The mainstream economic system, which underpins the current globe mess, is facing a deep and escalating crisis. This isn’t just about isolated single issues, it’s rooted in fundamental contradictions within the path we are on. Understanding these dynamics helps us see why our lives are shaped by austerity, inequality and endless war, leading to the current ecological claps.
The core of the crisis is economics, capitalism is grappling with a crisis of profitability and overproduction, the extract of maximum profit has built-in limits. As industries mature, squeezing out new profits becomes harder, stagnation sets in, driving drastic measures. In overproduction, capitalism produces far more than can be profitably sold, not because people don’t need these goods, but because they can’t afford them. These contradictions are now global, leaving nowhere for capital to expand without significant upheaval. To address this, the burden is systematically offloaded onto the working class, that’s us. The austerity path they talk about and impose is making us pay for their crisis.
One way the system tries to “fix” its profitability problem is through austerity. Cutting wages, both direct wages (our pay) and indirect wages (social spending on healthcare, education, infrastructure) are slashed to divert funds into profits. This erodes social support, when the infrastructure and public goods are gutted under the guise of “fiscal responsibility.” For the capitalist class, the greedy few, every penny spent on social upkeep is a penny not turned into profit. By shifting these costs onto the working class, they temporarily prop up their system while deepening the inequality we live in.
War, restoring profit through violence, when austerity isn’t enough, capitalism turns to war. Armed conflicts serve as a means to seize resources. Wars open up new sources of raw materials and markets, essential for restarting stagnating economies, create demand when military spending boosts industry and generates profits in the short term, regardless of human cost. War isn’t about peace or democracy—it’s about economic expansion at the expense of others. The casualties are collateral damage to the pursuit of profits.
Growth doesn’t serve us, the obsession with “growth” hides that under the current mess, capitalism, growth benefits the few, not the many. While corporations grow profits, ordinary people see stagnant wages, rising costs, and dwindling quality of life. Degrowth are often dysfunctional myths, anti-growth rhetoric can target the working class, accusing them of overconsumption. In reality, the poorest consume far less than they need, while the wealthy hoard resources, this liberal thinking sometimes is not helping. What we need isn’t anti-growth, but a reorientation of “growth”, investing in the means of subsistence for all, improving quality of life, and addressing urgent global needs by pushing hard to mediate the environmental catastrophe to focus on sustainably.
Dividing us to conquer us, to maintain control, the system relies on division, racism and nationalism. These ideologies pit workers against each other, distracting from the cause of shared struggles. Exploiting despair, with decades of deindustrialization and neglect levering entire communities in despair, creating fertile ground for reactionary politics that feed on this. By keeping us fragmented and focused on fighting among ourselves, the current #mainstreaming path ensures we don’t unite to challenge this mess.
What we need is more solidarity and system change that highlights how the contradictions are unsustainable. While the current path enriches a tiny few, it leaves billions struggling for survival and our ecology pushed out of a liveable balance, this is while producing enough resources to meet everyone’s needs. The solution isn’t austerity or war—it’s collective action to build paths that prioritize humanity over profit #KISS
To achieve this, we need to mediate the (stupid)individualistic narratives that blame “us” for systemic failures and instead embrace solidarity, demanding change and challenge. We need to focus on blaming “them”, yes, it’s daunting, and a little dangerous, but history has shown that when people organize, they can dismantle even the most entrenched systems. Let’s make that history again, please.
In part, the current challenges faced by the #openweb and grassroots reboot movements can be traced back to two cultural and structural problems: the influence of #fashernistas and the deeply ingrained #geekproblem. Both of these issues contribute to active blocking of meaningful change, hindering the progress needed for an openweb reboot. To walk this “native” landscape effectively, it’s needed to understand these barriers and how they work to block change and challenge.
The fashernistas and their echo chambers. The term refers to a subset of people who are highly engaged in performative discussions, centred on trending topics and social posturing without substantive engagement in grassroots real world problem-solving. While they are adept at identifying and amplifying transient issues, their conversations stay within insular bubbles. This creates a cycle where attention and focus are pulled toward repetitive discourse that never leads to concrete outcomes.
This taking up space with little and most often no follow-through is detrimental. Fashernistas thrive in a space where the appearance of awareness is valued over the hard, real action that is needed. In this #manstraming bubble, dialogue is focused on social capital—who knows what, who said what—rather than collaborative problem-solving. The result? The conversation around the openweb becomes cluttered, attention splinters, and meaningful action is overshadowed by a constant churn of noise.
