Tag: mainstreaming

Activism Matters for Tech Development and #FOSS Paths

To look at this, we need to move outside the comfort zones of current #mainstreaming thinking. Let’s start by touching on the role of #protestcamps in direct action, protest camps are temporary activist spaces set up in public areas to bring attention to social, environmental, and political issues. These camps create a direct action environment where people gather, discuss, and demonstrate. They range from #fluffy (peaceful and symbolic) to #spiky (disruptive and confrontational), depending on the nature of the cause and the activists involved.

Who uses these strategies and spaces, some examples of protest movements: #Occupy Movement – Challenged economic inequality and corporate influence. #ClimateCamp – A radical grassroots direct action movement to counter #climatechaos through awareness, policy pressure, and direct disruption. Active in multiple countries, it peaked in the late 2000s and early 2010s, influencing both public debate and government action. #CriticalMass – A decentralized cycling activism movement, founded in 1992, that uses monthly mass bike rides to reclaim public space and challenge car culture.

These examples of grassroots politics operates from the bottom up, empowering people to engage directly rather than relying on mediating political parties or institutions. These paths give communities a voice and enable change outside traditional power structures. Direct action & grassroots politics is always the working change and challenge we need, activism that bypasses traditional political intermediaries, using disruptive tactics like strikes, sit-ins, and blockades.

Together, these methods provide democratic and practical ways to challenge authority, disrupt harmful policies, and drive real change. Let’s look at another example, the debate around #XR (Extinction Rebellion), founded in 2018, #XR uses nonviolent civil disobedience to push governments to act on the #climatecrisis. The movement is divisive, some see it as #spiky, using direct action to force political change. Others argue it’s too #fluffy, adhering to liberal ideas of legality and nonviolence, which limits its radical potential. Whether #XR is a radical or liberal movement remains an active debate, but its impact on public discourse and activism is undeniable.

This active fluffy/spiky debate is core to affective grassroots activism. This experience we need to pass onto the #4opens alternatives & horizontalist paths in tech, which to often have the assumption that liberal legality alone will fix systemic problems, a #geekproblem fantasy. A better path, is learning from this history of activism, native #FOSS and #4opens structures, which yes are not without challenges, need this to build alternatives that avoid the false hope that #mainstreaming institutions will voluntarily dismantle themselves.

As I highlight, activism isn’t separate from tech development, with #FOSS it shapes it. Movements like #Indymedia, #Fediverse, and #OMN show that #FOSS paths can be built with social movements in mind. If we don’t shape our own digital tools, they will be co-opted by #dotcons and restricted by #mainstreaming forces.

The solution? Rebuild from the ground up—not just by resisting but by actively creating the alternatives we want to see.

To balance the continuing support for mess we need a real shift to things that matter in #openweb tech dev

The Open Governance Body (#OGB) is a radical approach to decentralized governance, designed to address the failures of existing governance models by combining activist organizing techniques with decentralized federated technology like #ActivityPub. It provides a very flexible governance framework that can be used across different communities, from local markets to the #Fediverse, creating a scalable and human-centric decision-making path.

Real-world applications, the #OGB can be applied to various governance needs, examples:

  • Local Market Self-Governance: Stakeholders—such as vendors, customers, and authorities—can collaboratively make decisions without reliance on centralized institutions.
  • Fediverse and Online Communities: Federated instances can adopt the #OGB for cooperative decision-making, ensuring grassroots control over digital spaces.

By adapting to both digital and physical environments, the #OGB promotes collective agency and accountability.

Why this path works, activist organizing as a foundation: Social movements have driven radical change for centuries using decentralized, trust-based governance. The #Fediverse itself is a proof of concept, it has demonstrated that federated, open-source technologies can scale without corporate control. Human-centric governance is built by merging these time-tested approaches, the #OGB fosters sustainable, non-hierarchical governance models rooted in #4opens values. This combination ensures adaptability and resilience against co-option by #mainstreaming forces.

Permissionless rollout, the #OGB is designed to spread organically, self-initiated setup: Any individual or group can start an instance, onboard participants, and begin governance discussions. Network effect growth: As more people engage, the system scales naturally, shaping governance from the ground up. This bottom-up path challenges traditional top-down governance structures and paves the way for a more equitable #openweb.

