Tag: NGO

People destroy things they love, not from hate, more from possession

One of the recurring problems in alternative organising is that people often destroy the things they love – not out of hatred, but out of possession. Projects become extensions of identity, territory, career, or personal meaning rather than living commons that others can build on. This is one of the hidden traps of the #fashionista path.

It’s worth looking at a few examples to critique how good intentions repeatedly fall short because of a lack of connectivity, grounded process, and social maturity.

The project at anagora.org/distributed-cooperative-organisation is an example of this, it presents itself as a distributed cooperative organisation model and contains some useful ideas around commons-oriented, cooperative, and feminist economic forms. But it suffers from a familiar problem – it does not truly LINK. The concepts float in isolation, disconnected from wider movements, histories, infrastructures, and practical organising paths.

This is the #fashionista view of the now 20-year-old #OMN path. Full of energy, aesthetics, and radical vocabulary, but with a distinctly teenage focus on novelty and identity rather than long-term grounded federation and commons building. Without deep linking between projects, communities, histories, and practices, ideas tend to fragment, scatter, lose continuity, and dissipate into noise. Flight, scatter to the wind – more compost.

The same pattern appears in the #DisCO (Distributed Cooperative Organisations) manifesto at disco.coop. Again, there are worthwhile insights and language around care, commons, and distributed organising. But the project still exists as a self-contained branding exercise rather than part of any deeply interconnected ecosystem. The issue is not bad intentions, the issue is isolation. Projects that do not effectively link socially, technically, historically, and organisationally. On this #fashionista cycle we struggle to accumulate real collective power, repeatedly restart from near-zero while presenting themselves as innovation.

The COMPOST digital magazine at two.compost.digital follows a similar #NGO and #fashionista path. It produces discourse and aesthetics around collapse, care, and alternatives, but again lacks the hard connective tissue needed for durable commons building. There is very little federation of process. Very little shared infrastructure. Very little accumulation of collective memory. Very little practical continuity.

This is what the hashtag #blocking is pointing toward, these projects unintentionally block healthier growth by occupying cultural and organisational space while failing to create pathways others can build through. Energy flows into maintaining identity, branding, and internal discourse instead of constructing durable public commons. This is where possessiveness becomes destructive, and slowly the commons closes.

This is not unique to these examples. It is a widespread problem across activist, cooperative, and #openweb spaces. Our “common sense” instincts are shaped by the wider culture of #stupidindividualism and #neoliberal competition, even inside projects supposedly trying to escape those systems.

This path naturally leads toward informal hierarchy, gatekeeping, branding over openness, resistance to criticism, control of information, and fear of genuine federation. Over time this undermines the collaborative nature of commons projects. As leadership roles become possessive, transparency weakens, collective goals become secondary to personal or organisational survival, criticism becomes threatening rather than useful and conflict is personalised instead of productive. Eventually the project spends more energy protecting itself than building any shared infrastructure.

This is one of the reasons so many alternative projects fragment despite good intentions. The tragedy is that many of these people genuinely care, but care without openness still become enclosure. That is why the 20 year old #OMN path keeps returning to linking, federation, and the , not as abstract ideology, but as practical anti-possessive tools of use.

The goal is not purity, not ownership, not building another isolated brand ecosystem. The goal is to create living commons that other people can actually connect to, extend, challenge, reuse, and build beyond. Without this, projects become temporary performances orbiting personalities and trends. With it, they have at least some chance of growing into real social infrastructure.

The hopeful part is that even failed projects contribute compost, ideas break down, fragments spread, lessons survive and people move on carrying experience. Compost matters, but we should still try to build gardens rather than endlessly producing piles of unfinished compost.

The #geekproblem mess we make of #openweb funding

#NGIzero #NGI #EU It’s important to remember in #openweb tech that most funding is poured directly down the drain, all value comes from #DIY culture which is always underfunded. Would be a good idea to try to rebalance this mess. And yes, we are not talking about the #dotcons mess, that’s another subject 😉

The value we are all talking about, the #openweb #fediverse based on #activertypub is a very good example of this issue. The group that pushed through the speck only goes through the formal consensuses process because the #dotcons were not interested in owning the outcome as it had no “value” to them. The speck was done as unpaid, unfunded #DIY labour, this is where almost all value actually comes from when you lift the lid on the current mess.

The importance of #DIY culture and the underfunding of #openweb technologies. It is true that much of the value in openweb technologies comes from the grassroots efforts of individuals and communities who are passionate about creating and maintaining these tools. This can be seen in the case of the #fediverse, which was developed by a group of volunteers who were committed to creating a decentralized and open social networking platform.

