The#IMC project is an affinity group – so we are planing to work through consensus and diversity of strategy to move the project past where it was ripped apart by internal stresses after 10 years of running as a successfully worldwide radical grassroots media project.
Of course this can and will be updated as needed, but we have a “chicken and egg” issue that we need a working affinity group/s to reach consensus on where we go. The #indymediaback project is a way of bootstrapping this code/process in #4opens way.
To keep “diversity of strategy” in place, we are using the #OMN framework.
* Fluffy – asking/pressuring for change though the system
* Spiky – fucking shit up to enact change and directly and sometime ethically using “violence” to property – not to people.
* Beyond spiky the is WAR where direct harm to people happens – that’s outside the metaphor.
It’s interesting to take a few moments to look at this more. #XR talks spiky by blocking bridges and occupying spaces, but they do it for a #fluffy agender of asking for change. As we are seeing now with their co-opting into “normal” this has limits on outcomes.
Where #climatecamp invaded and shut down the direct courses of #climatechaos with some limited property damage – though there were some in the movement that pushed for more property damage, was always “non-violent” to people. Though the police did regular violence to people in return, so was a one-sided agreement. This was lived “respect for diversity” and was affective in till the internal process ossified and #mainstreaming moved it to a more #XR agender where it promptly failed.
The #animalrights crew were #spiky doing damage to property, and some were not above doing damage to people. These guys were pretty intolerant but got stuff done and seceded in many of their objectives, though at heavy personal costs.
In the UK we have not had war in our movements since the Irish “troubles” though the has been way too much state violence around the world in our name.
Q. I remember when people were spiking trees to break chainsaws. Do you think the name came from that?
A. yes, the same movement. Spiky in both ways damage to the chainsaws and with possibility of hurting the users of the chainsaws this is meditated by clearly MARKING the area as spiked so sorted “diversity of strategy” #spiky in hand with #fluffy it works.
The problem is often from the dogmatic #fluffy crew collaborating with the police to stop this direct action. Due to the possibility of hurting the people with the chainsaws, this blocking effective action. Not respecting the diversity of strategy.
UPDATE
It’s interesting to look at this more as it’s an example of the success of the “Diversity of Strategises” and also their failures. Many spiky protesters see protecting nature from commercial logging as a war, with the possible injuries to the chainsaw works as exceptable to save nature. BUT in respect for the fluffy side of “Diversity of Strategises” they generally put up the notices about the spiking to stop the workers getting injured while destroying the trees. A good balance of spiky/fluffy, the fail is the liberal protesters then betraying them to the police as often happens which is a clear non respect for “Diversity of Strategises”. Possible social/ecological change is thus BLOCKED by this failing.
The big #fedivers is run in the voluntarist economic model of patron and donations to cover basic costs. The technical federation allows this to happen at a humane scale. This was how #indymedia was run for 10 years – not without stresses that we do need to mediate. at the #OMN we have seed funding for 3-4 years and looking for sustainability here.
We are building “grassroots” at #OMN the is a role for #mainstreaming journalism and media. Projects like @novaramedia etc. they can be funded in different ways. Diversity is always a good thing, its were real humane power lays.
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.
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.
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.
One uncomfortable thing we need to address, calmly and constructively, is this: for the last decade, the right has been better at cooperating around #openweb media than the left.
This isn’t because the right has better politics. It’s because they’ve been more pragmatic about infrastructure. While much of the left argued endlessly about identity, fashion, theory, tone, and purity, right-wing and reactionary groups quietly built linking ecosystems: shared blogs, cross-posting networks, video hubs, newsletters, forums, and self-hosted media that reinforced each other. They understood, often instinctively, that control of distribution matters more than rhetorical perfection.
By contrast, the left has been worse than useless on some of the basics. Something as simple as linking between radical media projects has often failed. Projects compete for attention, split over minor differences, or collapse into internal conflict. Even when the politics align, cooperation doesn’t follow. The result? Fragmentation without any resilience.
Ironically, the few left-wing media projects that have succeeded at scale largely did so by abandoning alternative tech altogether. They built their audiences and careers inside the #dotcons – Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook, Substack – accepting algorithmic dependency as the cost of survival. That choice brought reach, but at the price of autonomy, long-term stability, solidarity and real political leverage.
This isn’t a moral judgement – it’s a structural observation. Platforms reward individual brands, they block collective ecosystems. Once inside that logic, cooperation becomes optional and is often discouraged.
Where progressives have quietly seceded is not primarily in party politics or campaigning, but in lifestyle and cultural subcultures. This is where the #fediverse, #Mastodon, and other #openweb tools first took root. These spaces were driven by values – privacy, autonomy, care, consent – rather than reach or growth.
For a long time, that made them feel “apolitical” in the narrow sense. But in reality, they were deeply political, just not aligned with electoral or media spectacle cycles. They were building infrastructure for different kinds of social relations, not greed feed messaging machines.
Alongside this, we’re seeing tools being used more explicitly for radical and progressive agendas. Projects like #VisionOnTV and #IndymediaBack are reconnecting media with movement. Spaces like #Kolektiva bring an explicitly #fashionista anarchist politics into federated infrastructure. And frameworks like #OMN (Open Media Network) focus on shared process, trust, and governance rather than branding or growth.
This is important because as #mainstreaming accelerates and trust in the #dotcons continues to erode, both progressive and reactionary groups move further into the #openweb. The question is not whether this will happen, it’s how we shape the culture and norms of these spaces.
