The victim card in activism

There’s a pervasive and damaging cycle in activist and alternative communities that we need to recognize and break, the victimhood narrative. This is not about dismissing genuine struggles or the real problems we face (and let’s be clear, we all have these in abundance on alternative paths). What I’m talking about is the deliberate use of victimhood as a tactic, a card played to push an agenda or gain sympathy at the expense of collective progress.

When someone plays the victim card, it sets off a feedback loop. Others pick up on this narrative, and whether they mean to or not, they reinforce it. Before long, the person who played the card becomes trapped in their own creation. They become victims of the very narrative they set in motion. Those who latch onto this story to push their own agendas also fall into the trap, ultimately damaging the causes they claim to support.

This tactic does more harm than good. It doesn’t address the actual issues we’re facing; instead, it creates a toxic distraction that undermines real work that we need to do. By focusing on the victim narrative, we lose sight of the bigger picture, the subjects we should be addressing with urgency and clarity.

Let’s stop and think. Let’s step away from this destructive loop. We need to be clear about the real issues and not allow this negative narrative to cloud our judgment and derail our efforts.

Please, don’t reinforce this mess.

On the other hand, there are real victims, but these people aren’t playing card games, recognizing the difference should not be so hard for people.

The victimhood narrative needs composting

The process of challenging this mess making runs into the #mainstreaming of safety culture, we can reflect on Douglas Gwyn’s famous quote about Unix:

“Unix was not designed to stop people from doing stupid things, because that would also stop them from doing clever things.”

This is a powerful insight into the dangers of blinded regulation and unthinking control in tech and social paths. The quote speaks to the value of bindings of strong #4opens process in design, which allows for creativity, experimentation, and the change and challenge we need to build trust, yes there is the cost of occasional mistakes it’s a price we pay for taking this path.

Safety culture, particularly as it gets pushed into more regulated, closed systems, stifles the our humanistic experimentation we need to tackle the challenges ahead. The push to make everything safe, moderated, and controlled risks, creating paths where nothing truly transformative can happen. It feeds into the #mainstreaming #deathcult path of conformity, where other paths are sacrificed for the sake of avoiding “mistakes”.

By maintaining an #4opens process, as with Unix, we create spaces where people are allowed to fail and, in doing so, come up with new solutions, something that’s becoming more and more vital in the context of our ongoing struggles against #climatechaos, #dotcons dominance, and other meany systemic issues we face.

We need to balance this tension between safety and creativity, recognizing that without the latter, we inadvertently push the very problems we’re trying to solve.

To get past people being lost and thus pointless, It’s useful to frame left and right as driven by fundamental emotional motivators—fear for the right and trust for the left, a way to cut through the complexities of political debates. This lens highlights how cycles of fear perpetuate control-oriented agendas, while trust foster openness and collaboration. It’s a powerful way to step outside the immediate mess, recognizing the #KISS dynamics at play.

Do you think this could be used to influence current #openweb projects and the paths they take amidst #mainstreaming pressures?

Federating Metadata Flows: Bridging Folksonomy and Categories for the #OMN

These native #openweb activism based projects have been around for the last ten years. In the reboot of #Indymedia and the development of the Open Media Network (#OMN), the challenge of federating metadata flows sits at the heart of how people organize, distribute, and consume media in a decentralized, grassroots-driven native path. We’re navigating the space between #folksonomy (bottom-up, organic tagging) and categories (top-down, structured organization). Each approach offers advantages, but bridging them creatively is key to an effective and open media landscape.

What this #indymedia reboot video leave out is this:

Folksonomy vs. Categories:

#Folksonomy is a people and community -driven method of tagging content, allowing communities to organically build a taxonomy that reflects their interests and needs. It’s flexible, dynamic, and rooted in grassroots culture.
* Advantage: Captures the diversity and fluidity of bottom-up organizing.
* Disadvantage: Can be messy, inconsistent, and hard to scale across diverse instances.

#Categories are a structured, hierarchical way of organizing information, providing clarity and consistency.
* Advantage: Easier to search, sort, and maintain across larger networks.
* Disadvantage: Top-down imposition is restrictive and alienate grassroots contributors.

The OMN path: Combining Folksonomy with Categories

The #OMN and the Indymedia reboot are grounded in bottom-up grassroots projects, so we obviously start with a folksonomy approach. However, we recognize there’s some practical use for categories as well. Here’s a draft proposal for how to bridge the divide:

Folksonomy First: Every media object enters the OMN network with a set of user-generated tags (folksonomy). These tags represent the grassroots nature of the content—open, fluid, and community-driven.
Category Grouping: Allow instances to group folksonomy tags into category clusters. These clusters could be shared across instances, making it easy to adopt community-agreed categories while respecting the folksonomy origin. This means that folksonomy items are not discarded, but instead enhanced by grouping them into more structured categories. The folksonomy items, now part of category groups, flow through the network and can be treated as extra tags, maintaining transparency and openness.
Metadata Flow is the project: The OMN is not just a content distribution network but also a metadata flow tool. It allows media objects to move across instances, while each instance can enhance the object’s metadata (tags/categories) in a transparent and open way. The magic here is in building a path where meaning, the media, tags, and categories are fully federated and can flow effortlessly between decentralized nodes.
Subscription to Category Flows: Instances can subscribe to category flows, essentially saying, “I want to see all media tagged under a specific category or tag group.” This gives structure without forcing it, enabling diversity of content flow while still benefiting from categorization. This flexible subscription system empowers the grassroots while creating a bridge to more top-down consumption or categorization models.
Trust-Based Growth: The entire system is built on trust networks. Instances that trust each other’s tagging and categorization can share media freely, with the assumption that the metadata accompanying it adds value, not friction.

