The #hashtags tell a storie

Dot for profit for few con for the rest – took over the #openweb during the #dotcom era.

#stupidindividualism is our internal poison that we breed from the #deathcult

#failbook will/has failed us as individuals and as a society.

#openweb is a good view of what we had and what we won’t.

#4opens is a path out of the #geekproblem

The #geekproblem is a humane failure of trust and its replacement with control.

The #hashtags add up to tell a story and thus build a way out of this mess.

The #deathcult is the last 40 years of neo-liberalism.

Need to work in shovels, shit and compost to the story. Hashtags a tool for #openweb organizing ideas/stories/community’s. The is obviously a balance with self-expression. At the moment this “balance” is pure #deathcult being pushed by our shared #stupidindividualism

We have a #shoval, common storied #hashtags we have piles of #techshit to shovel for #compost to build up fertile soil for planting flower and vegetables to nourish our soles and actions.

Why talk in “soft” metaphors?

The issues are soft as are the explanations/metaphors. You can’t have a hard explanation of the social world without building it up from an ideological foundation. As most people are in denial of the possibility of different world views/ideologies this makes “hard” conversations a largely pointless way of communicating. People asking for them have not taken the first step so talking their hand to help them will soon lead you down a different/ideology path. As the project is about #KISS and focus this is something we have limited time/focus for.

 
If you can glimpse the world from different views/ideologies than the soft/metaphor will talk to you and the attraction for hard will be less strong. These people have a hope of building a different/ideology world/process so can help in real ways.
 
As we need to focus, it’s not an issue to talk to the first and more important to consolidate around the second… question is finding people that have not been “broken” by #mainstreaming agenders.

 

What do you mean by “mainstreaming”

Q. what do you mean by “mainstreaming”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The #openweb is a space for both progressives and reactionary groups

One thing we need to address now in a constructive way is that the right-wing has been better about co-operating around #openweb media than the left-wing for the last 10 years. We have been worse than useless on simple things like linking between radical media projects. The few successfully left media groups have abandoned alt tech solutions and built careers inside the #dotcons

Where we progressives have seceded, in terms of #openweb, has been outside politics and more in lifestyle subcultures with mastodon and the fedivers, these tools have been political natural and focused on privacy. We start to see the use of these tools for radical and progressive agenders with #visionontv and #indymediaback with the radical anarchism of #kolektiva and the #openweb framework of #OMN

With the #mainstreaming move away from the #dotcons we will see more activity in this area from both progressives and reactionary groups – make your voice heard – its pastime for you to #stepback to the #openweb

https://activism.openworlds.info

Next step in the #OMN

The majority of #mainstreaming #openweb tech projects have the assumption that human nature is a fixed thing and that every project has to be built in reaction to the 40 years of neo-liberal #deathcult that we all live in now as this is the “only” human nature visible. They completely miss/ignorer the social nature of people in groups in this look back at the 20th century, and we have clearly different views of human nature as examples to build society. Call it social democracy, call it communism, call it what you like. We DO NOT have to build tools in relation to the #deathcult, and we clearly should not base “hope” on tools that are built in this relation.

Mastodon, activertypub and the fedivers took a small #stepaway from this mess. The #OMN takes the next step away. For the rest #compost and #shovels come to mind.

The #OMN is a simple #KISS social tech project.

All these projects work off the same core code/workflow of tagging and editing metadata.

#Indymediaback is the news part of the project. This is to grow journalism from the grassroots and to make our news mainstream.

#Makinghistory – is the archiving project. This is to preserve and grow our history from the grassroots and make our history mainstream.

#Friendsandfamily – is the social networking project. For family/affernerty groups to move away from the mainstream #dotcons and to nourish the grassroots.

All the projects are #4opens and federated.

Take a moment to think about basics

Take a moment to think about basics: activism/campaigning is about building resistance to the mainstream to change its flow in progressive directions. Were #mainstreaming is about shifting activism to reduce these resistances to the mainstream flow. Thus, it’s good to understand that #mainstreaming is a #NGO agenda to build the jobs of the people involved, and is in turn funded to this end. Good not to get this shit mixed up.