At the same time, it is also important to recognize the role that funding can play in supporting the development of openweb technologies. While it is true that much of the value comes from DIY culture, funding can help to support and sustain this culture, providing resources and support to help communities. One initiative that is working to address this issue is #NGIZero, which is a program funded by the European Commission to support the development of #openweb technologies. Through this program, funding is provided to support projects that are focused on creating often #NGO focused decentralized and #geekproblem projects.

Overall, it is important to recognize the importance of DIY culture and grassroots efforts in the development of openweb culture and technologies. At the same time, we should also work to support these efforts through funding and other forms of support, in order to help ensure that these grassroots cultures and the technologies they build continue to thrive and evolve in the years to come.

Looking at the paths out of the current mess

We need an effective way of communicating that all value on the #fedivers is cultural, the tech itself is a product of this #openweb culture. The #activertypub speck is an accident of this culture not being swamped become the #mainstreaming was not interested at the time

We have an increasing number of funders pouring money down the drain in #fedivers tech, when the source of the value #openweb culture that created this new “commons” is swamped by the #mainstreaming agenda.

This #fediforum thing is going to be a hardcore invisible clash of cultures, all the #fashernista who stood back from the #ActivertyPub push for the last 5 years are now flooding in, as are refugees from the encryptions mess. The language might be  #fedvers  BUT most of the people will not be. Let’s try and create focus, small steps.

#Mozfest Is on if you want to see posers, #fashernista and general #NGO pointless. I did sign up but when the time came to log in I could not be bothered. I do use the browser, though.

We do need to express contempt for what a lot of the assumptions and agenda (often unspoken) our #NGO and #fashernista crew push. Yes, it’s crap and pointless, so please say this, in most cases the “emperor’s” are not wearing any clothes. Express yourself, it’s needed.

The is going to be an increasing mix of #mainstreming people moving back to the #openweb we need much better tools and process to deal with the mess they bring with them as well as our own mess we have here. The is going to be a lot of prat’ish behaviour from both inside our #openweb movement and outside from the #dotcons we need a way to mediate this… as it’s obviously damage dressed up in #NGO clothing.

The problem with this negative circle is that it is self reinforcing, the prats, don’t like being pointed at as prats, and in reaction they dig deeper into prat’ish behaver. This damage is not helpful, we need fresh thinking, what do we do when “our” people act as prats. Ideas please?

The is a solution to this, the #OGB which mediates prat’ish behaver by democracy https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody​


 

What is the #openweb

While the commercial web is dominated by large corporations, the #dotcons are what most people are familiar with, there is another side to the internet – the #openweb. In this article, we will explore what the #openweb is and why it matters.

The #openweb refers to the part of the internet that is not owned by corporations. Unlike the commercial web, where large tech companies like #Google, #Facebook, and #Amazon dominate the landscape, the #openweb is a decentralized space where people can create, share, and access content without restrictions.

The openweb is built on standards and protocols, which means that everyone can develop software or services that work seamlessly with existing tools and platforms. One of the primary benefits of the openweb is that it fosters humane creativity. Because we can all contribute to the open web, it encourages a diverse, liberal, range of voices and perspectives. Openweb technologies like blogs, wikis, and federated social networks have enabled people to connect and collaborate, leading to the emergence of new norms and social movements.

Another important aspect of the openweb is its commitment to transparency, it is a critical tool for promoting #freespeech and #democracy. Because it is not owned by any single entity or government, the openweb is a place where people can express themselves without fear of censorship or repression.

In recent years, the openweb has come under threat from the rise of the dominating #dotcons of the commercial web and the growing power of big tech companies. The commercial web is dominated by a few large corporations that control vast amounts of user data and use it to extract profit. This has led to concerns about, social control, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech giants and their agenders.

Despite these challenges, there are many organizations and individuals working to preserve the #openweb. From #grassroots groups such as #OMN to #NGO’s like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) an international community that develops open standards for the web, while #mainstreaming organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Google funded #Mozilla Foundation are dedicated to promoting a liberal #mainstreaming open and accessible internet.

In conclusion, the openweb is a critical part of the internet that promotes, creativity and free society. It is a space where anyone can contribute and participate without restrictions, and it has played a vital role in social movements and democracy. While the openweb faces many challenges in the face of the commercial web and big tech, it is essential to work together to ensure that the internet remains an open and accessible space.

Anarchist economics

Anarchism, in #OMN language, is not chaos. It’s the long historic struggle to build social paths growing trust, mutual responsibility, and shared power instead of fear, hierarchy, and extraction.

