate, half-baked reform in the #KISS sweep of human struggle. “Tax the rich” still assumes the rich deserve to keep most of what they’ve hoarded. It doesn’t touch the foundations of power. It doesn’t challenge the right of a #nastyfew to control the lives and labour of the many, it’s simply a polite request for a fairer share of exploitation.

Let’s talk about #conservatism – not the myth, but the mechanism. It’s not in any way about preserving “traditional values.” That’s branding. It’s about conserving power. Specifically, it’s about conserving the power relationships of the #nastyfew who own and rule, while the rest of us keep our heads down, grateful for scraps. It’s about saying the rich deserve their wealth, and the poor deserve their suffering. It’s about hiding violence behind respectability, and calling it “order.”

This didn’t start yesterday, from the French Revolution to today’s food bank capitalism, conservatism has been #blocking grassroots movements work to compost this mess. And now, it masks itself in liberal #mainstreaming, progressive slogans, while cops will increasingly beat your neighbours in the street.

And yes, if they’re beating your neighbours today, they’ll be beating you tomorrow. But maybe that shouldn’t be the reason to care, maybe it should be enough that they’re beating your neighbours today. This is not about guilt, it’s about clarity, we need to remember what real justice has always meant. Not tweaks, not taxes, not “top” tables with seats for the “marginalised.” But a complete rethinking of power, because if we don’t start #KISS thinking again, we’re not challenging anything – we’re decorating to hide the smell of the #deathcult

Please don’t be a prat about this, thanks.

How we push the world into this nasty mess

A musical interlude about the prats running the world

So how did we get into such a mess, one vile prat sells weapons to another vile prat so he can flatten a hospital being used by another vile prat, who then returns the favour by bombing the vile prat’s power grid. Then they both turn to the cameras and declare it’s all the other’s fault, while pointing fingers and shouting: “You’re the real vile prat here!”

Meanwhile, the rest of us, watching from behind #dotcons screens, trapped in algorithmic echo chambers, suffer the fallout, literally and figuratively, as these vile people continue their pushing pantomime of destruction. Whole cities vanish, people starve, oceans rise, and still, the prats keep prattling on.

Then there’s a whole swarm of quieter, vile prats. These are the ones in expensive suits who sit on boards and in parliaments, nodding sagely while doing absolutely nothing. Example? The arms trade with Saudi Arabia. The world watches Yemen bleed dry while the UK and US keep shipping weapons and shrugging. Another? The climate crisis, where oil companies, vile prats with shiny logos, knew the damage decades ago and simply paid the #mainstreaming to bury the evidence. Or look at Gaza. Or Sudan. Or Myanmar. Pick a conflict, you’ll find the same prats.

Our use of tech’s is core to this mess making: the #dotcons, surveillance platforms we call “social media” feed us these nasty prats daily, empowering them while disempowering us. And the #mainstreaming pundits, journalists, and influencers #fashernistas act like this is all normal, business as usual. They’re part of the problem. A bunch of vile prats, simply.

And because this feedback loop of prattery is normalized, people keep telling us this is how the world has to be. No alternatives. No resistance. Just sit down, shut up, and doom scroll. So here’s a humble ask: Don’t be a prat. Don’t excuse prats. Don’t promote prats. Start calling prats what they are. Vile prats.

How the world gets into this nasty mess, One vile prat supplies bombs to another vile prat so he can bomb another vile git, who then bombs the vile prat who bombed him. Then they keep being vile prats to each other and blaming each other and calling each other a vile prat for being a vile prat. And the rest of the world watches and suffers as these vile prats simply keep being vile prats. There are also many other vile prats who don’t speak up because one nasty vile prat, the biggest vile prat, has blackmail photos of them all being perverts, not in a good way.

Anyone #mainstreaming is pushing this mess. (Paraphrased from David Dayan)

An example of what happens in a nasty prat run world, to us.