The role of #openweb technologies on more political paths need funding and support. Using #RSS and #ActivityPub as core technologies offers significant advantages in grassroots politics:

  • Decentralization: Resistant to censorship and corporate control.
  • Interoperability: Enables seamless communication across platforms.
  • Transparency: Enhances accountability and public engagement.
  • Ownership & Autonomy: Empowers people to control their own data.
  • Accessibility: Breaks down barriers for marginalized voices.

The #Fediverse exemplifies this by offering a decentralized alternative to #dotcons. But the is still an oftern invisable ideological battle for the #openweb, the issues we aim to mediate is that programming is never neutral. Ideology inevitably shapes the systems we build. We see this in:

  • The Fediverse mirroring the #dotcons: Many platforms unintentionally replicate centralized models rather than embracing true decentralization.
  • The risk of #mainstreaming takeover: Without active resistance, corporate and NGO interests will attempt to co-opt the #openweb.
  • The #OMN as a counterforce: Focused on linking alternative and grassroots media, the #OMN is part of a broader push to prevent the enclosure of the digital commons.

The #openweb needs to remain a space for radical inclusion and self-determination, free from corporate and state control. This challenging of the status quo need real alternative futures, to get this we must critically examine the ideological underpinnings of our current world and ask:

The answers to these #blocking forces lie in building, not just critiquing, creating alternative paths and structures that embody the change we wish to see. The #OGB and wider #OMN projects, and the #4opens framework are part of this effort to reclaim community, autonomy and rebuild the #openweb from the ground up.

The challenge for #OMN & #openweb

There are a lot of mental health issues that are pushed over us in what remains of our open alt spaces, we need ways to mediate the damage, to help the people who spread this mess. The path of the #mainstreaming is corrosive to the alt cultures it feeds on. The cycle is always the same:

  • Radical ideas emerge → They are raw, open, and challenging.
  • Mainstreaming co-opts them → Dilutes them into something marketable.
  • They become performative → Used as branding by the #fashernista left, while the right weaponises the left’s discarded tools (like direct action).
  • The original movement is discredited → The real alternatives get buried under a mess of victimhood narratives, NGO bureaucracy, and “respectable” gatekeeping.

Composting this mess, one way is radical openness, but in a way that is intentional rather than naïve:

  • #4opens as a grounding principle → The more we expose the internal workings of a movement, the harder it is for power politics and NGO rot to take hold.
  • Affinity-based organising → Trust-based, decentralised, and responsive, avoiding the traps of rigid structures that get hijacked.
  • Resisting the urge to close → Every time a movement feels under attack, there’s a knee-jerk reaction to centralise and control. That’s how we lose.
  • Recognising how #dotcons manipulate OPEN/CLOSED → They’ve mastered open for them, closed for us, and turned it into a system of social control.

To take these step we need to admit we live in a gatekeepered world, yes the old media gatekeepers are gone, but what we have now is worse. The illusion of openness in the #dotcons masks a totalitarian model of control that makes traditional media censorship look almost quaint. Until we acknowledge that, every alt project will keep getting swallowed or broken from within.

The challenge for #OMN & #openweb is that we need to rebuild media and organising from a place of resilience, not just reaction. The #geekproblem, the #NGO mess, and the left’s failure to defend its own tools have left us in a weak position, but there’s still compost to grow something from. So, who’s ready to get their hands dirty?

Cutting through 99% of the #techshit

The #openweb is a much better framing than #fediverse when trying to break out of the tribal bubbles. It speaks to something broader and historical, whereas #fediverse is just one (flawed) expression of those ideas.

Why #openweb matters, it’s not new, which is actually a strength, this is the original internet vision before it got hijacked by #dotcons. It avoids the self-referential nature of the #fediverse, which often turns into a closed loop of devs talking to devs. It’s a term that can bridge communities rather than reinforcing in-group/out-group dynamics.

The limits of mirroring #dotcons, the first stage of the #fediverse, was largely about copying corporate social media platforms but without the profit motive. That was useful, but it’s hit a ceiling. Why? Lack of real community support – Devs build stuff, but actual social infrastructure is missing. Scaling the wrong way – Just copying individualist, engagement-driven models doesn’t actually create an open, healthy network. Reinforcing the #geekproblem – Developers remain in control, not communities, which leads to predictable NGO-style behaviour creeping in.