The Philosophy: “Transparency is the New Objectivity”

The OMN is rooted in the philosophy of transparency over objectivity. The flows of metadata, whether from folksonomy or categories, are transparent for to see, remix, and improve upon. This radical openness, guided by the #4opens, ensures that the system remains flexible, accessible, and grounded in the needs of people not corporations. Truth bubbles up from this, lies exist, but they are pushed to their own spaces, which people can choose to ignore.

Conclusion: Building the Age of Creative Anarchy

On a positive, we could say that the 19th century was the age of capitalism, the 20th century was the age of social democracy, and the 21st century could be shaping up to be the age of creative anarchy. In this era, the challenge is to embrace diversity while building tools that help us collaborate across differences. The OMN is a practical tool to move media objects and metadata around in a way that encourages creativity, transparency, and bottom-up control, all while allowing some degree of organization through category flows. This is a positive future for media, that is native to our current openweb reboot as our #fashernista like to call this #opensocialweb but the problem it is what we are doing is not social media… bad choice of naming.

The future is messy, but we can compost this mess into a thriving, decentralized media path. Let’s start with trust, folksonomy, and the #openweb, and grow from there #KISS who is coding this, who is funding this, help needed please as I don’t have the focus to see this through, it needs crew and funding, that might be you.

Why We Need the Open Media Network (#OMN)

A Path of Destruction: The Middle East’s Endless Conflict and Global Consequences

A #KISS post on the messy ideas behind this current real world mess.

The current events in Gaza feel familiar, a replay of the tragic historical cycle that has been spinning for decades. Israel occupies Gaza. Gaza resists this occupation by attacking to retake occupied land, Israel responds by obliterating swaths of Gaza in brutal retaliation. The Arab countries, bound by, dark agendas, and historical and religious ties, half-heatedly come to Gaza’s defence. In response, Israel attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then Iran steps in to defend Lebanon. This pulls the U.S. and U.K. into defending Israel.

It’s the same history we’ve seen before, and it’s the same history we’ll likely see again.

But what could happen next, the mess that’s looming: Israel escalates its conflict with Iran, triggering a regional implosion. The Middle East is thrown into chaos. People die, displaced by war and destruction. Refugees flood into Europe, triggering a far-right political backlash as governments shift further into the current nationalist, isolationist, and authoritarian politics in response to the refugee crisis.

On the current path, if it’s not this, it will be the next crises. Amid all of this turmoil, what happens to climate change? #Climatechaos marches on, unaddressed, with billions of lives at stake. While increasingly right-wing and failing liberal governments are preoccupied with wars and managing waves of displaced people, no significant action is taken on the climate front. The consequences are catastrophic, with more mass death and displacement on the horizon.

The key point here is that this is a mess, a mess we’ve seen unfold before and one that’s almost certain to play out again unless we find a different path to take. A part of this different path is we need to tie the ongoing conflicts directly to the larger global failures, not just politically but existentially, as the real crisis of #climatechaos continues to be ignored, masked by the drama and horror of the endless cycles of war and dead end power struggles.

We can’t stay on this path #KISS

A radical view of the Palestine

Oligarchy, Monarchy, and the Future of Governance of the #OpenWeb

The governance model of the Social Web Foundation (#SWF) aligns with oligarchy, where power is concentrated in the hands of a few, echoing the structures of monarchy normally seen within the broader #FOSS movement. Both oligarchic and monarchic may work for some traditional organizations, but they are not native to the organic, decentralized ethos of the #openweb, which has always been more anarchic in its path.

As we reboot the #openweb to resist and mediate the encroachment of corporate #dotcons, we need a governance path that is native to our space of fluid, decentralized movement. For this, we have been developing the Open Governance Body (#OGB) as a native tech and social solution, rooted in the same principles of federation that power the #Fediverse. It’s designed to be permissionless, allowing seamless adoption across platforms, enabling a truly open and resilient network that resists centralized control that is so strongly pushing into this #reboot.

The Fediverse dilemma is efficiency vs. values. Some people argue that the Fediverse isn’t “efficient” or capable of “capturing market share” like big tech platforms. While scalability and usability are important, it’s crucial to remember that the Fediverse’s success comes not from corporate metrics like profit margins or user acquisition, but from grassroots movements, affinity groups, and real needs. The challenge lies in creative “stitching”, in building networks that scale while maintaining the core #4opens values of openness, decentralization, and permissionlessness.