The role of #fahernistas in blocking change is their ability to dominate platforms and narratives. This domination becomes active blocking when their presence leaves little room for discussions rooted in genuine collaboration and open progress. They inadvertently (or sometimes deliberately) create an environment where the needed ideas and radical challenges to the status quo struggle to gain traction, let along attention. If the openweb is to flourish, this culture of self-referential chatter needs to be mediated.
The #geekproblem is a different kind of barrier, which is about the cultural divide within tech communities that leans heavily toward deterministic, technical solutions at the expense of accessible, inclusive approaches. The geekproblem manifests when developers and technologists become gatekeepers, framing issues in ways that reinforce their control by preserve existing narrow structures rather than opening them up for collective problem-solving.
For example, in the #openweb and #fediverse projects, the drive for good #UX runs parallel to an implicit exclusivity of bad UX dressed in “privacy”, “security”, “safety” etc. Technical jargon, complex onboarding processes, and a lack of user-friendly interfaces are a barrier to entry and community building. This exclusivity prevents the broader range of participants from engaging meaningfully, turning potentially revolutionary spaces into “specialized” silos, that reinforce this very #blindness.
#fashernistas and #geekproblem interact and often work in unintentional tandem. While the former distracts and fractures attention with endless (pointless, narrow and repeating) discourse, the latter locks down practical pathways for change through gatekeeping and technological insularity. The result is a failing “native” path, where critical mass, and the needed community, fails to grow—one part is too busy talking, and the other is too busy coding in isolation. The broader culture of the #openweb suffers as a consequence, making the needed change far more difficult to achieve than it needs to be.
Mediating for change, the solution lies in finding a balance that mediates between the superficiality of fashernistas and the closed nature of the geekproblem. This involves, promoting diverse voices, by ensuring that discussions within the #openweb aren’t monopolized by any tiny group. Building bridges between projects and communities, facilitating communication between technical experts and those involved in discourse to create actionable steps that align with #4opens paths. Developing a culture that values tangible outcomes and collaborative input over performative dialogue and gatekeeping. Amplifying onboarding, by making entry points into #opentech accessible, so people outside traditional tech ghettoes can contribute meaningfully.
The path we need for the openweb, is more than just technological solutions; it needs a culture shift. Both fahernistas and those contributing to the geekproblem need to recognize their roles and adjust their approaches, for the #openweb to thrive. The has been to meany years of pratish behaver on this, it’s pastime for #KISS. The current moment presents a fresh opportunity for change. With the fediverse and platforms like mastodon growing exponentially, there is potential to free the native spirit of the internet as a collaborative, #openspace driven by trust, transparency, and action. Let’s try and make this potential work, and not squandered it by letting the voices of the few block the work we need to do.
The blame, attack, and ban culture we’re seeing is not native to the #openweb. The principles that uphold the open web are built on the #4opens: open data, open source, open standards, and open process. These values encourage linking, transparency, and trust—qualities that are essential for constructive dialogue and a positive community atmosphere.
An example of why this matters: In recent months, reports have surfaced that developers associated with #bluesky, including those contributing to projects like #bridgy, have faced harassment. This behaviour runs contrary to the core path of the #openweb, #FOSS developers are humans too, with lives and responsibilities beyond their code, with #FOSS they provide their time to building #4opens free and open-source projects that benefit everyone. This kind of personal infighting can be not only unproductive but harmful. Yes, talk, argue about ideas and categories, but the focusing on individuals is often adding more mess to be composted.
A way out of this kinda mess is #netiquette, diversity, we need to foster spaces where diversity of thought and technology can coexist without wholesale blocking each other. A way to do this is for us to have conversations within our communities about netiquette and the standards we want to uphold. Yes, this is a challenging discussion, and it won’t be easy to reach a consensus. But even if the outcome is embracing our differences, that’s not a bad thing.
For more on my thinking on one of the strong roots of this mess subject
A part of this might be that it’s interesting to see that the right-wing are picking up the real problems and mess on the left and then using it to forward their own ideological agenda.
NOTE the things they are critical of are often real issues with the left, so we too likely need to address these ourselves, but to do this we should ignore the right agenda that comes with these right criticisms as this will be built of the normal right-wing lies and misinforming that their ideology paths are full of.
The current #mainstreaming paths are deeply embedded in capitalist structures, when looking at this critically, it reveals itself as a #deathcult, with the embodiment of unrestrained growth and consumption that runs counter to meaningful solution to #climatechange. While billionaires and corporatens may entertain the illusion of future-proofing their wealth and safety, the reality is more perilous than it appears to their narrow world views. Their greed fed opulence and influence can’t shield them indefinitely from a collapsing ecosystem that sustains all life, including their own.