Shifting the balance in tech, we can’t just keep replicating the #mainstreaming mess in different codebases. The tech itself needs to reflect the values of the #openweb, decentralised in governance, not just code, community-led, not dev-controlled, process transparency, not just ‘open-source’ performatively.

Dealing with the #geekproblem, devs are used to solving problems in isolation, but society isn’t a coding challenge. They often bring #NGO behaviour into the #fediverse, expecting deference to their authority—and then act surprised when there’s kickback.

Being #openweb native, if you’re coming from the NGO world, you’ll have a much better time if you actually engage with the native culture of the #openweb rather than trying to impose external hierarchies. Otherwise, you’ll just recreate the same socially and self-destructive patterns that have wrecked everything else. So yeah, to boost this thinking, we need to start using #openweb more and move beyond the #fediverse branding trap.

The #4opens and #nothingnew both cut through 99% of the crap so the few people who are going to do something can do something that would be useful rather than unless. From useful you get a few more people, rinse and repeat, and you get social change and challenge, even if this is repressed or implodes, it will be more fun, and interesting than the current mess making.

We can’t keep simply repeating this mess

The last 40 years of #mainstreaming has been nothing but a slow, suffocating descent into #climatechaos, driven by a #deathcult logic that normalised destruction as “common sense.” The worst part? A lot of our critical thinking is still shaped by the corresponding #postmodernism, which has left us floundering in relativism, unable to take action beyond fragmented, individualist gestures.

We’ve utterly failed to build functional alternatives in the last decades. The social, political, and technological landscapes have been co-opted, watered down, and turned into managed dissent. Now, we’re stuck in the wreckage, watching the same people who pushed these failed agendas still setting the terms of debate. Time to #KISS name it, challenge it, and compost it.

Open vs Closed is the core struggle, when activism falls into a shitty, stinking process, it’s always because of control-freakery, and there are only two paths:

  1. Open Process

If a project is meant to be open, then trying to close things down and hide the dysfunction will only make things worse. The stink seeps out, poisoning everything, the project’s core, its relationships, and every decision made. The dysfunction becomes baked into the structure, leading to a downward spiral of more control, more secrecy, more rot. Eventually, you’re left with an entirely closed project, despite all the performative openness.

  1. Closed Process

If a project is meant to be closed, then it survives by kicking out dissent, tightly controlling information, and maintaining hierarchical power until it either runs out of funding or loses public goodwill. Trying to “open up” a closed project without a total upheaval is nearly impossible, the repressed dysfunction will explode the moment it’s exposed.

NGOs & Activists: The false open, most NGOs and activist groups operate in a messy hybrid of open/closed. NGOs pretend to be open with consultations and focus groups, but the real decisions happen in closed rooms to maintain funding and careers. Activist groups start open, but as they grow, they close up due to power consolidation, internal conflict, and scale limitations. Trust-based affinity group organising remains one of the few viable models that doesn’t automatically lead to closure, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The “Dogma” of open, we need to be unapologetically clear, open projects must stay open, or they rot. Closed projects will never be meaningfully opened without collapse. NGOs & fake-open activism serve as control mechanisms, not movements for real change. This is the core challenge we keep running into: Open vs Closed. How do we stop repeating the same mistakes?

Just to remind you, the last 40 years of #mainstreaming has been a #deathcult when you look at our slow drift into #climatechaos, we can’t keep simply repeating this mess.

The difference between struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.

Power in tech isn’t neutral, and our issue over the last 20 years is that we have allowed the #dotcons to hoarded and weaponised it. The answer to our failer isn’t to retreat or seek more “ethical” enclosures, it’s to reclaim our power through radical, commons-based networks like #indymediaback and the #OMN.

This argument is #nothingnew, we don’t need endless reinvention, we need continuity. The #openweb isn’t about mimicking #dotcons; it’s about breaking their privatisation model and returning power to collective hands. Hashtags, metadata, and federated networks help on this path, but the real strength is social, not just technical.