Lifestyle is a way of forming a tribe inside this mainstream flow. The problem for activism is that this old school tribalism is obviously a BLOCK on social change, as looking and talking right are MORE important than being right. Being right would be “resistance” and lifestyle is about going with the counter flow.

On the other hand, there are advantages to “modern” tribal and lifestyle activism – it functions as social glue to hold campaigns together and provides a “uniform” flag to rally round. You notice I do not use words like anarchist, socialist, liberalism here as these have a different role in social change thinking – they are the ideas – the clothing is what I am taking about #fashionista is the hashtag.

#Revolution is about blowing up the flow of the mainstream so it floods into a different path, with much “collateral” damage in the process as we live inside a highly urban complex society. Both paths can be useful, both have costs.

Good not to mix this shit up, let’s build something to compost this mess #OMN

 

What are contemporary sins?

You rarely get anywhere by simply renaming things. All you do is lose the historical thried and then recreate the same mess. #Stupidindividualism is often the motivation for this, and it’s a big sin in the liberals and “post politics” crew.

A metaphor that individualism makes us stupid and that to live outside a balance of individualistic vs community is stupid. Yes, it’s an aspect of liberalism and capitalism and at an extreme with #neoliberalism.

#deathcult worshippers is another metaphor for (invisible) neoliberalism.

All the metaphors (used as #hashtags) are aspects of liberalism and very critical of neoliberalism.  The idea is to make #mainstreaming thinking dirty.

The hashtags work if a community/affinity group of people use them without falling into the sin of #stupidindividualism of course 😉

If you miss my point, please go back and reread, don’t drop back into sin 😉

Building alt/grassroots media networks to challenge and widen the traditional media

Our current groups doing alt/grassroots media are too limited in their idea of what media could/should be in this the is either a naivety or a dishonesty. The most successful act and think they can be #traditionalmedia” without controlling the distribution of their content in any meaningful way. This is of course not unusual, the mainstream media is continually making this same mistake. All of them rely on the #dotcons which nowadays is largely the #Failbook algorithm for the there content distribution.

Our current grassroots/alt media have websites so already have one foot in the openweb, but none of their sites prominently link in any meaningful way to each others. They do podcasting so anther foot in the open web, but all their effort for outreach is inside the #silos such as Apple iTunes etc. it’s hard to directly blame them, though we should and will, for this sorry state.

So why are we here? On the one hand we have the #fashernista embrace of the #dotcons which almost all the current crew built their careers inside. A capitalist #mainstreaming.

On the other we have the suicidal embrace of #encryptionists complexity and parallel “standardization” into a pointless/shrinking to nothingness alt-tech ghetto were our #geekproblem are and desire to stay. A liberal/libertarian #mainstreaming.

With these issues in mind I have been outreaching to these groups for the last year, and building real working openweb linking tech as part of the #OMN project. This currently is not been getting past the crew’s naivety/self-interest/career focused thinking. Fair anufe if that is as far as their imagination/aspiration goes, but this is a clear problem for working alt/progressive/left media that urgently needs to be addressed.

So our current alt/grassroots media are irrelevant to rebooting a healthy society from a technical/social point of view. Their is some good content but no realistic path for this media to be seen or spread in a way that can be affective for social change outside the controlling #dotcons

One simple and practical path to change this is a basic. To move on with the project to get alt/grassroots media producers linking to each other on the #openweb Currently they pointlessly do not do this, even though they have repeatedly stated they do over the last few years.

What action have I been taking over the last 10 years:

1) Keep private messaging them on steps they can take, this works to an extent, as last year I asked them to add more tags to their posts and they “broke” the User Interface on the #OMN codebase we are using by adding lots more – which is a good problem to have. A small step.

2) Publicly talk to them as a alt/grassroots media group in blog post and their social media – this currently has little effect.

3) Talk to them in public as producer groups – this has had a limited effect with some groups, will try this more.

4) Publicly talk to them as individual’s, this will generally get a private response and little/no action just words so far.

5) Name and shame them as groups who do not link/share with other groups in public, this might be needed for some groups, but this is a negative.