At the heart of this is the inherent contradiction in capitalism itself: it requires perpetual growth to survive. This necessity for expansion is incompatible with the measures needed to mediate or stop #climatechaos. If growth halts, so does the economic machinery that upholds the current power structures, creating a destabilizing domino effect. While many might ask why those in power do not pivot to prioritize environmental preservation, the answer lies in the system’s relentless demand for expansion. Even if an individual capitalist—or a consortium—decides to scale back for the sake of long-term planetary health, the market will simply replace them with competitors who are more willing to pursue relentless profit, growth, and resource consumption.
The current path has a self-destructive logic, this paradox is why even billionaires who are conscious of the dire climate situation resort to insufficient and infective measures. They might fund green technologies and push for marginally lower carbon emissions, but the actions remain constrained by the underlying logic: protecting the continuity of capital. This capital-centric world-view can’t embrace the radical systemic change we actually need to avert ecological collapse.
Billionaires and the bunker illusion, the ultra-wealthy/greedy fuckwits, plan to retreat to their fortified bunkers and private, insulated zones once climate-induced chaos growes un medateable. While contingency plans do exist—high-tech shelters, land acquisitions in regions predicted to be less affected by climate change—these are temporary solutions. A world unravelling from the fabric of its ecosystems will not sustain even the most fortified enclaves indefinitely. Even if technology advances to the point of enabling space colonization, the timelines required for such ventures far exceed the immediacy of the crisis we keep pushing.
This is a systematic issue and we need a collective solution. Capital, the motivation and power for action, is not about individual capitalists but capital as an entity, the socio-economic phenomenon that exerts control over its arbiters. Capital needs infinite growth, prioritizing profit over sustainability and long-term human survival. Individual or even collective attempt to defy this logic and implement meaningful, planet-preserving strategies would be outpaced and outcompeted by others who align more closely with capital’s #stupidindividualism of ruthless greed is good.
This #KISS understanding underscores the distinction between idealist and materialist interpretations of the crisis. Idealists believe that with enough awareness and willpower, the system can change from within. Materialists, recognize that capital is a structure that acts beyond the control of any individual or organization. It functions like biological evolution: it values reproduction and expansion above all else, even when those traits are in the end destructive.
There is some room for corrective action within the existing system, but it’s inadequate. Policies to mitigate environmental impact, even when enacted, are slow and piecemeal. The issue isn’t that #mainstreaming decision-makers don’t understand the problem; rather, they don’t grasp the depth of systemic overhaul required to address it. The principles they consider immutable—the rules of modern economics and finance. The “common sense” is the problem.
The need for radical change, the #deathcult of mainstreaming, propelling growth and consumption despite ecological warnings, is locked in a dance with CAPITALS logic. While billionaires may fund clean energy startups and talk about sustainable practices, their wealth and the power structures they uphold are bound up in the unsustainable status quo. Change and challenge requires uprooting fundamental beliefs about how economies must operate, not just superficial adaptations. Until this realization is spread, capital will continue on its path, indifferent to the ruins it leaves.
Best not to be a prat about this, thanks.
Why Capitalism and Climate Change Solutions Are Fundamentally Incompatible
The urgent need to address climate change collides with an uncomfortable reality, as we outline capitalism’s foundational mechanics make meaningful climate action impossible. This isn’t a case of individual negligence but a systemic flaw. Capitalism, by design, prioritizes profit and growth, at the expense of long-term, collective concerns and environmental preservation.
Capitalism favours the greedy few who can maximize profits in the shortest timeframe. It’s a path where the most ruthless and nasty competitor prevails, setting the standard that others must follow or face obsolescence. This constant pressure means that if an individual capitalist or company recognizes the existential threat of #climatechaos, they cannot afford to act on it meaningfully without losing their competitive edge. For example, a corporation that decides to limit emissions at the cost of profitability will quickly be outcompeted by one that does not.
The logic of capitalism ensures that any significant deviation from maximizing short-term profit results in failure within the market. Thus, while some companies engage in “green” initiatives to pay lip service to sustainability, these efforts are superficial. They exist to placate public concern and leverage marketing advantages, rather than drive the needed systemic change. The myths are that capitalism, through innovation and competition, will solve climate change. However, capitalist solutions boil down to maintaining leverage and coercing others into action. For example, the race for green technologies like electric cars and renewable energy can be more about dominating a new market sector than reducing environmental harm. Elon Musk’s ventures into space and sustainable technology, hailed as forward-thinking, illustrate this principle. Space colonization and technological fixes reflect an expansionist mindset, a search for new “territories” to exploit as resources on Earth dwindle.