Examples of this: #Indymediaback isn’t just a project, it’s a continuation of a proven model that worked before the #dotcons stole the narrative. It was a social technological project embedded in radical movements, used real-world trust systems, and functioned outside of state/corporate control. Rebuilding it isn’t nostalgia; it’s a practical step toward rebalancing power.

We need ongoing arguments about power, opting out or running to “better” #dotcons just dodges the issue. Power is always there. The question is who holds it, and for what purpose? Right now, the #dotcons wield it for social control, profit, and policing. The #openweb flips that, if we build it as a “native” path.

The fight isn’t about making people “feel good” about tech choices, it’s about removing power from enclosures and putting it back into the commons. That’s the difference between real struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.

Paranoia is one of the biggest blockers in alt-tech and radical spaces. It breeds mistrust, isolation, and internal sabotage, making collective action impossible. While some caution is necessary, too much just feeds into stasis and control, mirroring the systems activists are trying to break away from.

The #4opens is a direct antidote to this. Transparency counters paranoia, when decisions, processes, and networks are open, there’s less space for suspicion to fester. Trust isn’t built by secrecy but by consistent, open, and accountable action.

The irony is that a lot of these paranoid actors think they’re resisting control, but by shutting everything down, they’re just self-sabotaging. The solution isn’t more walls—it’s more flows. The #4opens provides the framework to move past the paranoia blockade and rebuild trust in practice, not just theory.

The victimhood narrative is often a trap, weaponised by the right and co-opted by the #fashernista left to shut down alternatives. It can be used as a tool of control, not liberation. Composting the mess, in part, by refuse to play their game, victimhood, is in part real and in part is used to create moral authority without real action. If we engage on those terms, we just get dragged into performative battles.

Expose the power dynamics, by asking who benefits from this? In the negative sense, it’s often gatekeepers who want to control the narrative. NGOs do it for funding, #dotcons for engagement, and #mainstreaming activists for status. A path out of this is reclaiming direct action, which sadly meany in the left abandoned, and the right picked up. We need to take it back, not through reactionary purity politics, but by actually doing the work outside their controlled spaces. A healing path is shifting from identity to process, the current model is all about who is speaking, not what is being built. That’s a dead end. We need #4opens process-driven organising, not personality cults or gatekept “safe spaces.” Make failure visible, one of the biggest weapons against alt movements is pointing out their failures, while #mainstreaming projects hide their rot. If we embrace messy openness, we take that power away.

Breaking the cycle:

  • The right weaponises grievance → to mobilise.
  • The liberal left weaponises grievance → to control and suppress real challenge.
  • The alt-left needs to weaponise transparency → to break gatekeeping and rebuild trust.

So the question is: how do we make “openness” an effective tool in this? The #4opens is a step.

Bridging the gap: Building a human-first #openweb

Many years ago, I wrote on my website sidebar: “A river that needs crossing—political and tech blogs: On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance; on the geek side, there is naivety and over-complexity.” Decades later, we still to often find ourselves standing on opposite shores of this river, struggling to bridge the understanding gap between human-centric communities and the techno-centric mindset of the “geek class.” This divide is a core challenge for anyone invested in building a better, decentralised #openweb.

This battle isn’t just about technology—it’s a deeper, unspoken struggle between openness and control. It’s about whether our social networks and communities will empower human trust and collaboration, or continue to be shaped by closed systems that reduce people to passive users.

To touch on this, it’s worth looking at a tale of two projects: Diaspora vs Mastodon

The history of the #openweb provides stark lessons. Consider #Diaspora and #Mastodon, two decentralised platforms with very different outcomes.

  • Diaspora had significant funding, public attention, and a large team of coders. Yet, it failed completely. Why? It was built with a #FOSS closed mindset—trying to replicate the control features of corporate platforms but within a decentralised framework.
  • Mastodon, by contrast, had no funding, minimal publicity, and just one dedicated coder. It succeeded because it embraced openness—allowing communities to organically grow and evolve based on shared principles rather than top-down control.

The lesson is clear: projects rooted in openness thrive, while those built on closed fail.