At its root, anarchist economics is simply the idea that people should have more direct control over the things that affect their lives. Workplaces, media, communities, land, tools, and infrastructure should be held more in common or managed cooperatively by the people actually using them, not owned by distant states, corporations, landlords, or bureaucratic classes.

This is the opposite of the current #deathcult path where power concentrates upward into institutions that claim ownership over everything while the majority are reduced to consumers, tenants, workers, and data sources. The important distinction is between use and ownership.

In capitalist logic, ownership means control without participation. You can own land you never touch. Own housing you never live in. Own platforms you never contribute to. Own factories you never work in. Then extract rent, profit, interest, and power from the people who actually do the labour. This is the normalised logic of the #closedweb and #neoliberalism.

In anarchist and mutualist thinking, possession comes from use and participation. If you use something, care for it, maintain it, and contribute to it, then you have a natural relationship with it. This is a living social process rather than an abstract legal claim enforced through violence or bureaucracy. That’s actually how many healthy human systems worked historically before everything became financialized and enclosed.

The #openweb originally functioned much closer to this model. People built websites because they needed them. Communities moderated spaces because they cared about them. Developers shared code because collaboration worked better than enclosure. Infrastructure was often maintained through trust networks, volunteer labour, and shared responsibility.

The problem is that over time the #dotcons enclosed this commons. Social relationships became platforms, sharing became monetized content, participation became engagement metrics, human communities became extractable data flows. This is why the matter:Open data. Open source. Open standards. Open process. These are not abstract technical values, they are practical social tools for preventing enclosure and concentration of power. Without them, projects quietly drift toward hidden hierarchy and soft authoritarianism even when they use radical language.

This is also why thinking about the #geekproblem matters, too much alt-tech still thinks freedom comes primarily from technical architecture while ignoring social power. But history shows that purely technical fixes usually reproduce the same social hierarchies in new forms. The problem is not only bad code, it is social relations. A decentralized system can still become socially authoritarian. An open protocol can still become culturally closed. A cooperative can still become dominated by informal elitists. A “horizontal” project can still be controlled by hidden networks of influence. That’s why anarchist economics focuses so heavily on mutual aid, federation, and self-management.

Mutual aid is simply people organizing together directly to meet shared needs without waiting for permission from markets or states. Food sharing, community defence, free software, skill swaps, radical media, housing networks, protest kitchens, neighbourhood repair groups, grassroots publishing. These are not side projects, they are the foundations of another economy already existing inside the shell of the old one.

Projects like #Indymedia worked because they embedded technology inside living social networks and shared political cultures. The value was not just the publishing software, it came from trust relationships, collective process, and common purpose. This is the same path #OMN is trying to reboot for the #openweb era. Not by inventing endless new startups and pointless platforms, chasing #fashernista tech trends or feeding the #NGO funding machine.

But by rebuilding commons infrastructure that people can actually use, shape, and govern together. The goal is not perfect ideology, the goal is reducing domination. Less extraction, hierarchy, enclosure, passive consumption. More participation, transparency, shared responsibility and more collective agency.

The irony is that this is often more practical than capitalism itself. Mutual aid networks regularly respond faster than states during disasters. Open-source infrastructure powers huge parts of the internet. Informal community care keeps millions alive under collapsing systems. The future probably won’t arrive as one giant revolution, it grows more like compost.

Small living networks.
Shared tools.
Open processes.
Federated trust.
Commons infrastructure.

That’s the real anarchist economy in practice, messy, human, relational, and alive.

The Genoa #G8 Summit protest

The Genoa #G8 Summit protest, which took place from July 18 to July 22, 2001, was a significant event in the history of modern protest movements. The protest drew an estimated 200,000 demonstrators from all over the world, who came together to block the event and voice their concerns about the power and influence of the #deathcult in the G8 countries.

The G8 Summit, which brings together the world’s eight most powerful countries, is a controversial event that has long been the target of protest movements. Critics of the G8 argue that it is an undemocratic institution that seeks to set the rules for the world at large, without real accountability to the people it purports to serve.

The protesters who gathered in Genoa were determined to block the event and make their voices heard, and they were met with an extremely violent and heavy-handed response from the Italian police. Dozens of protesters were hospitalized, more were taken into custody after night raids on two schools housing sleeping #NGO activists and #indymedia journalists.

The treatment of those who were taken into custody was barbaric. Protesters were beaten, sexually assaulted, and denied access to medical treatment. Many of those who were held in custody were subjected to psychological torture, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement. Despite the brutality of the police response, the protesters remained resolute, Seeing the G8 Summit as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the world.