And people think and act on this as normal behaver, this is why we are in such a mess, #KISS. The path out is to start composting, not feeding the mess. You don’t have to be perfect, just don’t be like everyone else, don’t be that person, thanks.

Some reading: https://steady.substack.com/p/when-incompetence-goes-to-war

The Mess We Make (Again… and again)

Programming Mission: Let’s Fix the Fediverse Discovery Gap

Here’s a small but powerful challenge for #openweb builders – and a perfect #DIY project if you’re fed up with the current #geekproblem. I’ve been trying to find #Fediverse instances that actually cover my town, Oxford, UK, so I can help promote and grow them locally. You’d think this would be simple, right? But… nope.

Tried the standard “instance pickers”? Dead ends. Tried generic web searches? Useless #SEO sludge. Tried maps like this one, a good start https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/fediverse-near-me_828094#7/52.076/-1.714, but nothing covering Oxford.

Why is this happening? Because our current tools focus only on technical facts (server specs, software used, uptime, etc.) and ignore the uncontrolled (dangerous) metadata that actually makes discovery meaningful:

What’s the instance for?
Who does it serve?
What community does it represent?
Where is it rooted geographically or socially?

This is the #geekproblem in action: great code, but no way to find things people actually want to use. What’s the fix? Someone (maybe you?) could create a community-focused discovery tool that:

Encourages instance admins to tag with location, community, topics, etc.
Provides search/filter UI that works for real people, not sysadmins
Uses the Fediverse’s open standards (#ActivityPub + #microformats) to pull this info in
Maybe even integrates with OpenStreetMap or a simple opt-in geo-tagged registry
Outputs something friendly – like “Find your Fediverse community in your town”

This is not a hard project, it’s a weekend hack for someone who cares, but it has real social value as it helps bridge infrastructure to lived communities. That’s the core of the #openweb reboot.

So for people who can’t see why this matter. If we want the Fediverse to grow beyond techies and Twitter refugees, we need to help people find their people. Local discovery is key. Place-based communities are still powerful, especially when rebuilding trust, mutual aid, and shared media in a collapsing world.

So, want a simple mission? Build a tool that helps people find #Fediverse instances by town, city, or region. Start with Oxford, but make it global. Make it open. Make it federated. And when you do? I’ll be the first to push it out.

#Fediverse #OMN #openweb #4opens #FediverseDiscovery #programmingchallenge #Geekproblem #MutualAid #CodeForGood #FOSS #localweb #trustnotcontrol #KISS

Update: my suggestion of path, a simple UX:

A few dropdowns over the map,

Region (countries are regions, anti-nationalistic)
City/area (a county or city)
local (village, area in city)
Them maybe latter hyper local (but not for now)

Then we have subject – it would be normal to have a multi subject hashtag map, that updates on each click – adding the clicks to a list on the side – with “new button” to jump back to start.

Then you have advanced for the normal tech stuff… which currently is the front end on most pickers. This would also be displayed on the info box for each instance on the map, so still central, just not AT THE FRONT.

UPDATE: can just pull all the existing data out of the current sites like https://instances.social/list#lang=en&allowed=&prohibited=&min-users=&max-users= as these are all #4opens. So the projected site could be up and running with full data in little time. Yes, you would have to ask people to tag their installs to geolocate their instances. This could be done a hard way or a simple #KISS way like any admin in the instance adding a #hashtag with a geolocation hashtag after it. Then periodically go through the instance list and spider all admins on each instance if you find the hashtag – add the next hashtag as a geolocation or something as simple as this.

Ideas in comments, please.

UPDATE: this is this one https://fediverse.observer/map works better still nothing in Oxford – it seems to be pretty random with little relevance to subject and area, is it by IP address, that would be #geekproblem

Why Doesn’t Every City Have a Fediverse Server?