Big tech’s model is horribly efficient at addiction and control, but at the loss of community, autonomy, and creativity. We don’t need to replicate their model. Instead, we #KISS focus on the values that make the #openweb unique: cooperation, shared governance, and, most importantly, people’s agency.

Why OGB and OMN Matter, the Open Governance Body (#OGB) is built from decades of activist organizing, and like the #OMN (Open Media Network), it’s designed for the public good. Both projects are rooted in the belief that we already have working models, proven over 200 years of social activism—that can guide us in building alternative tech solutions to resist the corrosive influence of corporate power

If you’re interested in how we can compost the current tech mess, have a read about the concepts of #composting on this site and learn more about the #OGB and #OMN. We can’t keep creating the same #techshit mess, by understanding these alternative paths can we walk together, a path toward a truly #openweb that is so needed in this era of #climatechaos

How to think about governance https://lovergine.com/foss-governance-and-sustainability-in-the-third-millennium.html

The metaphor of cat herding

The metaphor of cat herding is a useful and fitting when working with decentralized, independent actors who are resistant to collective action, especially in grassroots tech and activist communities. It reflects the challenge of getting people to focus, organize, and work toward common goals without losing their autonomy or devolving into chaos.

With projects like #OMN and the broader #openweb movement, this “cat behavior” is part of the problem, people (especially in the tech and activist communities) are often independent to a fault. Many resist structure, preferring to focus on their individual projects without acknowledging the necessity for governance and collaboration. It’s not enough to be open; without some kind of balance, “open” becomes vulnerable to co-option by corporate interests with #mainstreaming or at the grassroots paralysed by fragmentation.

Let’s look at some examples of balancing the “Common Sense” #mainstreaming mess:

The term #socialweb is a perfect example of an inadequate framing. It doesn’t hold the critical, oppositional power needed to counter the problems caused by mainstream platforms and narratives. The #openweb, clarified through the #4opens, offers a path to activism that balances the inevitable co-option by corporations and the path of NGOs like the #SWF (Social Web Foundation). But this balance only works if we acknowledge the simple reality: that both grassroots actors and corporations have access to these spaces.

The invisible power of #FOSS is another key aspect here. The foundation of corporate tech stacks is built on open-source projects, yet the social and political value of this is lost on many people who don’t see beyond the technical aspects. The same applies to the #geekproblem, which ties directly into the cat-herding analogy—people in the geek world to often miss the bigger picture and the need for broader, political engagement beyond coding or individual technical projects.

Cats vs. Humans in Governance

When grassroots movements fail to build their own governance structures, external actors step in. This is where NGOs or other “grown-up humans” take over. They come in to “pet the cats”—offering bowls of food and the “safety”, and the control of care, but ultimately exerting direction over a process that needs to be native, organic and grassroots-driven. This infantilises the community, pacifying it rather than empowering it.

The problem is that the “cats” let this happen because they are incapable of building the structures necessary to avoid it. If we don’t step up with human solutions, if we don’t create governance models that fit our ideals, we’re always losing control to external forces that don’t share our values and paths.

It’s beyond urgent to move from cat behaviour to human solutions, we are in an era of #climatechaos, where incrementalism and complacency are paths we can no longer take. We can’t keep trying to herd cats who refuse to collaborate on meaningful, systemic change. Instead, we need humans who can engage with the mess we’ve made and work together to clean it up.

To make this move from cat behaviour to human solutions:

Build Native Governance: Grassroots projects need to establish their own governance from the start. This avoids outsiders stepping in and co-opting the movement. The #OGB is a solid step in this direction.
Clarify Language and Values: Words like #socialweb lack the critical edge to inspire action. Framing like #openweb and #4opens make the values explicit and point to the political and social power of the alternative we’re built.
Acknowledge Power Dynamics: Open means open for everyone, including corporations. But grassroots actors need to reclaim the open spaces they helped create rather than let these be dominated by corporate inflowing interests. Balance can only come from political awareness and active mediation.
Move Beyond Individualism: The metaphor of herding cats also speaks to the issue of #stupidindividualism. We need to get beyond this and rebuild collectives, focusing on shared governance and goals rather than isolated actions.
Challenge Corporate Co-Option: Just as #FOSS underpins corporate tech, we need to build movements that are resilient to corporate takeover. This involves structures and cultural values that resist domination and control.

It should not need to be repeated so often, the shift we need is cultural as much as it is technical. We can’t keep going down paths we know do not work and only lead us back to the current mess. We need to rethink what it means to be part of a collective and how to build governance that reflects our values, instead of relying on outside forces to define them for us #KISS

PS. I am thinking this could get messy, we need shovels #OMN

The path out of this mess is in part social tech, we need to build this path

The current path of distraction’s and #stupidindividualism are pushing the cycle of pointless noise that is feeding into our inability to focus on real change. People are busy, swept up in distractions, and pointless pursuits to be the change and challenge they need to be. It’s a cycle of complacency with a bad outcome. Agitation, anger, and disturbance are powerful motivators, but we need to focus into something meaningful, to avoid drowning in the noise, we need to focus on what’s actually going on. But, in this mess, how do we push people to grow up and focus without falling into the trap of more #blocking or just offering more distractions or ‘better bling’?