Capitalism’s path needs to push costs onto external parties, the public and the environment. The system relies on government-funded infrastructure and socialized costs, as seen with subsidies for oil companies, highway construction for the automotive industry, or public bailouts for corporations in crisis. When it comes to addressing #climatechange, this reliance on externalized costs becomes a liability. The climate crisis is a global “cost” that capitalism, left unchecked, will not address willingly. It requires collective action that contradicts capitalism’s individualistic and profit-driven paths. This is why capitalist markets require regulation by state or more importantly collective paths to function at all or sustainably, and even then, such measures face fierce resistance.
The automation age: how the nasty few plans to survive. The question whether billionaires believe they can weather the storm of #climatecollapse is complex. Many of them, seeing the unsustainability of infinite growth, look for exit strategies. This explains the investments in space travel, underground bunkers, and gated communities. The implication is stark: they believe their wealth will shield them from the mass suffering climatechange will bring. Automation adds another layer to this story. With machines replacing human labour, the exploiters envision a future where their economic power persists without the masses of real people, that’s you and me. This dystopian reality shows the detachment of capital from human and ecological concerns.
We currently face a failure of collective action. One of capitalism’s critical flaws is its inability to coordinate collective action without state intervention. While some countries have managed to decouple emissions from #GDP growth through advancements in service sectors and digital economies, this decoupling remains insufficient to meet the global targets needed for net-zero emissions. The system’s piecemeal and reactive approach cannot match the scale of planning required for real and needed climate action. Without a fundamental restructuring that prioritizes the collective good over private profit, meaningful progress remains an illusion and out of reach.
To make the #mainstreaming agenda more functional in an #openweb reboot, we need to address issues of inclusion, governance, and sustainable development while ensuring that the openweb embodies participatory paths. How do we do this?
Strengthen community governance decentralized and transparent decision-making by createing frameworks for governance that involve more voices from the grassroots, like the #OGB project. Tools based on federated models (like those used in the #Fediverse) empower people to participation in decision-making processes. Collaborative standards, working groups that draw from a mix of tech experts, community members, and non-expert voices to create paths that reflect collective needs rather than top-down dictates.
Develop a supportive ecosystem for builders with funding beyond the #fashernistas. Shift funding mechanisms toward projects that align with the values of the #4opens (open data, open standards, open source, and open process). This means supporting those who build with the public good in mind, not just flashy, trendy ideas, and tech fashions. Empower developers with a community focus by highlighting developing projects that prioritize #UX and community needs rather than tech novelty. Encourage #FOSS governance practices that are transparent and inclusive. Foster this inclusivity by bridging silos with cross-community dialogues, this can facilitate discussions that bring together different sectors of alt-tech, civic tech, and grassroots movements to cross-pollinate ideas and useful paths to take.
Ensure that platforms being built do not only cater to niche tech communities but are accessible and usable by the public, to focus on practical relevance. This helps to empower people to understand the importance of decentralized tech and how it benefits them directly. Thus helping to break down the barriers posed by the #geekproblem and demystifies participation in the openweb paths. A strong part of this is organizing hands-on workshops that engage people in contributing to and shaping the projects.
Accept that failures are part of the process. Instead of discarding what doesn’t work, use these experiences as compost—breaking down what failed and learning from it to build stronger initiatives. This plays a role in shifting cultural narratives to challenge and change the stores around the #openweb and wider #openculture to include cooperative problem-solving and mutual respect. Shifting the focus from tech utopianism to realistic, impactful change.
Build tech paths that are adaptable and capable of evolving with peoples needs and global conditions, including #climatechaos and socio-political shifts that are accelerating. A part of this is support for meany small tech paths that link and flow information and communities.
To reboot the #openweb to become a part of a shifting mainstream, we need to promote messy participatory governance, redirect funding to genuine, community-oriented projects, and champion inclusive, sustainable paths. The composting analogy emphasizes learning from past mistakes and continuously building resilient, inclusive solutions #KISS
The act of linking goes far beyond a simple convenience; it forms the backbone of an interconnected, accessible, and transparent internet. Yet, many people overlook its importance or misunderstand its role, especially when transitioning from #dotcons (corporate-controlled platforms) to #openweb environments. To sustain the promise of an open, people-driven internet, we need to recognize and actively engage with the practice of sharing non-mainstream links #KISS
Don’t feed the trolls, keeps coming to mind, when looking at the #X influx, this is like waves washing on the shore, be the shore not the wave.
To make the #NGO crew more functional in an #openweb reboot, we need to focus on changing organizational culture and integrating principles that align with the #4opens and “native” grassroots, collaborative values. How can we do this?