This is a story of power, plain and simple

Over the last few years, we’ve been watching a familiar story unfold, we’ve seen repeat itself in radical spaces, tech movements, and grassroots networks for decades. It starts in the grassroots with “progressive” #fashernistas (yes, them) pushing themselves into the front to speak for “us.” They talk the talk of decentralisation, care, community, and #FOSS ethics. They wear all the right hashtags: #opensocialmedia, #Fediverse, #commons, #techforgood. But when you look at how power is actually exercised behind the scenes, it’s something else entirely. This is a story of power, plain and simple. Not in the dramatic “revolutionary” sense. But in the subtle creep of careerism, institutional capture, and “safe” social capital games that flatten the radical and uplifts the “palatable”.

Let’s take a few examples from the #activertypub world, first with the #SocialHub stagnation, this open space was originally created by the grassroots crew to shape the standards of the decentralised web, It was originally a commons, protocol-building and governance exploration space. So, what happened? The people now “leading” came from lifestyle #fashionista activism and wannabe NGO circuits, who in the end were all trying to be embedded in the institutional funding environments, or visiting from the safe academic bubble. And thus they brought with them the dogmas of safe spaces, of “emotional consensus,” “hidden affinity group governance,” and “(ex)inclusive dialogue”… that JUST SO happened to exclude the radical and messy paths that are actually native to the #openweb, the bad mess they then made, ended up only pushing the dogma of the #geekprolem as it was the ONLY path they could imagine controlling in a way that would not threaten the thin connection to the institutions they were feeding from. This behaviour so often slips into forms of parasitism, which is not a good thing at all.

Then we have the current #Fediverse outreach infrastructure capture, where we’ve seen the same class of actors attach themselves to the most visible projects – like Mastodon, ActivityPub standards, and now “Fediverse governance.” They secure seats on boards. They host conferences with glossy branding and friendly logos. They use these controlled spaces to then push out “code of conduct” documents and “safe space” branding… while closing and excluding the very messy native infrastructure of discussion and direction that is both native and needed.

Examples? #Mastodon’s GitHub, issue tracking, and moderation are all tightly controlled by a small clique around the project founder. Community voices are kinda tolerated at best, discarded at worst. The project is moving onto the #NGO path, no bad thing in its self, but with its years of pushing its own branding as THE Fediverse, it becomes a bad thing. In this, there is a very real debt of damage they need to pay back – as a part of a functioning gift economy – saying sorry and admitting mistakes would be a good first step.

Then we have the example of the #FediForum events, pushing into the space blindly, with zero historical context or any actual knowledge, to represent the #activertypub ecosystem. The problem is they paywalled, which lead “naturally” to increasingly gate keeping with #NGO commercial interests being pushed to the front to represent “us”. When the radical and experienced grassroots voices obviously don’t get involved, as they simply refuse to step over the paywall. This is an ongoing mess, that we do need to compost and not only with #fashionista outrage but with real working paths, we used to do this, but we can’t any more – why?

Over the last few years we have had proposals for genuine horizontal governance, that could have been used to shift this mess making and to actually shifts power outward – but these were labelled “too messy,” “too political,” or “not the right time.” This is not accidental, it is liberalism functioning as control – with a smile. So… what can we do? Let’s be clear: This is a power issue. It’s not about bad intentions. It’s about how power is used, and then abused, even in the so-called “horizontal” paths.

The first thing we have to do is recognise the smell of #NGO-style liberalism that so easily hides itself in good intentions, grants, DEI language, and “process.” But it then ends up:

Disempowering community autonomy
Replacing radical potential with “professionalism”
Marginalising away activists and messy real-world projects
Recreating the same vertical hierarchies, just with better “open” branding

Composting this mess is needed to break the cycle:

Build and back native projects. The only way to push back against capture is to grow infrastructure from within our communities, like: #OMN (Open Media Network) #OGB (Open Governance Body). These must be trust-based, not credential-based. That means supporting those doing the work without demanding they translate it into pointless and most importantly powerless NGO-speak to be taken seriously.
Use the #4opens as a filter, this simple social retelling of #FOSS is designed precisely to push out the 95% of #techshit and focus energy on projects with: Open source Open data Open standards Open governance. Apply these consistently, and the parasite class will struggle to keep and find a foothold.
Push for messy, lived governance, stop waiting for perfect systems. We need to prototype imperfect, transparent, accountable governance now. It should be: Based on trust, not rules-lawyering Driven by use, not representation Grounded in solidarity, not status
Refuse the “leader class”, just because someone has a title, a grant, or a #dotcons following, doesn’t mean they speak for us. Call out the unaccountable influence. Politely or not. Let’s not let careerists write our futures.:

The Fediverse path could be the most important #openweb reboot of the commons of this decade. But it will only be that if we keep it rooted in social power, not polished #PR and #NGO mess. We don’t need new kings. We need more gardeners, to work together to compost the piles of #techshit and keep the space open and safe.

I think when our #fahernistas say to us “what have we done, please be nice to us, you’re not welcoming.” We need to reply: Am happy to be nice #KISS, just stop being a prat in this space please.

It’s really simple, please stop being (an often nasty) prat.

The Mess We Make (Again… and again)

NGIFORUM2025 is timidly touching sense

It’s good to see events like #NGIFORUM2025 as it’s trying to be on the path of the #Fediverse and the wider #openweb reboot which are real forces for social good, messy, hopeful, and grounded in decades of grassroots digital culture, which we do need to support. BUT we also need to speak honestly, as these spaces are not healthy by default.

Too often, they are co-opted by #NGO and institutional actors who bring with them a dangerous kind of “common sense”, what I’ve long described as the parasite class. We see this clearly at #NGIFORUM and similar #NGO events. Despite the energy and good intentions, the dominant framing is stuck in a narrow, #neoliberal logic:

More funding for shiny #techfixes.
Token gestures to social issues.
Endless discussion about scalability, compliance, branding, and “the market.”
Panels where “on-topic” needs reality-checking and “off-topic” is often the path to sense.

This is not the #openweb native path, and what we need is more shovels and composting, to grow the real grassroots native paths, with open projects from the messy soil of lived social experience. Not more polished “innovation theatre.” And crucially: we need to bring activism back into these spaces – not as token #fashernista crap, but as lived, rooted practice. We need to embed activist tech into the core of these events, not leave it in the hallway as is the current norm.

Because let’s be honest, too much of what’s being showcased is just more #techshit to compost. Take the role of NGI funding (Next Generation Internet): It could be a powerful tool to fund the future of a people-powered web. But right now? It’s structured to reward isolated hard tech with narrow deliverables, and punish anything messy, social, or disruptive. That’s upside-down.

The development side of open-source should be anti-commercial – in its process, not necessarily in its usage. That means public funding should support the huge social layer that keeps FOSS and #openweb projects alive:

Community organising.
UX design from lived needs, not compliance charts.
Onboarding and trust-building.
Accessibility work.
Documenting process for reuse and remix.

But currently these parts are entirely unfunded, and that is pushing us into the arms of the parasite class’s of all types. We are walking backward into the future, again, projects without people, users, and support are dead projects. No matter how elegant the codebase is.

One thing that the event brings up is that we need to shift policy, national governments and #EU to actively intervene in the monopolies running the current internet. Both mobile and fixed-line networks need to be opened up to allow for grassroots, peer-to-peer, and local hosting paths to flourish. The current centralised infrastructure is a block to the native #openweb, and we can’t “build better” on broken foundations.

The also needs to be a cultural shift, to unblock the #geekproblem. This is not a call-out – it’s a call-in. The feedback is there, i’ve personally been working on this issue for over a decade, what we’ve seen is a cycle: Working in a small way… failing in a big way… repeating.