6) Name them as individuals within the producer groups and push for linking directly to them in public, name and point to the individual that this is a clear negative fail, a last stage.

It’s a shame that this escalation is needed/not working – linking is a clear path to success on the web – the right-wing blogs/producers do this, it’s a simple fail that the left/progressive do not now, and generally never have link to each other.

“Make the world you want to see” LINKING is the bases of the #openweb and a strong path to #rebooting the grassroots internet itself. Looking for helpful/happy people to crowed source the active conversation to make this happen, maybe we need a “new” alt-media content #reboot to pull the current ones onto a sustainable path, lead by example.

For this to be relevant we need working open media tech, the best example of this is mastodon/activertypub. The #OMN project uses this and is simple #4opens based on linking, it’s a “first step”.

Updated text, find our current project https://unite.openworlds.info/explore/organizations

Why do I call Facebook a #dotcons

Our #mainstreaming current online tools (for example #Facebook) were built out from the worst parts of human nature. The challenge facing us is can we build our tools from the best part of human nature (an example would be the #OMN) I think this is a nice challenge to have.

It’s interesting to think about what shapes the small part of the social flow you see on #failbook and see how other agenda’s dominate what you see as a “personal” experience.

2) The ego of the CEO and heads of engineering and marketing at Facebook.

3) The agenda’s of the investors in Facebook – this includes front company’s for the intelligence services of the US and many very rich people. (#nastyfew)

4) The agenda of the advertisers that pay Facebooks bills. The agenda’s that all the above do not want to push – this is semantically hidden by “we can’t sell adverts next to your content”. And they sell this to us as: “this is not social engineering”.

5) Anything published outside Facebook silo/portal is pushed down and things published inside Facebooks walls are pushed up. An example of this is that Youtube videos are not always embedded any-more, and that #failbook videos are and autoplay. (URLs are now down rated)

6) The people you friend on Facebook. But this is not unmediated the people who are a better fit to the first 5 points will be pushed more visible than people who do not, which will be pushed down out of view.

7) Your likes and interactions will help the algorithm chose from the “advert friendly content” in your wider feed and push these posts into your (personal) news feed.

8) Facebook is clever evil, the algorithm is elastic, you can push it and it will bend. Of course, evil cleaver wants you to do this because it learns how you push and how to push you back to shape the above first 5 points.

9) Clever Evil 2 that Facebook will also push though content that it cannot necessarily monetize, but has the intent to addict you to taking the phone out of your pocket to check every spare moment.

10) It’s not only about cats and family photos, it about reshaping the world so that #Trump and #Brexit can happen, and we are powerless to do anything about this. All we can do is empower the enemy by feeding it knowledge on how to empower Trumps and Brixets. Shake and repeat, shake and repeat, shake and repeat, shake and repeat.

Click, swipe…

Why did the #openweb flower and die over the last 30 years

Published Date 2/22/16 1:17 AM

Why did the thousands of open internet projects fail? Despite large amounts of state, foundation, #NGO funding. There were early successful activist tech projects, all proved to be pointless or withered with success. In all cases I would argue that the underlining fairer was one of ideology, almost all projects worked against the dominate ideology of the net and web itself. Just as the #dotcons burned and bust repeatedly, traditional media was hopeless in till a new generation came along who had an inclining of the underlining working of the new tech ideology.

The few open projects that worked with in the ideology of the web were swamped by the pushing of the funding of the #mainstreaming of the web/internet. I am arguing here that the majority of people making a living in the #openweb/internet world are core to the problem not the solution, I could name hundreds of projected with the word open/radical in um who actively destroyed “open”.

A tiny minority created a world expanding technology based on the ideology and practices of trust based Anarchism. This exploded into the existing tech/communication worlds, pushing aside, pushing over, all the “better” 20th century vertical (ideology) tech already in place. Open became dominant for a while and this open was “locked in” because of a strong ideological thread throughout the standards and structures of the internet/web, the very “chaos” of the #openweb protected it from the “vertical” (20th century) locking of corporates such as Microsoft etal.