The answer is simple and #KISS, by recreating collectives. We’ve seen first hand how hyper individualism (#stupidindividualism) isolates people, leaving them powerless against larger systemic issues. Rebuilding real, engaged, and active communities is key. Movements like #OMN, #OGB, #indymediaback, and #4opens are examples of initiatives that become the change and challenge we need. These projects draw from undercurrents of ideas that we know work, combining them with the best of #openweb tech to grow from small seeds into real change.

But it’s also essential to dig at the roots of the mess: #pomo (#postmodernism) and the #deathcult (#neoliberalism), ideologies that have shaped the mess we’re in, cynicism and cutting off collective alternatives. If we don’t address these root issues, they will keep returning, and we’ll remain stuck in the same cycles of decay.

The #geekproblem is real, it’s the problem of domination and control born out of geek culture shaped by “common sense” paths. Look at the decline of the #dotcons like #failbook and Google, where #fashionista optimism gave way to corporate greed. Then look at early days of #openweb projects like #couchsurfing and #indymedia, we had healthy, thriving native cultures that weren’t obsessed with control. The key is to recognize what went wrong and build on a path that doesn’t repeat those mistakes.

What the #dotcons think the future is, from meta

The challenge is that many within geek culture can’t see the value of projects like #OMN, as it exists outside their narrow, “common sense” world-views. We need to help people see beyond the obvious, look for non-mainstream alternatives, and recognize that the solutions aren’t in the corporate web but in the decentralized, open spaces, commons, we create ourselves.

Now is the time to reboot our own media and to be wary of #fashionista agendas that hijack and dilute the change we need. The way forward is messy, organic, and rooted in collective action. What we can do:

Agitate and Disturb: Use media, art, and culture to push people out of their comfort zones and make them question the status quo. The hashtag story is a tool to do this.
Build Collectives: Recreate spaces where people can work together meaningfully, paths that empower communities to balance the current #stupidindividualism. The OMN are projects for this.
Focus on the Roots: Don’t only address symptoms, dig deep into the core ideologies that keep returning and haunting us, like #pomo and the #deathcult. This website is a tool for this
Reboot Media: We need to take back control of our media, using open technology to create alternatives that aren’t based on capitalist greed but on #KISS shared values. There is a native project for this indymediaback
Stay Wary of Distractions: Resist the temptation of ‘better bling.’ The solution is not to make the distractions shinier, but to focus on what matters.

The path out of this mess is in part social tech, which we need to build. It’s time to grow up, pay attention, and start building the world we actually want to live in. A shovel is need to compost the current mess #OMN. But I don’t have the focus to do this, we need a crew.

The key part of this is WHO decides, this is a political and democratic issue, not a tech “problem” we need to build with this strongly in mind.

Opening a space to build alternatives #OMN

How ingrained the #deathcult mentality has become. After decades of #neoliberal ideology, people have internalized the “no alternative” mindset, making it difficult to embrace radical solutions. Moving public opinion, especially outside the #dotcons bubble, requires patience and strategic optimism. It’s frustrating when potential allies focus too much on tearing things down instead of building up new, radical paths.

How do you think we can inspire collaborative and hopeful action movements, without them getting lost in the negativity?

There is a visible to some/invisible to meany split between isolationists and communicators in decentralized tech. This, if you can see it, highlights a tension that exists in these spaces: the drive for autonomy versus the desire to connect and build community. The isolationists tend to come from a place of distrust—towards government, society, and even other people, while the communicators are motivated by collaboration and the desire for balance of freedom without “control”. This is from’ish this thread

To build a community of positive-minded, collaborative people around decentralized technology, it might help to frame it with a focus on inclusivity and openness, rather than a dogmatic political alignment. Positioning the project as radically progressive and inclusive can attract those who share ethical values without alienating people who might not identify with specific left-leaning ideologies, but do align with collectivism paths and community-building to make these paths real.

What can help build a project native to this like the #OMN, we start with clear, shared values, like the #4opens then build these into strong myths and traditions, inclusive, mutual aid, transparency, and collaboration to hold the path, no matter how messy it gets. This might help to grow an affinity group of action to draw in, by holding the space open, people who want to contribute positively and filter out those who don’t share those #KISS goals.

Decentralized, communal governance, like the #OGB are a path to empower communities to moderate a healthy and welcoming space. Decentralized decision-making allows more voices to be heard and helps mediate conflicts before they become toxic. This distributing power and responsibility, to build open, curated discussions and ensure these remain constructive and don’t descend into conspiracy and extremism. Yes, make it clear that free speech is valued, but the community is not tolerate of hate speech and fascist ideologies. On this native path various approaches and ideas, coexist in collaboration and messiness, a path to avoid dogmatism and the mess that ideological purity can so easily spread.

To build this we can use existing networks, the #fediverse is a great example of how decentralized tech work to scale, a good place to draw inspiration, example of community building, moderation practices, and fostering healthy interactions. We can start with highlight successful models of cooperation and interdependence that try and resolve conflicts organically.