The #OMN path is human trust networks over algorithms. One of the core goals is to learn from these past successes and failures. From these focuses on growing federated human communities by prioritising openness, trust, and collaboration over technical “perfection.”

A counterintuitive path – Why Spam and “Bad Content” Matter. It might sound counterintuitive, but spam and irrelevant posts are a necessary part of building communities. Without the challenge of sorting and filtering content, there’s no reason for humans to reach out, form trust networks, and collaborate on moderation. Geeks often see spam as a technical problem to be solved with algorithms, but this approach misses where the value is.

Algorithms centralise power, when we rely on black-box technology to handle content moderation, control shifts to the people who design and manage these “boxes”. This creates invisible hierarchies, as seen with #Failbook and other #dotcons platforms. By relying on human moderation and trust-building, communities become stronger and more self-sustaining. People are motivated to engage, connect, and contribute to a path they help shape.

Spam and low-quality content must flow into the network as part of the process, but the network itself should flush this out to organically push valuable content to the top through human effort. Of course there is a balance here, this decentralised approach keeps power in the hands of the community balanced with the coders. With this flow of data and metadata established, we put some federated structure in place.

Scale through federation creates organic grow.

  • Base Sites: These are narrow, local, or subject-focused publishing sites where content creation happens. They are small and community-driven, and their true value lies in their specificity and grassroots community engagement.
  • Middle Sites: This aggregate content from the base sites, adding value by curating, tagging, and filtering. They act as the core of the network, sifting through content to ensure quality and relevance.
  • Top Sites: These are broad outreach platforms designed for #mainstreaming content. They are easy to set up and administer but add little original value. Instead, they highlight and amplify the best content from the base and middle layers. These sites are the change and challenge.

This structure reverses the traditional value pyramid, where top-down platforms dominate. In the #OMN model, the true value resides at the grassroots base, while the top merely reflects the collective effort below.

Moderation as a feature, not a problem, for the network to thrive, it must scale through human connections and trust, moderation is the fuel for building the trust networks.

  • Trusted Links: Content flows through trusted networks, where moderators ensure quality.
  • Moderation Levels: New contributors are moderated until trust is established. Over time, as trust builds, moderation becomes less/unnecessary.
  • Failure Modes: Without trust-building, sites will either become overwhelmed by irrelevant content or collapse under the weight of unmanageable workloads.

The only way to maintain a useful site is to build, either a large, healthy community with diverse moderators and administrators, or a small, focused group based on high-quality, trusted connections. Both outcomes are desirable and reinforce the decentralised ethos of the #OMN.

Why automation fails, the temptation to automate everything is a hallmark of the #geekproblem. While algorithms might make a network “technically” better, they erode the human element, which is the entire point of decentralisation. Automation creates middling-quality networks with mediocre outcomes, leading to Signal-to-Noise problems, reduced motivation, if everything is automated, why bother forming trust networks and engaging deeply?

Less is more should be a guiding principle. By focusing on simplicity and human collaboration, the #OMN avoids the pitfalls of over-engineering and maintains the integrity of its community-driven mission to build a better future. The #OMN isn’t just about technology; it’s about creating spaces where people can connect, collaborate, and build trust. It’s about empowering communities to take ownership of their networks and their narratives.

This road won’t be easy. We’ll need to fight against the inertia of the #dotcons and resist the urge to repeat the mistakes of the last decade’s failed alt-tech projects. But by embracing the #4opens principles, we can create a web that serves people, not corporations. The tools are already here. The open internet still exists, for now. The choice is clear, build for humans, not for algorithms. Trust people, not black boxes. Decentralise, federate, and grow organically. The #OMN provides a roadmap—now it’s time to follow it.

Public Social Media: The Choice is Clear

As the #fashernista and #geekproblem “debate” over social media platforms intensifies, the choice between truly public, decentralised networks and corporate-controlled #dotcons has never been clearer. Let’s look at a simple example:

  • Mastodon is owned by no one and everyone (community-driven). Its structure is public non-profit. Number of distributed nodes are in the thousands (fully decentralised). Post length: 500 characters and more. Can edit? Yes. Mastodon represents the native #openweb. It’s built on decentralised principles, where people and communities own and control their spaces. There’s no central authority dictating rules or exploiting for profit.
  • Bluesky is owned by Venture Capitalists, Its structure is corporate for-profit. Number of “distributed” nodes: One (centralised in practice) Post length: 300 characters Can edit? No. Bluesky, despite its claims of decentralisation, is owned and operated as a for-profit venture. Its structure centralises power and prioritises profit over people’s control, offering a polished but limited alternative to #mainstreaming paths.