Emphasize transparency and open governance to mediate the NGO minded people who suffer from opaque decision-making processes that reflect the inefficiencies of traditional institutions. By embedding transparency and open governance—where decisions are documented, accessible, and participatory—we create a culture that supports this trust and collaboration.
Encourage flexibility and adaptability, as many NGOs have rigid structures that make it hard to adapt to new information and strategies. Embracing a more flexible, iterative approach—similar to agile practices in tech—helps organizations pivot when necessary and stay responsive to a rapidly changing world
Bridge technological and social gaps by mediating the common sense NGO temptation to treat tech as a separate realm, run by a select few tech-savvy individuals. Instead, hard code social understandings with technical frameworks. This involves training NGO workers in basic digital literacy and fostering collaboration between tech and non-tech teams to build solutions that are both functional and socially impactful.
Adopt the decentralized paths inspired by #Fediverse and #P2P networks to enhances resilience and empower local paths. This shifts them from the dependency on corporate #dotcons platforms and reduce susceptibility to the influence of #mainstreaming. Work for them to commit to ethical use of technology, the NGO crew should prioritize the use of #FOSS tools and technologies. This involves building and partnering with developers who focus on sustainable, community-driven tech projects.
Rethinking funding and independence is core, NGO minded people frequently become entangled with funding streams that align with mainstream, status-quo agendas, making it hard for them to support any radical change. To avoid this, NGOs can be incureaged to explore diversified funding models, such as community crowdfunding and partnerships that align with #openweb values, avoiding entanglement with restrictive, top-down paths.
NGOs need to be wary of falling into the trap of ‘NGO-ism,’ where the focus shifts from addressing root causes to perpetuating their existence for funding and visibility. This shift is countered by adopting the values of community-first accountability and ensuring that work leads to substantial change rather than superficial engagement.
Foster inclusivity beyond tokenism, NGOs are fixated on ensuring diversity and exclusivity, but this needs to be more than a box-ticking exercise. This means more messy organizing, truly valuing input from a range of community voices, fostering dialogue, and incorporating grassroots activism into their agenda to stay aligned with the real needs of those they aim to serve. Connecting with existing grassroots movements like #XR, #OMN, and others, and sharing expertise, resources, and platforms amplify voices and catalyze change. Building bridges instead of silos and encouraging co-creation are needed for revitalizing movements toward collective goals.
By taking these paths, NGOs and the crew that think in this stream, can become more functional allies in rebooting the #openweb good to focus on this #KISS
Trying to make the #fashernistas functional in an #openweb reboot is much harder than it needs to be currently. As, we do need to harness their strengths by redirecting their focus towards #KISS sustainable and meaningful outcomes. How can we do this?
Clarify Objectives, with straightforward and compelling stories that outline why the #openweb matters and how individual contributions can make a difference. A path to this is bridging skill gaps, with tools, workshops and resources that equip them with the knowledge and capabilities needed to participate in technical and community projects. This can help to shift the focus from self-promotion to collaboration, to create environments where the emphasis is on shared goals and outcomes rather than individual status and branding. Core, is a culture where collective progress is celebrated more than individual accolades, motivating the fashernistas to work alongside others to build communities of action.
Community #DIY projects, involve #fashernistas in decision-making through community-led governance structures that align with the #4opens (open data, processes, source, and standards). This is built from transparency and trust. To build this focus on narrative and storytelling to highlight social impact, craft stories around how #openweb projects positively impact real communities. This can resonate with #fashernistas’ interest in influential narratives. Engage with higher statues “influencers” thoughtfully to create and share stories that champion community-driven tech solutions and emphasize ethical, long-term growth over the normal fleeting trends. Connect these trends to tangible long term goals to demonstrate how style and purpose can align without losing depth.
Create opportunities for fashernistas to be involved in pilot projects, hackathons, and online campaigns that result in visible, practical changes. #Compost the social flaws, the negative aspects, by acknowledging and address superficial tendencies, redirecting energy towards problem-solving and constructive efforts. Use feedback systems to point out valuable contributions and areas that require more depth, guiding fashernistas away from shallow engagement towards impactful involvement.
The path is to promote long-term thinking by challenging short-lived trends, demonstrate value over time by examples from successful open-source and community-driven paths that gained momentum with steady and committed efforts. By aligning their creative energy with the structural and ethical needs of an #openweb reboot, the #fashernistas become not only influencers but essential collaborators in pushing a more connected, community-focused, resilient digital paths that we need in this era of crises.