Nothing last forever, a new generation came along who merged the “open” back into the “closed” can’t really blame them, they were children of Thatcher and Reagan. Am amazed to have lived though the time of the #openweb, the world really did feel very different for a time. Who are the heroes and who the villeins, this history is unwritten yet, better get to it.

This is my realistic/pessimistic view of where we are at LINK

Organiseing the 21st Century

Published Date 12/23/14 7:52 PM

Let’s look at how we acturly organise. Grassroots alternative streams (and #mainstreaming river with more complexity) can be split into a number of streams

* The horizontals

* The verticals

In the horizontals the organising is actually pretty opaque – lets look at the tributary’s

Organic consensus – This is rare and generally fleeting, a working example is the rainbow gathering, generally as the project settles into place organic consensus is replaced with one of the bellow organising strategies. The organic nature comes from shared myths and traditions.

Bureaucratic consensus – Common, but this tends to be only a surface layer obscuring the actual working practices which would be one of the others. It leads to ossification, see late climate camp process as an example of this. A current project is looking likely the “edge fund”.

Opaque affinity group – There is a group of people who are doing it, but you don’t know how or how to take on a role. A lot of alternatives are actually run like this, middle/late #climatecamp is an example.

Invisible affinity group – The thing just appears as if by magic, lovely as far as it takes you. Given time, this will burn out and morph into one of the other forms. Early #climatecamp is a good example of this, as is early #Indymedia

Open affinity group – The is hope in this hard to sustain one, an example would be the tech group at Balcomby anti fracking camp. These are hard/tiring to keep open “naturally” falling into a different strategy.

Then the verticals are more in the open

Democratic centralism (#SWP etc) top down and corrupt, good for the nasty crew at the centre that can last a long time by draining new blood from the alternative. Big noise and little effect.

Bureaucratic democracy (#NUJ) good as far as it goes but endless meetings and heavy use of cross subsidy to sustain the sluggish process, problematically reactionary dues to glacial adaptation to changes around it.

Career Hierarchy – most trade unions and the Labour Party, conservative and sluggish, can be captured by functioning opaque/invisible affinity groups and then used for their own ends – an example the #newlabour project.

Generally, the way things are on the river surface bears little relation to the undercurrents below the surface. Almost all organising that achieves social change is by opaque or invisible affinity groups. The more permanent, static alt infrastructure is Democratic centralism or Bureaucratic democracy. The parts that merge into the mainstream river are career Hierarchy.

We live in turbulent times, enjoy your ride on the choppy river.

A look at where we are at in our #openweb reboot

It’s helpful to reflect on the list at Fortifying the Fediverse: Decentralized Trust and Safety 2024 as it reveals the values of the groups they represent. Importantly, it also provides a glimpse of where our shared #openweb reboot might be heading.