The choice between #Mastodon and #Bluesky reflects a broader conflict between decentralisation and #dotcons corporate control. It should, but often is not easy to see that networks like the #fedivers are native to the #openweb where Bluesky is an interloper, though they are both #4opens.

Projects like the #OMN, #4opens, and the #Fediverse itself, offering freedom, community ownership, and transparency. Bluesky, on the other hand, represents the same closed, profit-driven ethos of the #dotcons, repackaged in a new “shiny” wrapper.

When you choose a network, you’re not just choosing where to post, you’re choosing what kind of internet you want to build. The open, public internet is still within reach. The choice is clear.

Seed from a toot and image from @FediTips

The web wasn’t built by solo tech geniuses

The web wasn’t built by solo tech geniuses, finance firms, or flashy luminaries making illusionary promises. It was grown by the collective time, energy, and creativity of millions of grassroots people and communities working together to create something greater than themselves. The internet as we know it emerged not from the top-down visions of elites, but from decentralised, collaborative efforts. This same collective energy will be what propels us into the next era of the #openweb, a web that remains true to its native principles of accessibility, freedom, and inclusivity.

For the last 20 years, however, we’ve been stuck in the corporate-controlled ecosystem of the #dotcons. Platforms like Meta, Google, and Amazon have dominated the landscape, turning the internet into a commodity to be bought, sold, and controlled. Their vision has led to the rise of the #closedweb, where profit and surveillance trump openness and collaboration. This #mainstreaming path is deeply concerning because it fundamentally contradicts what the web was meant to be, a space for sharing, learning, and connecting without the old gatekeepers.

There is a movement to reverse this trend, the #Fediverse, but like meany reboots it’s floundering as it grows through the inrushing of “common sense”. What we need is native #KISS foundations for a thriving #openweb, A path to this is to embrace the #4opens as guiding principles:

  • Open Data: Ensuring that information can be freely shared and reused.
  • Open Source: Building tools and platforms that anyone can access, modify, and improve.
  • Open Standards: Creating interoperable systems that work across platforms and communities.
  • Open Process: Making decisions transparently and inclusively to foster trust and collaboration.

This is a simple retelling of the #FOSS process with the addition of #openprocess as is used in the best projects, this is a part of the #nothingnew path we are on.

It’s not enough to critique the #dotcons, we need to actively build alternatives, the #Fediverse has already taken the first set on this path. The next step is focusing our energy on “native” projects like #OMN (Open Media Network), #IndyMediaBack, and #OGB (Open Governance Body), on this path we can create a decentralised, human-centred web that prioritises communities over corporations. These projects are not about recreating the same flawed systems in a slightly different guise; they’re about fundamentally rethinking how we engage with technology, governance, and communication. This rethink is #nothingnew as it’s copying the working structure of grassroots activism.

The time is now to come together and make history by working on these alternatives. The #openweb is not just an ideal; it’s a necessity for a sustainable, democratic future. Let’s reject the illusions of the #closedweb and instead build a web that truly belongs to everyone.

Tech princes and the #deathcult

The billionaire problem, Elon Musk, tech oligarchs, and the #deathcult of wealth as a social path.

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is emblematic of a larger issue: the unchecked power of tech oligarchs. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill millionaires; they’re part of a nasty few, the class that operates above the ultra-wealthy, shaping politics, economies, and societies to their inadequacy. While the myth is pushed that billionaires are brilliant innovators who work harder than everyone else, the reality is darker. Their actions reflect a destructive #deathcult mentality, hoarding resources, manipulating public discourse, and pushing harmful ideologies for personal gain and standing.