The Italian government was later brought to trial in the European Court of Human Rights, where it was found guilty of violating the human rights. The court ruled that the police response to the protest was excessive.

A fresh look at #openweb history

For people who like buzzwords

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents that is accessed through the Internet. #Web01, #Web02, and #Web03 are terms that are used to refer to different generations or phases of the World Wide Web (#WWW).

#Web01 refers to the early days of the World Wide Web, when it was first introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, the web was primarily used for academic scientific, #NGO’s hobbyists and activists purposes and less yet widely adopted by the public.

#Web02 refers to the growth and expansion of the World Wide Web during the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the web became more accessible and user-friendly, and was increasingly adopted for commercial purposes. This era saw the rise of #dotcons, characterized by the growth of social media, mobile devices, and cloud computing. The web had become increasingly interactive and interconnected, and has become a critical tool for communication, misinformation, social control and commerce.

#Web03 was a waste of space, focus and money by the #Encryptionists who in bed with the scammers produced meany still born tech children in the last 10 years.

#Web01.5 refer to an intermediate stage between Web01 and Web02, marking a transition between the early and more experimental phase of the web and its more widespread commercial adoption. Web01.5 refers to a time when the web was still growing and evolving, but had already become more accessible and user-friendly, and was being adopted for more diverse purposes. With #mastodon and the #fedivers over the last 5 years, we are rebooting this web01.5 stage.

The patriarchs of the early #openweb

What is the #OGB

The one thing you quikly learn in actavisam is any thing that gets done, is done in a messy way. The process is meant to be messy, and there are no set laws or statutes, but instead a growing body of mythos and traditions that people can reference when making decisions. The model also includes the power of recall for both “The Voices” and “The Body” to ensure accountability and maintain trust within the community.

The structure is designed to be flexible, allowing for the redefining of variables and options to suit the specific needs of the community. The lifespan of “The Voices” is flexible, currently with options of 1 year or a rolling 6 month term, and members of “The Groups” can come from “The Body” and the original proposer of the proposal.

#OGB The proposed governance model is based on a combination of traditional grassroots activism and the fediverse experience of federation as a tool for horizontal scaling of social power. It focuses on “sortation” and “core consent” as means to achieve decision making and power distribution, and utilizes the concepts of “The Body”, “The Groups”, and “The Voices” to facilitate the process.

The specific process used to achieve core consent will be determined by the group or community using the tools and variables provided by the codebase.

#OGB “Core consent” refers to a level of agreement or acceptance reached by a group or community on a particular proposal or action. It is not a specific process or method, but rather a general principle that guides decision-making within the group. In the context of The Body, it may be achieved through a variety of methods such as voting, threshold, or other forms of consensus-building.

#OGB Community and the tradition of recall and dilution. The voices are representatives of the body, but ultimately it is the body who holds the power and makes the decisions. It is a delicate balance that is built on trust and tradition, and it is meant to be messy and not a traditional power structure. It is a “native” approach that is designed to work within the decentralized and disorganized nature of the fediverse community.

The groups and voices have the power to make decisions, but they need to work together to build consensus and make effective decisions. The model also acknowledges the challenges of dealing with a disorganized group of individuals and the importance of building a body of mythos and traditions to guide decision-making.

The proposed governance model is designed to be non-hierarchical. It is meant to work with the fediverse’s decentralized structure, and it is built on a long history of grassroots activism. It is not a traditional power structure, and it relies on consensus and recall processes rather than laws or statutes.

#OGB It’s important to keep in mind that this system is built on trust and collaboration, and relies on the stakeholders being engaged and willing to work together towards a common goal. The lack of a formal sense-checking step is intended to encourage decentralized decision-making and empower individuals and groups to take ownership of their own actions and decisions. The recall and dilution mechanisms provide a way for the community to self-regulate and course-correct if necessary.

#OGB The Voices have limited terms and can be replaced by the body, so their power is not permanent. Additionally, the groups and other voices serve as checks and balances on the power of the Voices. This is built into the governance model to ensure that power is distributed and not concentrated in one group or individual.

Messiness: The proposed system embraces the messiness of real-world governance and is designed to work within it, rather than trying to impose a false sense of order. It is built on the principle that power should be distributed horizontally and that decisions should be made through consensus-building and compromise.

#OGB issues:

Prioritization: The proposal system allows for prioritization by allowing the governing body to decide which proposals to take action on and which to ignore.

Spam: The use of standard moderation tools and community flagging systems would help to address the issue of spam.

Centralization: The proposed system takes into account the potential for centralization and addresses it by encouraging participation and blaenceing power to those who actively contribute to the community.