In the online spaces I navigate, there’s no shortage of #fashernistas crowding the conversation, diverting focus from the native #openweb paths we urgently need to explore. They take up space and ultimately block more than they build. Then there’s the #geekproblem: while geeks get things done within narrow boundaries, they’re rigidly resistant to veering beyond their lanes, dogmatically shutting down alternatives to the world they’re so fixated on controlling. This produces a lot of #techshit, occasionally innovations, but with more that needs composting than the often limited value they create.
Then there are the workers, many of whom default to the #NGO path. Their motivations lean toward self-interest rather than collective good, masking this in liberal #mainstreaming dressed up as activism. At worst, they’re serving the #deathcult of neoliberalism; at best, they’re upholding the status quo. This chaotic mix dominates alternative culture, as it always has, and the challenge is one of balance. Right now, we have more to compost than we have to plant and build with.
What would a functioning alternative to this current mess in alt paths look like? Well we don’t have to look far as there is a long history of working alt culture, and yes I admit it “works” in messy and sometimes dysfunctional ways, but it works. What can we learn and achieve from taking this path and mating it with modern “native #openweb technology, which over the last five years has managed in part to move away from the #geekproblem with #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse.
Blending the resilience and collective spirit of historical alternative cultures with the new strengths of federated, decentralized tech solutions like ActivityPub and the Fediverse, the path we need to take:
Community-Centric Design: Historically, alternative cultures prioritize more communal, open, and egalitarian paths. The path out of this mess need to be rooted in this ethos, a new alt-tech landscape could leverage federated technology to avoid centralization and corporate control, emphasizing community ownership. The Fediverse, with its decentralized model, embodies this shift, each instance is a unique community with shared norms, which helps to protect against centralized censorship and allows diversity without imposing a single dominant path.
Resilient, Messy, and Organic Growth: A #KISS lesson from traditional alternative spaces is that success doesn’t require perfect order. Alt-culture spaces thrive on a degree of chaos and adaptability, which enables rapid response to new challenges and paths. This messiness aligns with how decentralized systems function: they’re, resilient, while letting communities develop their own norms and structures while remaining connected to a larger network.
Mediating the #Geekproblem: A key challenge in the tech space is overcoming the “problem” geeks, where technical cultures focus narrowly on technical functionality at the expense of accessibility and inclusiveness. ActivityPub and Fediverse have shifted this by prioritizing people-centric design and by being open to non-technical contributions. Integrating more roles from diverse social paths—designers, community, activists—can bridge gaps between tech-focused and community-focused paths.
Using #4opens Principles: The “#4opens” is native to #FOSS philosophy—open data, open source, open process, and open standards—guide this ecosystem. By adopting transparency in governance and development, communities foster trust and accountability. This openness discourages monopolistic behavior, increases collaboration, and enables #KISS accountability.
Sustainable Engagement Over Growth: Unlike the current #dotcons model that focuses on endless growth and engagement metrics, the alternative path prioritizes quality interactions, trust-building, and meaningful contributions. This sustainable engagement path values people’s experience and community health over data extraction and advertising revenue.
Leveraging Federated Technology for Cross-Pollination: ActivityPub has shown that federated systems don’t have to be isolated silos; they can be connected in a openweb of interlinked communities. Just as historical alt-cultures drew strength from diversity and exchange, the Fediverse path allows for collaboration and cross-pollination between communities while maintaining autonomy.
By integrating these native #openweb principles, we create an alt-tech ecosystem that is democratic, inclusive, and resistant to the mess that currently plague #mainstreaming and some alt-tech paths. This hybrid path allows tech to serve communities authentically, fertilising sustainable growth and meaningful, collective agency that we need in this time to counter the mainstream mess.
Reflecting on the last 40 years, it’s clear that the trajectory toward #climatechaos has been pushed by the entrenchment of corporate power and increasing capital-driven approach to global challenge. This era, the “neoliberal” era, normalized policies that favoured deregulation, privatization, and financialization. This shift didn’t just allow corporations to thrive; it redefined our social priorities, encouraging a culture where profit overshadows community and basic environmental welfare. These #deathcult worship have permeated public institutions and policies, making it harder for grassroots systemic change to take root.
The liberal majority, typically positioned between activism and power, has been to side with the “#mainstreaming” approach, which, while sometimes not as overtly destructive as corporate power, clearly lack the willingness to disrupt the status quo. These liberals express concern over climate change but favour “market-friendly” reforms that repeatedly fail to challenge or change the root causes of the #climatecrisis. This creates a paradox: despite their environmental concerns, they end up blocking radical changes. On the fluffy side, movements like Extinction Rebellion (#XR) and initiatives like the Open Media Network (#OMN) highlight how pushing this middle ground to support change—not just acknowledge it—is essential for challenging entrenched powers.