Let’s start with Musk himself. People think of him as the “SpaceX and Tesla guy,” (this is not true, but that’s another story) his behaviour since acquiring Twitter reveals his priorities. Musk purchased the platform for $43 billion, not as a business investment, but as a tool for propaganda to consolidate power and influence politics. To platforming far-right politics, by amplify propaganda and undermine the thin remaining democratic paths. From boosting bots that inflate the appearance of support for far-right ideologies to reinstating accounts that push hate speech, these actions directly impact global politics.

This control of Twitter, and most importantly the chattering classes that stay in this #dotcons, has silenced the little dissent left. Bot-driven disinformation spreading far-right ideologies isn’t accidental; it’s strategic manipulation of public opinion to push agendas. Like supporting trump and authoritarianism, spending over $250 million on Trump’s election campaigns.

Musk isn’t alone, tech oligarchs like Bezos and Zuckerberg are equally complicit in reshaping society to benefit themselves, at the now clear expense of the public. Bezos’s quiet Influence, unlike #Musk, #Bezos operates in the shadows, Amazon spends millions lobbying US politicians to block antitrust laws and maintain monopolies to exploits workers and maximise profit. His strategy is quieter but no less harmful. #Zuckerberg’s free speech farce, with the ending of liberal fact-checking on #Facebook under the guise of “free speech.” The result? A flood of bots spreading hate speech, disinformation, and simple propaganda. By prioritising profit over public responsibility, this #dotcons becomes another breeding ground for extremism.

The #feudalistic influence of tech princes and oligarchs has consequences that go far beyond social media with political manipulation, global meddling. This is no longer just about wealth, it’s about shaping geopolitical realities. This is going to accelerate the current climate and resource chaos. So why do meany of us keep bowing? There is a persistence of the billionaire myth, the idea that they’re smarter, harder-working, and more deserving, which keeps #mainstreaming people from challenging this power. But it should be obvious these aren’t self-made geniuses, they’re nasty inadequate opportunists thriving in a broken system. This isn’t just about Musk or any of the other nasty few billionaires. It’s about rejecting the #deathcult of greed and exploitation our socialites are based on. The rise of billionaires as political actors isn’t inevitable, it’s a symptom of a path that values unrestrained profit over people.

Where is this going, they crave #control, so they assume everyone else is out to control them. They weave #conspiracies to crush their enemies, so they see a world drowning in conspiracies against them. In the final stages, a fully rotted #ideologue can’t even see threats or weaknesses; their perception is warped by their own decayed #moralcompass. At this point, outside direct, action they are beyond reach. Every word we speak will be twisted against us. Every action we take will be seen as an attack #paranoia #fascist.

The #OMN has a vision for something better, decentralised, open, and community-driven governance. A world where power is distributed, not hoarded by a handful of deranged oligarchs. The challenge is to make this vision a real path, and to turn our distaste for the status quo into action for this change and challenge.

OMN #openweb #fediverse #makehistory #deathcult #OGB #visionontv

The pushing of doomed projects

We need real and sharp critique’s of the current state of #mainstreaming in the #openweb and tech-for-good spaces. The challenge is of cutting down obviously pointless projects from 99% to 90% which is a both realistic and necessary path. How can we achieve this shift, focusing on impactful subjects, better implementation, and strategic approaches in coding development.

The developing of alternatives to corporate platforms is a first step we have taken in the #Fediverse, with most of the #mainstreaming projects simply replicate corporate models while branding themselves as “ethical” or “decentralised.” The next step is to create genuine alternatives, by focusing on “native”tools for community governance, people-first design. Then it’s key to mediate the many #NGO tech projects that keep reinventing the wheel instead of tools for the change and challenge we actually need and use.

We need to rethink funding paths for #openweb projects, as the current funding ecosystem mostly drives pointless or doomed #geekproblem and #fashernista projects. Many of these projects are designed to chase grant money, not solve problems. To mediate this, we need to push for more cooperative grassroots funding pools.

A persistent issue is the disconnect between what developers think people need and what people actually need. Shifting away from the current paths can be done by testing ideas in real-world environments before scaling them, ensuring they’re practical and usable. Stop chasing the startup-style obsession with scaling at all costs. Building federated systems designed to thrive in small, resilient communities. Encourage slow, thoughtful growth that prioritises depth of engagement over breadth of reach. Simplifying over-engineered solutions and avoiding adding complexity for its own sake; the simpler the tool, the more likely it is to succeed.