The right tends to treat tech instrumentally: as a tool for mobilisation, influence, and power accumulation. That can make them effective in the short term, but it often leads to centralisation, cults of personality, and brittle structures that fracture under pressure.
The left, when it’s at its best, treats tech as part of a broader social ecology: something that should support care, plurality, mutual aid, and collective agency. But when the left fails, it fails by refusing to build — mistaking critique for action, and purity for strategy.
The #openweb doesn’t automatically belong to anyone. It’s a terrain of struggle. If progressives don’t show up, cooperate, and do the boring work of linking, hosting, moderating, and sustaining infrastructure, others will fill that vacuum. This is why now is the time to make your space in this network and be heard.
Not by abandoning existing networks overnight, but by practicing a #stepback: one foot in, one foot out. Staying connected where people are, while actively building and strengthening open alternatives. Helping others take that step, rather than shaming them for not already being there.
If we could build #dotcons social media, we can build #openweb social infrastructure. If we could centralise power, we can federate it. The #openweb path is not a retreat, it’s a return to shared ownership, shared memory, and shared responsibility. And it’s long past time the left took it seriously again.
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.
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.
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
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 😉
Throwing ideas into the air to see where they land, this is a sketch, not a blueprint – a thought experiment. As if we’re serious about using the #openweb to challenge #mainstreaming, and build alternatives to failing capitalist status quo, we have to start somewhere. So let’s ask: what does a world built around the #4opens look like?
We’re talking about a soft move away from capitalism, not an apocalyptic collapse or utopian leap, but a pragmatic, grounded shift in how we live, relate, and build together in the digital era. A society governed by openness, not profit, future rooted in collaboration, not control.
The End of Money as the Primary Motivator
In a #4opens world, exchange is no longer driven by the blunt instrument of money. The logic of scarcity fades when information is abundant and freely shared. With open data and transparent process, value can be tracked, distributed, and balanced – not hoarded.
Imagine a path where you give not to accumulate, but to re-balance. Where you’re recognized and supported for what you contribute, openly. This doesn’t mean the end of value, it means the end of commodification as the only language for it. Capitalism made money sacred. The #4opens world breaks that spell in the digital paths, which can then be used as a lever to re-balance this in the more physical world.
Radical Reductions in Inequality
The current digital economy centralises control in the hands of the #nastyfew, the platform owners, the server landlords, the data hoarders. In contrast, a #4opens world puts common infrastructure – physical and digital – under #FOSS democratic stewardship.
Open code, open governance, open data, open processes. These tools dismantle the gatekeeping logic of closed silos. We stop renting access to our lives and can then stop working to make the rich richer. What results is not just a redistribution of resources, but a recomposition of power. Rich and poor stop being natural categories, we start down the path of inequality becoming a historical memory.
Ecological Transformation via Digital Abundance
In this world changing, we break the toxic loop where growth = progress. As digital goods expand – freely shareable, replicable, adaptable – the material basis of economic growth shrinks.
Instead of growth for its own sake, we can choose to sift focus to ecological outcomes. Energy systems localise, circular economies flourish. The planet breathes again because we’ve stopped mistaking consumerism for culture. On this post-consumption, we can meet human needs without destroying the biosphere.
Real Community, Not Algorithmic Spectacle
When your networks are open, knowable is modifiable, you stop being a metric or a data point. You become a person in a community again, who can re-build networks of care and trust. The #4opens give us tools to know each other better, to collaborate without permission, and to keep relationships alive across distance and time. We escape the isolation of the #dotcons by remembering what it means to belong, not to brands, but to people.
Reclaiming the Meaning of ‘Common Sense’
In this transition, we’ll have to rethink almost everything we take for granted. Why do we work so much? Why do we compete instead of collaborate? Why is everything a secret? Why are we trained to distrust?
The capitalist world naturalised its own ideology, it taught us that exploitation was just “how the world works.” The #4opens world undoes this conditioning. We’ll discover that our “common sense” was a prison, and that open thinking makes new realities possible.
We already lost privacy, let’s be honest that the #dotcons and the surveillance state see everything. This isn’t a warning, it’s the present, there’s no going back to closed data. Not legally or technically. The dream of sealed-off privacy is gone. So what can we do?
We open the #metadata bag. All of it. We make the hidden flows of power visible. We stop pretending that corporate surveillance is okay while peer-to-peer transparency is dangerous.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable. But in a world where we’ve already been stripped naked by Google, Amazon, and the NSA, radical transparency becomes the preferd path to justice. The question isn’t “how do we hide?” but “how do we share wisely and govern openly?”
What Does a Post-Capitalist, Open Society Look Like?
It’s not utopia, it’s messy, it’s federated, full of tension and debate. But it’s also a world where:
Decisions are made in the open, not behind closed doors.
Software is built to be forked, not locked.
Platforms are governed by people and communitys, not shareholders.
Care is more valuable than control.
Collaboration is default, not an afterthought.
This is the vision of the #4opens, not a theory, but a practice. A lived, everyday politics. A shift from passive consumption to active creation. It’s the beginning of something new, rooted in #FOSS, a real path, where everything we already know works if we just trust each other enough to try.
So, what does a #4opens world look like? It looks like the world we’re already building, underneath the rubble of the old one. Time to pick up your shovels.
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”.
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.
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 