In summary, the governance model being proposed is based on a long history of grassroots activism and federation as a tool for horizontal scaling of social power. The approach focuses on sortation and taking power out of “power politics” by creating a modern take on classic social movement practices. The goal is to work with, not against, this history and avoid the pitfalls of “process geeks” coming in and damaging the movement.

I want to see if there are individuals here who have the skills and interest in helping to build the tools and processes needed for the #OGB project, and if so, to explore potential collaborations and partnerships. I also want to raise awareness and understanding of the project and the issues it addresses, and to gather feedback and input from a diverse group of people. Ultimately, my goal is to bring together a group to build this #OMN

This can be achieved by building bridges and fostering communication between different perspectives, rather than trying to control the outcome. The key is to find a balance between different approaches and allow for diversity of tactics in different situations.

It is important to understand that whatever process or governance structure is used, it needs to work in the messy reality of human interactions. We need to recognize that the need for control is to often a barrier to finding solutions, and instead focus on building structures and tools that allow us to navigate the mess and make decisions more collectively.

It is a way to empower the community and decentralize power, giving a voice to those who actively contribute and care for the fediverse. By keeping the system simple and easy to understand, it allows for more participation and creativity from users, rather than relying on a small group of individuals or organizations to make decisions. The focus is on the collective and community-driven decision making, rather than hierarchy and bureaucracy #OGB

The goal should be to create a system that is inclusive and that promotes participation, rather than one that is complex and exclusionary. The key is to strike a balance between simplicity and effectiveness, and to focus on the overall goal of empowering the community to govern itself.

It is important to keep the #OGB governance system simple and easy to understand for all stakeholders, as this allows for more participation and engagement. The focus should be on empowering the users and creating a decentralized system that allows for more voices to be heard and for the community to self-govern.

#OGB The lottery system would also help to distribute power more evenly among instances, as it would ensure that smaller and less popular instances have an equal chance of having a representative chosen.

Additionally, the use of human flagging as a way to address potential abuse of the system would also help to ensure that larger and more influential instances do not dominate the decision-making process.

The system would rely on a combination of automatic checks and human moderation to ensure fairness and accountability, while also recognizing the limitations of formal processes and the importance of trust and collaboration. The emphasis is on keeping the system simple, flexible and adaptable to the unique needs and culture of the fediverse community.

In summary, the proposed #OGB aims to distribute power among as many people as possible within the fediverse, by delegating specific tasks and responsibilities to individuals selected through democratic procedures, with the goal of preventing monopoly of power and promoting decision-making through consultation.

The approach is to empower people to take ownership of their governance, rather than providing them with pre-determined solutions. The goal is to create a flexible, adaptable system that can be adapted to the specific needs of different communities and organizations. Trust and collaboration are key elements, as well as a willingness to experiment and iterate. Overall, the main emphasis is on building a governance system that is grounded in the culture and realities of the community it serves.

The #OGB project is meant to reflect the practical, on-the-ground reality of horizontal activism and the fediverse culture. It is not based on idealistic or theoretical models, but on the lived experience of the community.

The development of the project would involve a production/coding team, funding, and testing with a real user base.

The process would involve a lottery system for selecting members, with checks for instance activity and human involvement. The goal is to mediate the shifting of power from the .01% to the 99.9% of the fediverse, and the approach is designed to scale horizontally for use in other democratic structures such as local street markets. The body would be moderated through flagging and standard fediverse moderation tools.

The proposed representative body for the fediverse would be a democratic structure that allows for the delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks through democratic procedures. The body would be composed of stakeholders (instances), users, and affiliates, with a focus on distribution of authority among many people and rotation of tasks among individuals #OGB

In summary, the proposed #OGB allows for any user to submit a proposal which will be visible on the activity stream of the governing body. The body can then decide to take action on the proposal by passing it to a group or forming a new group to work on it. Prioritization of proposals will be handled by the body and the groups, with SPAM being dealt with by flagging and standard moderation tools.

It is important to note that the #OGB is designed to distribute power and decision-making among a diverse group of stakeholders, including instances, users, and affiliates. This can help to mitigate the risk of any one group or individual having too much power and influence over the fediverse.

Additionally, the use of sortition and flagging mechanisms can help to ensure that the voices of the community are heard and that bad actors are held accountable.

If people start to game the system, the solution is to get more people involved, which will dilute the problem. The lottery will shift bad groups out if fresh people of goodwill join. If a user has multiple accounts, it is up to them to resign some of them, so new stakeholders can be chosen.

However, this will be up to the group, as it is tradition. The default will be set, but it’s open to change.