The challenges are real, especially in keeping out toxic elements without being authoritarian or losing the balance of openness. By focusing on shared, values and building a community where contributions are judged by their alignment with the collective goals rather than personal politics, you can create a space that encourages progressive ideas that fosters a sense of solidarity.

This is a real path to open a space to build alternatives #OMN

The mainstream internet, #dotcons, seduces us with dopamine hits, saps our creativity, and turns us into sad, noisy, powerless complainers. It steals our time with endless distractions, buries the pathways that lead to real change, and, in the end, empties our wallets.

Stop complaining. Just step away to help build the alternative #OMN

#openweb #dotcons #4opens #techshit

The metaphors are change and challenge

Balancing the #mainstreaming mess by focusing on what’s “native” is a useful step in rebooting the #openweb. Rather than outright rejecting things that don’t fit, the goal is to actively engage and mediate through pushback, ensuring that the core values are preserved while allowing space for broader participation. This path helps prevent the dilution of the original ideals while embracing diversity in a constructive way.

To centre this conversation, we create frameworks that ensure any new developments align with principles like the #4opens and facilitate ongoing dialogue to maintain a shared direction. The key here is to keep it simple (#KISS), ensuring the tools are accessible and intuitive.

The metaphor of composting the mess to seed radical movements is an evocative one, emphasizing the importance of turning waste and negativity into something productive. It aligns with the path of movements growing from rich, grounded beginnings, rather than from the toxic, divisive environment that emerges with negativity spreading unchecked.

The use of these hashtags helps to frame the broader narrative, adding depth to the conversation about the failings of the digital world and how to move beyond them. With the hashtags like #deathcult, #dotcons, and #techcurn clearly defining the toxic systems at play, while others like #openweb and #4opens point toward solutions based on transparency and decentralization.

The metaphors are a powerful comparison between ecological composting and the cultivation of social and technological movements, particularly in the context of grassroots media and openweb activism and culture.

Seeds and compost, describe movements as seeds that grow in rich compost, meaning that movements need nurturing environments to thrive. The compost represents the ideas, collaboration, and foundational work that allow movements to grow organically.
Spreading shit, a metaphor about how we are distracted by “spreading shit on each other,” negativity, conflict, and infighting hampers collective efforts. While conflict and criticism are part of human interaction, too much negativity leads to a foul atmosphere, where movements struggle to grow.
Composting the shit, is from the phrase “shit is good for compost”, that negative experiences, bad ideas, and even failures can be turned into useful lessons, helping to enrich the soil for future movements. Rather than discarding everything, the key is to transform the bad into something productive.
Tools for change, the shovel, symbolize practical action. You need real tools (both literally and metaphorically) to work the compost, to nurture change, and to dig into the mess. Tools like openness, transparency, and collaboration are vital to making the compost to actually lead to growth.

The #Hashtags are anchors, a way of framing complex social, political, and technological issues into digestible themes. The #OMN tags define the broad spectrum of the struggles and the critiques of current paths:

#Deathcult: Neoliberalism, a system that prioritizes profit and narrow economic growth over human and environmental well-being.

#Fashernista: The interplay of fashion, trends, and social relations, highlighting the superficiality in political movements.

#Openweb: The original vision of the web, built on openness, collaboration, and free exchange.

#Closedweb: The pre-internet and post-open-web eras dominated by corporate control (the #dotcons).

#4opens: A principle-driven framework to ensure transparency, openness, and collaboration, inspired by the #FOSS and grassroots activism.

#Encryptionists: A critique of those who advocate for excessive encryption without considering its broader social cost.

#Dotcons: The commercialization of the internet and how it is leading to environmental and social collapse.

#Geekproblem: The ongoing debate between determinism and free will, and its relationship to technological culture.

#Techshit: Refers to the waste that technology produces—both physically and socially—which can be repurposed into something useful.

#Techcurn: The technological churn, the constant cycle of “innovation” that leads to more problems than solutions.

#Nothingnew: A philosophy of slowing down technological development to reflect and correct the negative outcomes of rapid progress.

These are used as a call to action, to encourage a shift to the #KISS values of the openweb and to building humanistic paths. By understanding this, and acting on the metaphors and hashtags, we better navigate the challenges of today’s online and offline mess to work toward meaningful, open, and progressive alternatives to the #deathcult we have worshipped for way too long, way to long.

Navigating challenges: online governance, trolling, and privacy

It’s interesting and useful to look at the critical issue of online governance, community dynamics, and the problem of #mainstreaming trolling on both the #dotcons and open social platforms like #Mastodon, #Fediverse and the broader #openweb

Let’s start with mastodon, the complexity of (default) privacy settings leads to public conversations inadvertently shifting into private spaces, this is a UX problem, but it also points to a larger issue with how we handle communication, trust, and governance on decentralized platforms. And raises a question, are we on the right path? Confusing privacy settings are disempowering, the defaults in platforms like Mastodon pushing users toward privatized conversations, which are not combatable with #4opens media paths, of transparency and public dialogue. Yes, this is a subtle but important #UX issue, exacerbated by the complexities of decentralized platforms and different peoples preferences for engagement.