The OMN serves as an example of a shift from centralized, profit-driven platforms toward community-based, participatory paths. Unlike platforms that build on capital agendas, the OMN draws from grassroots energy and shared values, allowing it to organically support social goals. This shift is key: if OMN and similar #openweb initiatives grow, they’ll likely reflect their foundation—community engagement and shared purpose—versus the profit-at-all-costs paths.
While the liberal centre currently act as a buffer zone that resists necessary change, supporting projects like OMN can help reshape this middle ground by creating an accessible alternative to mainstreaming stories and corporate lies. In this sense, belief—especially in sustainable community-driven projects—becomes a tool for social transformation. And belief is crucial; without a sense of possibility, it’s easy for people to fall into cynicism and adopt the fear-based messaging spread by right-wing agendas
The challenge is to compost the “bourgeois struggle” between conflicting nasty interests by promoting grassroots, #4opens paths and projects that focus on cooperation, transparency, and community.
“We don’t need to talk about the climate, we don’t need to talk about change. What we need to talk about is power and criminality and evil.”
Lying as a tool for blocking change has become the pervasive issue, especially when people use it to protect the status quo and avoid facing uncomfortable truths. This obstructs the collective efforts needed to talk about problems like #climatechange, social inequality, and the erosion of open, democratic #openweb communication paths. Tackling this involves strategies that create a #4opens culture where honesty and accountability are valued, while simultaneously recognizing that some of these distortions stem from deep-rooted personal, social, or economic fears.
Establish clear, collective values around truthfulness: A first step is creating a culture where truth is valued, especially when it challenges the self-interested comfort of those involved. In functioning open networks, communities have shared values, that rewarding honest dialogue and penalizing deceptive behaviour which hinders constructive paths. This transparency can be incentivized by showing how it benefits collective goals over (stupid) individual agendas, aligning values to encourage honesty as a default.
Encourage critical thinking and #KISS media literacy: People lie and distort truth when they lack confidence in understanding complex topics and thus feel pressured to align with dominant easy stories. A culture of media literacy empowers people to spot misinformation, resist manipulative tactics, and feel more comfortable confronting inconvenient truths rather than ignoring or reshaping them for comfort. Equipping people with these skills means fewer incentives to hide or distort facts and paths.
Promote accountability mechanisms: When dishonesty is not held to account, it reinforces a culture where lying is acceptable. To push back at this, transparent accountability culture is essential, especially in influential sectors such as media, politics, and social organizations. Accountability encourages people, institutions and communities to take responsibility for the information they use and host, helping to establish truthfulness as the norm rather than an exception.
Normalize difficult conversations: Lies are used as a shield to avoid uncomfortable subjects, especially in collective spaces where the potential for friction is high. Encouraging a culture of dialogue, where differing opinions are expressed without retaliation, reduces the need for deception. By creating “active zones” for conversation and providing conflict-resolution traditions, groups address the root issues without resorting to dishonesty.
Use positive reinforcement for transparency: Rather than punishing instances of dishonesty harshly, positive reinforcement can reward honest behavior, making it a habit. When communities highlight examples where transparency led to better decisions, improved paths, and strengthened trust, it becomes a wider path for more people to take. Celebrating transparency that benefits a project or a social goal helps to erode the perception that lying is necessary or advantageous.
Acknowledge the root causes of lying as a defense mechanism: Often, people lie as a defense against vulnerability, fear of judgment, or loss of control. Recognizing these underlying motivations makes it easier to address them constructively rather than combatively. Providing support, whether through promoting self-awareness, emotional resilience, or ethical decision-making, reduces the pressure people feel to lie as a way of self-protection.
Build grassroots movements focused on integrity: Lastly, fostering grassroots movements that are on the #4opens path, embodying integrity, transparency, and accountability from the start is key. Small, community-driven groups have the agility and cohesion to establish a trust-based environment, which can serve as a seed for horizontal scalable wider networks to balance the mess coming from larger, dominating #mainstreaming institutions. By showcasing effective, transparent grassroots paths, we influence larger systems and set a precedent that truth is not optional.
In a world where lying undermines genuine change, mediating its use requires #4opens strategies that prioritize transparency, mutual respect, and courage. Changing a culture from one where lies are tools of convenience to one where truth is a shared value is a core part of the change and challenge we need. This will not be easy, but when we can start to close the gap between intentions and actions. This shift of path from lying to truth is #KISS to addressing the complex mess of our time, ensuring that truth, rather than deception, fuels our paths.