The #OGB system that will allow multiple accounts from a single user to be included in the lottery for selection of representatives for the Body (OGB), as long as they are active and human. The idea is to keep the system simple and easy to code by relying on flagging for blatant abuse, rather than hard-coding restrictions.

When an instance registers, it would appear on the OGB’s activity feed, giving members time to flag or discuss it if needed. Overall, it is important to keep the system as simple as possible and easy to code.

#OGB The key idea is to empower instances to decide who speaks on their behalf, and to moderate as much power downwards to federate responsibility.

The proposed system includes automatic checks, such as whether the instance is online and has been used recently, and whether single-user instances should be counted. There would also be an option for user/stakeholder flagging to question if an instance belongs, based on terms of service.

The challenges of using formal processes, such as those used by #NGO‘s and cooperatives, in #openweb and activism projects. These types of processes can be a bad fit for the fediverse and activism, as they tend to be too rigid and not suited to the decentralized and dynamic nature of these communities.

Existing projects and resources that may be relevant to governance: Loomio, Decidim, Noisebridge, and Sociocracy. Tend to be based on formal consensuses, a bad fit for messy unstructured groups.

The system incorporates principles, such as the use of sortition to select stakeholders, users, and affiliate stakeholders, the use of a “Security Group” to detect bad actors, and “recall” process to remove individuals who do not align with the goals of the fediverse.

The system includes an option to aid/onboard new roles by having an overlap with the old roll-holder where they share the role and the use of tradition and workflow to mediate the “Allocation of tasks along rational criteria”.

“Tyranny of Structurelessness,” helps designing democratic and effective decision-making structures. By delegating specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks, requiring accountability, distributing authority among as many people as possible, rotating tasks, allocating tasks based on rational criteria, and providing equal access to resources and information, the group can ensure that power is not concentrated in the hands of a few individuals #OGB

The #OGB achieves this by limiting the number of stakeholders and users by lottery, for example, 100 stakeholders and 100 users. This would be matched by a smaller number of affiliate, providing a balance of perspectives and interests.

It’s important to note that the number of members in the body can change depending on the situation, the admin group should be able to adjust the pool size depending on the requirement to try different approaches to see what works

The #OGB is representative of the fediverse as a whole, with stakeholders (instance operators), users, and affiliate stakeholders all playing a role in decision-making.

Based on the statistics of a population of over ten million accounts and more than 9,000 instances, it would be difficult for a body of that size to make decisions efficiently. A smaller representative body would be more manageable and better able to make decisions quickly and effectively.

The use of sortition to select voices, and the ability for other body members to flag bad voices, provides a way to detect and address any individuals or groups that may be acting against the best interests of the fediverse.

Additionally, the use of basic security checks to detect sock puppets and spammers, and the ability to “recall” flagged accounts, helps to ensure that the governance body is representative.

The #OGB has several mechanisms in place to mitigate the risks of capture by special interests or bad actors.

By allowing all members of the body to participate in the formation of groups and the formation of agreements, the system is designed to dilute the power of any one group or individual.

The consensus of voices, minus one, is what makes an agreement the “voice of the Fediverse” ensuring that the agreements reached by the body are truly representative of the fediverse as a whole.

Groups are formed around issues that receive a level of support from members of the body, agreements are reached through group discussions and consensus-building. Voices, which are a subset of stakeholders, have the power to both initiate groups and enact agreements reached by groups.

The number of voices is dynamic and would depend on the number of stakeholders, but a small number, such as 3-5, would be ideal to ensure that the system is nimble and responsive to the needs of the fediverse.

The power of the voice in this proposed #OGB system is distributed among different groups and individuals. Proposals come from anyone with an ActivityPub account, giving all users the opportunity to shape the direction of the fediverse.

It should be noted that the idea of sortition and open governance is not new, it is a way of governance that has been used in some ancient Greek city-states and it’s been proposed in modern times as well. However, it’s implementation in the #Fediverse could be a new and exciting way of ensuring decentralized and democratic governance.

Additionally, allowing stakeholders who were not selected by the lottery to still submit proposals for group decisions would ensure that the input and perspectives of all stakeholders are considered.

The workflow described is a way to ensure that the Open Governance Body i#OGB s representative of the fediverse as a whole, by giving all users the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process.

By allowing users to opt-in to becoming stakeholders, and then using sortition to select a representative sample of users to serve as members of the body, the system would be designed to ensure that the voices of all members of the fediverse are heard.

The use of sortition to select users to be part of the body would ensure a random and representative sample of the user base. And the dynamic balance of stakeholders and users would provide a check on the power of any one group.