UPDATE: it’s about inheriting the settings of the thread, all my posts are #4opens as this is the core project, it’s unusual to send a DM or other setting though do this a little when needed. When having a public conversation and suddenly find this happening in a non-public space, at no point did I agree to this move, but it happens, due to others settings, it should default to one side public, my settings, and one side (semi) private the other person’s settings, as on my side it is VERY much a #4opens public conversation, it’s a form of corruption for this privatisation to happen… a mess I have to fix by republishing my side as a separate post – sub optional and bad #UX

This is in part the push for mainstreaming, both inside and outside, alternative platforms, creates pressure toward conformity and centralization. This undermines the grassroots nature of media networks like the Fediverse. In the end, we move towards the same governance and behavioral issues seen in #dotcons, corporate social media platforms. Left-wing and progressives need to resist these pressures to/by fostering a #4opens culture of diversity, and mutual aid.

Moving beyond this mess, a culture of empathy and understanding is needed for mediating trolling behavior. Listen before judging, then make judgements based on sound open process, so people have the space to change their paths if they can. A mindset of curiosity and openness, rather than rigid ideological adherence is needed for this to work, metaphors are fertile seeds to bring conversation into this path. This creates spaces where different perspectives can be heard and discussed constructively.

A first step is to be “intolerant of intolerance” with #4opens as a guide. The problem is that this is a right-wing path https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance so we add the #4opens, ethics, to turn this to the left/progressive #KISS path.

The #openweb has always been, under the surface, built on strong communities rooted in mutual aid to provide a buffer against the toxic effects of trolling and infighting. When people feel connected to a shared mission, they are less likely to engage in destructive behavior. The strength of grassroots movements lies in their ability to offer this solidarity and care as an affective path of change and challenge. You acturly can’t have one without the other, in this conflict in moderation can be healthy or not.

We need structural social solutions to governance, the work on the #OMN and #OGB is a promising step toward creating decentralized, open governance paths that can mediate trolling and other negative behaviors. “the rule of an enlightened “philosopher-king” (cf. Noocracy) is preferable to the tyranny of majority” is the bases and fear unthinkingly in #FOSS governance paths. Much of the trolling comes from this unthinking. By embedding #4opens trust, transparency, and community in the path of these networks, we create environments that foster collaboration and experimentation, rather than pointless ongoing conflicts.

Navigating these challenges: online governance, trolling, and common sense privacy is no small step. However, with the paths like the #4opens, a focus on mutual aid, and a commitment to progressive, decentralized governance, it’s possible to create a healthier, more resilient online and offline progressive ecosystem. The work done through the #OMN and #OGB projects reflects this path where spaces (online or offline) are inclusive, productive, and capable of handling the messes that inevitably arise in all “open” communities.

Navigating the Trolls

The “public first” paths of the #OMN faces steep hurdles without the necessary support, focus, and funding. Achieving diversity in these spaces requires more than just a philosophical commitment—it needs active engagement from a variety of voices, technical expertise, and resources to push the project into wider use.

The current dominant “safe first” path in projects like Mastodon does create a certain type of functionality, but it also stifles innovation and radical potential by prioritizing safety in ways that ultimately encourage more privatized interactions. For grassroots, #openweb movements to thrive, they need both tech development and community support that embraces complexity rather than pushing toward conservative #mainstreaming defaults.

Ideas please to pull in the necessary dev focus and resources to make the public-first #OMN a reality? Can we build ways to attract contributors outside traditional #blockeing funding paths?

The Open Media Network (#OMN) is a set of tools to empower communities

Thoughts on the mess we made on #socialhub and the wider #openweb reboot

The frustration of navigating the mess of activism, tech, and grassroots movements, especially when they get co-opted and sidetracked by personal interests, #NGO agendas, or broader #mainstreaming mess. We need ways to process, compost, and turn this mess into productive paths, which better balance burnout and disillusionment with actual progressive outcomes.

A part of this is the parasite #NGO and #fashionista paths, how NGOs and big parts of tech can parasitically latch onto grassroots movements, commodifying and diverting them from their own paths. These non-native ways end up taking the paths they claim to oppose, and are a part of the broader #deathcult problem. Mediating this deathcult and pratish behaviour is needed, that challenges the individualistic, egotistical people who are always a part of grassroots movements. If left unchecked, these people will derail collective efforts and reduce movements to infighting rather than the path of change and challenge we need to be on.

Composting the mess, is perhaps the most hopeful metaphor to turn #mainstreaming shit into something more fertile. This metaphor is about processing what went wrong, reflecting, and turning that energy into a better path, sustainable, and rooted in the core values of the #openweb and #4opens grassroots efforts. The mess is undeniable, but with native openweb tools and paths, composting, mediation, linking, and decentralization there’s still hope to turn this #reboot into something productive. We really need to make this work.