The idea of nationalizing the fossil fuel industry as a climate solution has had some attention in recent years, though it hasn’t yet broken into #mainstreaming policy discussions. Proponents argue that taking control of the industry allows for a managed, planned decline of fossil fuel production, aligned with climate goals and fair treatment for workers.
Notably, liberals like the Democracy Collaborative’s Carla Skandier have proposed a “51 Percent Solution,” where the government would secure a majority stake in fossil fuel companies, guiding a controlled reduction in output while providing worker protections and ensuring energy security during the transition. Economists, including Mark Paul, have also highlighted that, with public ownership, governments could avoid lay-offs and support fossil fuel workers through the transition, making this approach both an economic and environmental path.
While mainstream politics in the U.S. and Europe have not embraced nationalization yet, there’s increasing support for policies targeting both demand and supply of fossil fuels. Without direct control over fossil fuel companies, efforts to reduce emissions are blocked by corporate profit motives and the industry’s political corruption and influence. This #KISS liberal approach serves as a substantial step toward meaningful #climateaction, but its feasibility, however political support, would require broad public backing and economic planning to balance stability and fairness during the transition.
This is likely the ONLY #mainstreaming path that could work, me I like other paths, no issue not to do both at the same time #OMN
Over the last few decades, the web’s evolution has been shaped by competing ideals. Early on, we witnessed the shift from the “better” #closedweb corporate controlled paths to an #openweb#DIY explosion—a time when collaborative, decentralized approaches thrived. #Mainstreaming efforts to recapture this #4opens spirit failed for years, but eventually, corporate-driven dot-coms platforms captured the majority of people. Activist voices were muffled as #dotcons pushed mainstream interests, pulling away the community-driven power the web once enabled. This phase was a bait-and-switch operation, leading to surveillance capitalism and making it harder to stand up for collective, public-first internet paths.
A key aspect here is that this decline wasn’t caused by isolated figures but by broader, recurring social forces, like #fahernistas and the #geekproblem, who fell into patterns of adopting dominant narratives by failing to recognize the alt values of “native” open tech paths. As this happened, the #NGO world came in with “nice funding,” which subtly aligned activist tech initiatives with liberal, watered-down approaches. This pushed and promoted co-option over the power of change. The result was tech stagnation, with communities gradually losing their voice and control, the mess we were in 5 years ago.
The current openweb revival is due to protocols like #ActivityPub, coinciding with the rise of #web03, which was about re-implements #closedweb paths. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity, especially as the rotting of dotcons reveals the hollowness of centralization. While this #reboot has potential, it’s often bogged down by the same forces that hindered past movements. The #fahernistas focus on transient tech trends and individualistic coding projects that ignore the power of collective working, and the #web03 uncritical push of #encryption as a solution without a broader social strategy results in mountains of #techshit.
What works? Building from simple foundations: As digital activists and #DIY tech communities try to reboot the web, it’s essential to start with simplicity: #KISS principles (Keep It Simple, Stupid) offer a practical foundation. Instead of complex, flashy approaches, this mindset prioritizes clarity, accessibility, and collective agency. Each simple, intentional step creates a more durable basis to counter #mainstreaming forces.
What do we need: Self-organization tools within community are needed to reshape the path. Hashtags, for instance, have devolved into self-branding tools (fashernista), whereas they originally provided decentralized organizing power. Reclaiming these tools for grassroots purposes helps bring DIY activism to the forefront and build cohesive networks across digital paths.
What needs balance: The #VC poison of “nice funding” and #NGO co-option, are the big challenges facing the #openweb movement. Often, well-intentioned tech initiatives accept NGO money to sustain themselves, but this financial support is not neutral. The NGO world, embedded in liberal agendas, steers projects toward safe, palatable solutions that appeal to funders rather than fostering the radical shifts needed for real change. This sugar-coated poison draws tech initiatives away from their roots and into a cycle of compromise, weakening the collective power that grassroots projects depend on.
What can we do? As we look at ways to reignite a meaningful openweb, these lessons from history are crucial. Without seeing these patterns, we are repeating the same mistakes and allowing corporate and liberal to dictate the paths we take to build our shared digital commons. How we actually make this work is not obverse, but the current #fedivers reboot is a seed that is in the ground and growing.
I use the #4opens as a tool to do this as it’s simply #foss development with #openprocess added on, a useful tool to get past what people say their projects are about. And what they are actually about https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens we need tools like this to compost the piles of #techshit people keep creating, if we are to have soil to grow tech seeds of hope, like #Activertypub
The path is simple, who is coming down it with me and meany others?