  • Blacksky: This project, created by the crypto crew for the #NGO liberal types, is firmly rooted in the #dotcons sphere. While it  claims to align with #openweb values, its foundation leans towards control and capital rather than grassroots paths. Yes it adds diversity to the ecosystem but will likely become another messy experiment that feeds into the compost pile. Support it if you feel inclined, but be prepared with a shovel to deal with the outcomes.
  • Bonfire Networks: A project from the #NGO world trying to push into grassroots territory. However, history is littered with similar efforts that fail repeatedly due to their inability to adapt to the #openweb’s native ethos. While it contributes to diversity, its trajectory reflects a pattern of missteps.
  • Darius Kazemi: A #mainstreaming grassroots figure who has a notable presence but seems more focused on occupying space rather than producing actionable outcomes. While there might be potential utility here, none has been apparent thus far.
  • db0: This one remains a mystery for now; no further insight is available.
  • Emelia Smith (@ThisIsMissEm): I’ve had conversations with Emelia, but their contributions seemed incoherent and mostly negative. They might align with the #fashernista tendency—style over substance. Time will tell if they add value or continue in this vein.
  • Erin Kissane: A figure from the NGO and academic world who shows an appreciation for grassroots efforts but is not inherently part of that ecosystem. There may be some utility here, but needs meaningful contributions.
  • Fediseer: An intriguing but unclear initiative. It’s worth keeping an eye on to understand its objectives and implications for the #openweb.
  • Independent Federated Trust and Safety (IFTAS): This group has ambitions to play a core role in trust and safety, but has yet to approach this responsibility with the respect or engagement needed for genuine collaboration. As with similar #NGO projects, it’s wise to have a shovel ready to compost any emerging mess.
  • Lemmy: Originally a Reddit clone, this project has taken an interesting turn by decentralizing its focus towards forums and wikis. It’s an intriguing experiment that deserves continued observation as it evolves.
  • Mastodon: A truly native grassroots project that has been instrumental in expanding the fediverse and the adoption of ActivityPub. However, as the project grew, it gravitated towards an #NGO-like structure and began engaging in #mainstreaming. This shift is a natural but challenging path for projects as they scale.
  • Newsmast Foundation: An #NGO initiative centred around liberal #mainstreaming of news flows. While it adds diversity to the ecosystem, there remains an urgent need for native grassroots media projects to balance this narrow perspective.
  • Pixelfed: A companion project to Mastodon with a similar ethos. While it’s a positive addition to the ecosystem, its path leans towards #mainstreaming. It’s sometimes positioned as a token example of diversity by the Mastodon team, which could become problematic if this narrative goes unchallenged.
  • Social Web Foundation: An #NGO-backed initiative with some grassroots influence from its current leadership. However, in vertical structures like this, leadership tends to shift with changes in funding, which will alter its trajectory.
  • Spritely Institute: A strong technical project focused on a more peer-to-peer (#p2p) approach. While the technology is promising, its messaging and outreach need significant improvement to achieve broader understanding and any adoption.

This list reflects the diversity and challenges within the #openweb space. It underscores the need to balance different approaches, highlight the very real lack of native grassroots efforts, and the need to remain vigilant against co-option by #dotcons and #NGO mainstreaming paths.

Or an earlier draft:

It’s helpful to look at a list from https://about.iftas.org/2024/12/23/fortifying-the-fediverse-decentralised-trust-and-safety-2024/ as it reflects the values of the groups they represent. And more importantly where our shared #openweb reboot is going.

  • Blacksky is a #dotcons being built by the crypto crew for the #NGO liberal types, it is native to the #openweb so part of diversity, but, in the end likely more mess to compost, support it if you like but have a shovel handy.
  • Bonfire Networks comes from the #NGO world pushing into the grassroots, not native and like all projects with this motivation there is a long history they fail, and fail, and fail. It’s a problem flow in the #openweb so a part of diversity.
  • Darius Kazemi a #mainstreaming grassroots person, who talks and takes up space, might have some use but not as far as I know.
  • db0 do not know this one.
  • Emelia Smith (@ThisIsMissEm) I talked to this one, but they did not make sense and were largely negative, #fashernista maybe. Who knows, let’s see.
  • Erin Kissane NGO and academic guy who likes grassroots, but is not. Might have some use, but not so far as far as I know
  • Fediseer This is a strange one, what is this about?
  • Independent Federated Trust and Safety (IFTAS) An in-group pushing into a core role, not respectfully so far, but let’s see where they go. Have a shovel at hand to compost the mess.
  • Lemmy Has an interesting history, a clone of Reddit, then pushing the core coding out to forums and wikis, it’s interesting and worth watching.
  • Mastodon a native grassroots project that pushed the fediverse and activitypub wider. With this move, as the project grew, they shifted to the #NGO path and engaged in #mainstreaming as people do.
  • Newsmast Foundation a #NGO project of liberal #mainstreaming news flows, fine as a part of diversity, but we also need native grassroots.
  • Pixelfed is a companion to mastodon, a good project, if soft and #mainstreaming in its path. Is kinda used as meto project by the mastodon crew to say the is diversity, this could be a problem if unchallenged.
  • Social Web Foundation is a #NGO backed project, it has a bit of grassroots to it from its current leadership, but leadership changes in vertical structures when funding flows changes.
  • Spritely Institute a good tech project, a more p2p path, but hard to understand, needs actual outreach.