The normal problem, the trajectory of #SocialHub, and the broader #openweb community, simply went off course due to factors that we need to talk about:

Shrinking of the crew, led to the forced narrowing of focus, limiting the community’s ability to engage widely and creatively. As fewer people became involved, the flexibility and potential of the project shrank.
Chasing funding, is a recurring poison in many grassroots projects. The moment funding enters the picture, the focus can shift from mission driven goals to survival driven ones, leading to compromises and sell outs.
The #geekproblem, is a recurring issue where the culture of arrogance and ignorance within tech communities blocks collaborative, inclusive problem-solving. Tech culture ignores the social dimensions of community building, exacerbating problems instead of solving them.
Failed governance, feudal-like governance structures hindered the ability to mediate these issues, turning leadership into top-down control rather than fostering horizontal collaboration. Attempts like the #OGB (Open Governance Body) were/are being blocked by the systems they set out to fix, leading to a self-reinforcing mess.

What can we do, next steps:

Composting the mess, rather than seeing the failure as terminal, it’s about turning the decay into fertile ground for new growth. This composting metaphor is apt—it’s about taking what didn’t work, reflecting on it, and using it as the soil for new, better-structured efforts.
Recognizing people over code: The issue lies with people, not technology, the main barriers are social—ego, power dynamics, and lack of collaboration. Governance structures, community engagement, and shared values need to take centre.
Defining and defending the #openweb, people will inevitably sell out for funding and status. To mediate this, a clear, shared understanding, of what the openweb stands for, an articulation of principles like the #4opens is crucial. The community needs a strong value framework to guide decisions and prevent the erosion of ideals and paths.
Building a hub for meaningful engagement, #SocialHub was once this place, but it’s now too narrow and constrained by the #NGO. #fashernista and #geekproblem interests. If the community is to thrive, it needs a revitalizing, a broader range of voices participating, where governance is open, and where people are empowered to contribute without the weight of gatekeepers and blinded apathy and intolerance blocking we to often have now.
Infrastructure and funding, the practical path of supporting the infrastructure also needs addressing. The lack of funding is damage that shifts, the code itself, into became unresponsive to the community’s needs. Finding sustainable, non-exploitative funding models is needed. Could a cooperative or mutual aid model be a path forward, that aligns with the values of the #openweb while providing the necessary resources?

Immediate Actions:

Broaden governance: If we return to SocialHub or a similar network, start by widening the admin and mod team to ensure it represents more than just the narrow confines of #NGO, #fashernista and #geekproblem interests. This inclusivity prevents drift.
Articulate values clearly, by creating a visible and accessible page for the #4opens, making it a cornerstone for paths and discussions, decisions, and collaborations. People need to understand and agree on the principles driving the openweb, #KISS
Revive discussions, reignite meaningful discussions about the purpose and direction of the openweb. This needs to happen on networks where all voices are welcomed, and consensus building isn’t seen as a hindrance but a pathway forward.
Explore funding models, as the current mess is feeding this #blocking. Look into alternative funding mechanisms—cooperatives, community-supported models, or decentralized funding structures that align with openweb values. Chasing VC or NGO funding leads to the same patterns of co-optation and control.

By addressing these issues—people, governance, values, and sustainability—the community can begin to rebuild, with a “native” approach, it’s possible to compost the mess into fertile soil for future growth.

UPDATE the thread on this turned into a mess then a part of it vanished, likely someone blocked, so posting the last update here:

” I just don’t see SocialHub as likely to evolve into the kind of place for the broader discussions focusing on social issues.”

The problem we are talking about. This is exactly what #socialhub was “broader discussions focusing on social issues” for the first 3 years or so, we had the path we now need in place as native grassroots.

A tiny number of people used the #geekproblem to narrow this open space down to focus EXCLUSIVELY on the #FAP. Why and how this happens is where the value is, so we don’t keep adding to this mess, in the future.

PS, this mastodon mess of jumping from public to semi private all the time is a mess.

We need to reclaim focus and energy wasted on current failing systems

Many years ago, I stopped going to most tech events and supporting “ethical” business. the #NGO tech events are mere talking shops, spaces filled with endless discussions but no outcomes. They suck up time, energy, and focus, acting as gatekeepers that reinforce the status quo while masquerading as spaces of change. These events are part of a semi-hidden #deathcult, worshiping, the failing structures of the present rather than imagining and building of alternatives. Next time you see one of these events pop up in your feed, ask yourself: Is this contributing to actual change, or just taking up space?

Then we have the same problem with the way people, too often, set up “soft green alt businesses” that can’t “pay their way” within the current capitalist system. If you can’t challenge capitalism’s rules, why not consider working to overthrow them first? Only then will we have the non “pay-to-play” spaces where real alternative projects can grow.

We got into this mess by accommodating these structures rather than challenging them. As Marx said:

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.” Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapart

In simple words, we must be realistic about the conditions we face but also bold in our strategies to change them. To take this path, we need to navigate past the blocks of power politics, the stupidity, fear, control freakery, cowardice, and overwork that consistently stymie technological and social change. It’s past time to move aside from this mess. We need to reclaim the focus and energy wasted on maintaining the current failing systems and redirect/balances this to building #openweb and resilient #community spaces for change and challenge.

A #KISS step is compost the #techshit to create space to build networks based on #4opens—#OpenData, #OpenSource, #OpenProcess, and #OpenStandards. In the current #fediverse the pathways are there; it’s up to us to walk them.