The Affiliate Stakeholders would bring additional expertise and perspectives to the table and their members would have to be ratified by the Body to ensure that they align with the goals of the fediverse.

However, it should be noted implementation will be complex #OGB

An Open Governance Body #OGB, would be a decentralized and democratic system for governing the fediverse. The three groups of stakeholders, users, and affiliate stakeholders would provide a balance of perspectives and interests, with stakeholders representing the people running instances, users representing the people using the instances, and affiliate stakeholders representing other organizations and groups within the fediverse.

An activist history of the web

The “better” #closedweb (ISP intranets) was “surprisingly” destroyed by the “inferer” #openweb, which then exploded in use to spread everywhere. The #mainstreaming thinking then tried and failed to recapture this project for ten years as it takes up global space, and was a real challenge change, that the “common sense” said should not exist. This working alternative was finally sold out by our own #fahernistas, who bribed with money and statues members of the “unthinking” #geekproblem to build the #dotcons that rapidly took over the #openweb space.

Our wider activist #fashernistas created “liberal stories” about how embracing the #dotcons was a good path. The wider #fahernistas flocked to these #closedweb spaces to grasp at the real early power they provided, after society had finished this shift, the bate and switch took this power away, and we were left with “servalence capitalism” and no social power, as was obvuse at the time it was a con.

Our #fashernistats then pissed tech change/challenge agenst the wall for ten years. While the #openweb user facing technology withered, ignored and irrelevant to #mainstreaming. A few years ago we had an “accidental” #openweb reboot with #activitypub and soon after pushing of the next generation of #closedweb projects with #web03 leaving us in the current messy times.

Yes now the #dotcons are roting, but the #openweb is only a small change challenge due to our #fahernistas and #geekproblem actively #BLOCKING the change challenge inherent to the project.

Where are we now and what can we learn from this? Liberalism in tech are often active prats, co-opting, bait and switch and taking the easy #NGO funded path when the choice comes. They are #friendlyenemies, even when they deny this with all their “common sense”. Ideas to mediate this, please?

Do you except that “new” is often #deathcult (neo-liberalism) and #postmodernism because this is “common sense” what is your plan/idea to get around these problems?

I have had 20 years of “new” and am very underwhelmed, actually it’s almost all #blocking or adding to the #techshit to be composed. This is obviously a problem that needs to be mediated, what is your plan/process to have a better outcome?

Remember that the only thing that has worked in the last 10 years has been copying #dotcons with #activertypub every themselves has failed, what can we learn from this?

This is an important question that the #OMN project mediates.

People BLOCKING needed process, or worst simply ignore it

We need to start from a simple but often-missed point – different starting assumptions lead to different processes – and those lead to very different outcomes. This is the lesson that gets lost when radical #openweb projects are treated like just another app, or reduced to a polished #NGO common sense path.

The #OMN doesn’t come from that place. It grows out of a different worldview, rooted in the lived traditions of the commons, the early internet, and grassroots organising. This isn’t abstract theory; it’s a body of practice that has already worked in many different forms.

We’ve seen it before in the early #indymedia network giving global voice to decentralised movements in the #wikis and early blogospheres building shared knowledge in public and more recently, the #Fediverse (for example Mastodon) showing that federated systems can scale without (yet) falling under corporate control.

These are not utopian ideas, they are working proofs that transparent, decentralised, trust-based systems can function and sustain real communities. Yes, they have limits. But those limits are not simply weaknesses, they are part of what keeps them healthy. They enforce diversity, autonomy, and accountability at a human scale, rather than collapsing everything into a single, extractive system like the #dotcons.

Where things go wrong, the current problem is a loss of context. Many people entering tech and activism today don’t have access to this lineage, or only see half of it. Developers who understand federation but not community process often build technically elegant systems that don’t sustain real social use. You end up with silos that work, but don’t live. Activists who understand horizontal organising but not open standards end up relying on closed tools – Facebook groups, Google Docs, Slack – rebuilding their movements inside systems that ultimately undermine them.

In both cases, something essential is missing. Without a grounding in the subcultures that shaped civil rights movements, free software, and the commons, people default to what feels like “common sense” – but is really just #mainstreaming logic.

That tends to look like discomfort with open governance (“too messy”), preference for control and clarity over participation and suspicion of openness when it challenges institutional norms. The result is familiar: well-intentioned projects that centralise, burn out, and quietly disappear when funding cycles end.

The #OMN is an attempt to break that cycle, it’s not a single platform or product, it’s better understood as shared infrastructure – both social and technical – that helps reconnect what has been fragmented. Think of it as soil, not a finished structure. The aim is to reconnect grassroots practice with open technical standards, compost the backlog of half-built projects and abandoned ideas and create conditions where new work can actually take root and grow.