It’s not personal, it is structural. And we can do better, if we compost the fear of doing things differently. A practical example, we need more points that are currently deemed “off-topic.”
Because what’s “on-topic” in these spaces is just branding and polite theatre. And that’s exactly how the #dotcons rose to dominance in the first place.

We are at risk of simply recreating their culture in softer tones. Let’s not do that. Let’s take a breath and reflect on what we’re actually building, it’s not a rhetorical question. This is not abstract.

Because if we keep defaulting to #neoliberal “common sense,” if we ignore the reality of climate collapse, digital authoritarianism, and infrastructure lock-in, then we’re just dancing around the edges of a very real #deathcult.

Let’s do the real work, let’s dig, plant, compost, and build trust. Let’s reclaim the tools and shape the #openweb around care, not control. Because anything less? It is just another empty panel on a sinking ship.

“All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.”
— Oscar Wilde

#Fediverse #OMN #4opens #commonsnotplatforms #mutualaid #socialroots #trustnotcontrol #KISS #NGIFORUM2025 #NGIforum #nlnet

It’s becoming a problem

It’s becoming a problem. When people start asking, “Is @_elena the first genuine superstar of the Fediverse?” – we should all pause. This isn’t idle praise, it’s the reproduction of celebrity culture, liberal imperialism, and vertical hierarchy in a space that explicitly set out to reject those structures.

Have you ever thought – just for a moment – that this might be the completely WRONG path for a horizontal network like the #Fediverse? Yes, we need mess. Yes, we need experimentation. But this? This is #mainstreaming in its most seductive form, a soft power grab, hiding behind friendly faces and growing marketing gloss.

Both #pubconf2025 and #fediforum, and the people who attend them, are becoming a showroom for this liberal capture, promoting star-making and platforming over community process and open governance. It’s a mirror of the conference-industrial complex, repackaged for the #dotcons-weary.

We’ve seen this before: #NGOs turned movements into funding funnels. Influencers replaced organizers. Polite panels replaced fourm-level solidarity. It’s been happening here the last few years. But we do need to remember, the Fediverse isn’t a playground for fame, it’s a commons, to distribute power – not concentrate it. We don’t need to unthinkingly push people down the superstars’ path. We need peers, comrades, care, conflict resolution, and actual shared infrastructure.

So let’s be honest, if you’re pushing “the first superstar of the Fediverse,” you’re not pushing decentralization, you’re pushing brand culture, mainstreaming logic, and attention economies repackaged for liberal feels.

That’s not radical. That’s not native, it’s not what we came here to build. Let’s compost this celebrity logic before it roots too deep. Let’s stay messy, collaborative, and resist the temptation to crown anyone. Because if we don’t? We’re just rebuilding the same old pyramids – with slightly alt avatars.

Let’s look at the more #mainstreaming #dotcons path. The not-so-subtle message we need to remember on social media: Dictators hate to be ignored. Especially on their “special days” – birthdays, elections, court appearances, or orchestrated spectacles. These moments are designed to dominate the media cycle and, by extension, the social media algorithms.

They thrive on attention, and whether that attention is praise or outrage, it fuels their visibility and power. Here’s the social tech they exploit:

When you doomscroll their face, the algorithm sees interest.
When you post disgust, the algorithm sees engagement.
When you argue with trolls, you’re boosting the signal of the original post.
When you call them names, it still centres them.

That’s the #dotcons feedback loop, engagement is king, and dictators know how to play that game. Let’s break this circle, on these days, do something different:

Share stories of local mutual aid.
Link to historical context that exposes the long game of these power grabs.
Boost voices that decentralize attention, not concentrate it.
Post about books, direct action, food sovereignty, climate organizing, and tools for collective autonomy.
Highlight grassroots projects like #OMN, which are building sustainable, decentralized alternatives.

This is how we take the air out of #mainstreaming fires. Starve the algorithm and feed the resistance. Focus on things that actually matter, remember: not engaging is a strategy. Ignore the circus. Build the commons.

#KISS