You likely need a shovel #OMN

The Open Media Network (#OMN) is a set of tools to empower communities

A project we need to build together as a path”native” to the #openweb

let’s recap, as you likely missed half the story the first time round. This speaks directly to the core of why meaningful change is so hard to achieve within the current mess of tech and “ethical” business. Most #NGO tech events, which claim to be about fostering change and innovation, have become places of inertia. They are “talking shops” paths where people discuss endlessly with no concrete action or achieving “real “native” outcomes. These spaces take up limited time, energy, and focus, which could be directed toward building real alternatives. They are gatekeepers, reinforcing the status quo while pretending to be progressive and transformative.

These paths only “exist” if they play by the rules of capitalism, rules that are designed to extract value rather than support meaningful, sustainable alternatives. So, instead of challenging these rules, people waste time trying to work within them, missing the bigger picture. If we want to create real change, we need to challenge the foundations of the system itself, not simply try to adapt to it.

Marx’s quote emphasizes that while people make their own history, they do so within the constraints of circumstances handed down from the past. In other words, we carry the weight of outdated structures and ideologies that continue to stifle transformation. The history of failed strategies and the perpetuation of ineffective methods weigh us down, preventing us from taking different paths to different possibilities.

The power dynamics within these spaces—be it #NGO tech events and “ethical” businesses are filled with control, fear, overwork, and cowardice, which block progress. Real change is movement beyond this mess, to reclaim energy wasted propping up failing systems, to redirect it toward building #openweb and resilient communities to use this freed up space for change and challenge. The #fediverse and other decentralized networks already provide pathways; we just need to be brave enough to walk them.

In short, this matters, for a radical shift in focus from superficial actions to systemic change to compost the #techshit and build truly transformative from the ground up. And yes, we need a shovel #OMN.

Yes, we are in a mess, we need a path

The Open Media Network (#OMN) is a set of tools to empower communities

People find it hard to understand the “unique” selling point of the #OMN beyond the tech, which is “common sense”. And this is, drum roll, reveal, that people and content are data objects in the “commons” by default and only private/owed by exception. This is the basic #KISS “unique” selling point of the #OMN there we are, I said it was simple.

It’s interesting with all the talk about the project over the last ten years this was never talked about. This is a direct result of the agenda blocking of the #geekproblem, #fashernista agenda and #NGO control mess. We never actually get to the bits that matter as we are so fussed talking about the bits that don’t matter, the ones the groups above push. This is a mess that we urgently need to compost.

The Open Media Network (OMN) is a set of tools to empower YOU to change and challenge the world we live (and die) in. The OMN is about opening up the flow of information and breaking down the silos that keep data locked in walled gardens. It’s an “anything in and anything out” network, operating through mediated trust database/flows that puts power back into the hands of grassroots paths. This framework is built from the #fediverse to flow freely, with control in the hands of the users.

The OMN is a “data soup”—a blend of tagged data objects flowing through channels. These flows are mediated by trust, which means that users can depend on the reliability of sources and content within the network. This isn’t just about blind trust; it’s about a dynamic, evolving network of trust relationships where both content creation and consumption are guided by the principles of openness and integrity.

Within the OMN, people are free to choose their own level of engagement—whether they want to be active participants contributing content and trust, or more passive consumers curating what they see and share. The choice is yours, the network’s design supports autonomy. Embracing the messiness of data, the OMN has several unconventional features that might be seen as “problems” by those entrenched in traditional geekproblem tech paths.

Lossy Data: Accepting that not all data needs to be perfect or complete. The world is messy, and our data can reflect that reality.
Redundancy: Multiple instances of the same data help to ensure that information isn’t lost and allows the network to be more resilient.
Trust: It is integral to the network’s design. Users navigate this “data soup” based on trust relationships rather than on algorithms or centralized authority.

By mediating the #geekproblem, which will view these attributes as flaws, we open up perspectives on how data and communities can interact and thrive. This network is built on the #4opens principles to ensure that the OMN is not another closed-off tech experiment but a genuinely open and collaborative path. It’s not about reinventing the wheel or creating something entirely new from scratch. Instead, it’s about leveraging existing tools and technologies to build a decentralized media/news network that is “permissionless” for anyone to use and contribute to, it’s up to them if they trust other people.

What makes the OMN exciting is the potential it offers for “flows of trust” to develop. Communities and people are encouraged to build their own projects on top of the simple OMN framework, allowing a wide range of alternative media, news, and social projects to emerge. The focus is on using these flows to cultivate healthy, vibrant communities where trust is a core currency, and where diverse perspectives can coexist and grow.

The goal is empowerment through decentralizing control and empowering communities that allow people to take control of their media, their data, and their interactions. The #OMN provides a good user interface (UX) to facilitate easy navigation and interaction within the network, making it accessible for tech-savvy developers to everyday users to create meaning and shared spaces.

In conclusion, the OMN is not just a project; it’s a framework for interacting with information and with each other to invite us to rethink our relationship with media, data, and trust. So, let’s get involved. Let’s build, experiment, and trust. The #OMN is an opportunity to shape a truly #openweb where you have the power to change the world by challenging the current statues quo.

The patriarchs of the early #openweb