On the technical side, the building blocks already exist – protocols like ActivityPub and RSS. On the social side, we have long-standing practices of trust, transparency, and collective governance. What’s missing isn’t only the tools, it’s cultural memory, continuity of practice and the confidence to build differently.

If we’re serious about the #openweb, the shift is less about innovation and more about orientation from products → to processes, from platforms → to ecosystems, from control → to trust and from presentation → to practice.

This isn’t about rejecting institutions or funding outright. It’s about recognising that if everything is filtered through those to often blinded lenses, we lose the qualities that make the #openweb viable in the first place.

The challenge – and the opportunity – is to reconnect the layers of narrative with practice, funding with real needs and technology with lived community. Because without that, we don’t get growth, we just get better storytelling about stagnation.

#OMN #openweb #OGB

A conversation about money and the #openweb


A conversation with the #NGO side of social technology:

A. Just booked my place for ePIC next month in Lille. It’ll be my first time on the Eurostar!

https://epic.openrecognition.org

A decade ago, it was the first conference I went to as Mozilla’s Badges & Skills lead. Time flies.

#OpenBadges #VerifiableCredentials #ePortfolios #conference #travel

Q. these things are kinda hopelessly expensive. You have to worship the #deathcult to attend… Hard to know what to do with these two track approaches… Kinda can’t be #openweb are the any that are happening outside the temples of death #XR

Ps this is a metaphor 🙂

A. I think that’s a complicated way of saying you can’t afford to go?

Q. is a social comment about events like this, there are a lot of them. How can non #mainstreaming people get involved in #openweb events like this, a good subject for you to bring up, if you would, thanks. Ps. Not #stupidindividualism I should not have to say that.

A. My opinion is that you can’t have your cake and eat it? You can’t live outside the mainstream, throw rocks at it, and then complain when it doesn’t accommodate you?

Q. yep, I have spent my whole life outside the #mainstreaming, much of it building up and working on #openweb projects and content. Do you not find what you just said cruel and dismissive? Good to think on this and hopefully bring it up at the event. Not picking on you here, or attacking you, social commentary is not a bad thing on the #openweb

A. Social commentary is not what you’re doing here. You’re just replying to me to reinforce your worldview. So no, I don’t think I’m being cruel and dismissive. Perhaps you should think about your theory of change about how you’re going to build a constituency of people to change the world? It’s certaintly not by being a reply-guy 🙄

Q. dismissive and curl second time. Now this is just being a prat “It’s certainly not by being a reply-guy” OK, please have a think about how to bring the #openweb away from the current #mainstreaming that events like this embody (due to cost) as we are heading for social/environmental disaster fast, the is no good outcome from the #deathcult we all worship, we do need a working #openweb for a better outcome.

A. So you reply to me with the #deathcult hashtag after I share excitement about going to an event? And I’m being unreasonable? I’ve never had a positive interaction with you, Hamish. You might wear that as a badge of honour, but I’ve finally realised it’s time to mute you. Good luck.

Q. OK, please have a think about how to bring the #openweb away from the current #mainstreaming that events like this embody (due to cost) as we are heading for social/environmental disaster fast, the is no good outcome from the #deathcult we all worship, we do need a working #openweb for a better outcome.

Using the power of #4opens

The have many useful roles, but one that urgently needs highlighting is how they help protect grassroots tech projects from being pushed aside by the parasite class of #NGO and #fashernista projects that grow around them.

Over the last 20 years, in my direct experience, this pattern repeats again and again. Grassroots communities do the difficult early work of building trust, creating culture, seeding solving practical problems and growing real commons. Then, once this groundwork becomes valuable, layers of institutional actors arrive:

  • NGOs looking for funding flows,
  • consultants looking for careers,
  • academics looking for prestige,
  • and #fashernistas looking for visibility and branding opportunities.

The original social process gets buried under management culture, professionalisation, controlled messaging, and performative governance. The result is stagnation, fragmentation, and the slow death of the native project culture that created value in the first place. This is why open process matters so much, the make this #techshit visible:

  • who is making decisions,
  • who controls resources,
  • who is blocking change,
  • who is extracting value,
  • and who is actually doing the work.

When process is visible, unhealthy behaviour can be challenged early and composted before it hardens into institutional power. Without transparency, these patterns stay hidden behind branding, polite language, and bureaucratic process. So yes, please use the in all grassroots tech projects, not just as technical principles, but as practical social tools for defending commons from enclosure.

Because if we do not make power visible, power will always hide itself.