How do we achieve the 9% Difference? Getting from 99% pointless projects to 90% will require, stronger public scrutiny to slow the pushing of doomed tech projects. This path needs to focus on realistic, grounded ideas, focus on doing, not talking by encourage people to start small and prove themselves through action, not the normal empty big #NGO promises.

By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that waste time, focus and resources. It’s not about erasing failure altogether, that’s impossible. It’s about creating a culture where thoughtful, practical grassroots work has the space to thrive and grow #KISS

The #dotcons share an ideology

There is a tech ideology that masks corporate power, and this view of #mainstreaming Cyber libertarianism is a bizarre ideological mishmash, a combination of hippie flower power, economic neoliberalism, and a heavy dose of technological determinism. It’s the credo of Silicon Valley, so much so that for years it was known as the “Californian Ideology.” this “thinking” shapes the tech bros and their billionaire overlords, who for the last ten years have push #cryptocurrencys and now claim that technologies like #AI hold the key to solving all human problems and offers “endless opportunities” for wealth, power, and pleasure. Naturally, anything that stands in the way of this vision, government regulation, public oversight, and most importantly collective action, must be swept aside. For meany years, this sounded like a progress path to some, but it’s riddled with obvious contradictions and dangers.

Many of the problems we face are inherently political, requiring systemic solutions that involving collective governance. Yet, the CEOs, executives, and vulture capitalists would rather you believe that the solutions lie in the “free-market”, that is then conveniently funnelled through their platforms and products. This serves their interests in maintaining power and wealth while pushing aside meaningful public accountability and any possible of an alternative.

This fusion of #geekproblem libertarian engineers and anti-government #fahernistas gave rise to the foundational myths of this #geekproblem flow, that technology empowers individuals to create a better world. In the 1990, cyber libertarianism become the dominant ideology in Silicon Valley. Yet, as this ideology flourished, it should have been clear that its vision of “freedom” was fundamentally flawed.

The rhetoric of #techbrow claims to be about freedom—freedom from government oversight, freedom of speech, and freedom to innovate. But in practice, this freedom is selective. It serves the powerful and nasty few while ignoring or exploiting the vast majority. This omission is central to the current #dotcons and parts of our #openweb reboot By focusing exclusively on the dangers of government tyranny, it ignores how corporations can wield just as much, if not more, power over people. This isn’t an accident—it’s the entire point. Silicon Valley’s billionaires don’t want less power for themselves; they want less oversight from governments and the public.

Neoliberalism becomes the new normal to justify policies that benefit the nasty rich. This path of our current #dotcons oligarchs is no accident. The vague anti-government ethos provides the perfect cover for neoliberal policies. By dressing up deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and the dismantling of public services in the language of “freedom,” both tech billionaires and neoliberal politicians can push their agendas without ever addressing the systemic issues of capitalism, inequality and exploitation.

The Musk empire is a prime example, while he rails against government interference, he eagerly accepts billions in subsidies, pushes for deregulation that benefits his companies, and weaponises his platforms to amplify far-right ideologies. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has turned it into a haven for white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, throttled links to media outlets he dislikes, and boosted his own tweets to ensure maximum visibility.

This is the logical conclusion of the path we have all walked down with our embrace of the #dotcons. By rejecting democratic oversight and embracing a narrow, individualistic definition of freedom, we have consolidates power in the hands of the few wealthy, nasty #techbrows and their acolytes. For all the rhetoric about empowering individuals, this path has always been about protecting the privileges of the nasty few.

We see in the USA this Silicon Valley influence growing. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to challenge these paths and step away from the #dotcons these inadequate and nasty people control. We need to understand that freedom isn’t about the absence of government oversight, it’s about creating a humanistic society where power is accountable, resources are shared more equitably, and everyone has the opportunity to grow. The spreading fascism hiding behind the ideology of Cyber libertarianism offers none of this, Instead, it offers us a neo feudalism, tech kings, knights and priests who claim to liberate us while consolidating their control. It’s time to see through the shiny algorithm driven façade and make the effort and focus to build something better. With the native #openweb reboot we have the tools to do this, with #OMN there is a different technological path we can take.