YouTube and the #deathcult of “Independent” Media

Over the last ten years, we’ve all been spending more and more time on #YouTube. And maybe you’ve noticed something strange: many of the channels you once thought of as independent are no longer independent at all. They’ve been quietly bought up by private equity firms with billions in backing from SoftBank, Amazon, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone – the usual #mainstreaming priests of the #deathcult.

Channels like Task & Purpose, Vice, Veritasium, Donut Media, Simple History, Economics Explained, The Drive, and History Hit are already part of the buyout wave. Some of the biggest names in our worship of “creator culture” – CocoMelon, Colin and Samir, The Theorists, Dude Perfect – too. And that’s just the ones who admitted it. There’s no law requiring disclosure.

Capitalism has a logic, that creators are commodities. “Independent” YouTubers once worked on tiny budgets – a camera, editing software, a couple of friends – to reach millions. They were messy, risky, sometimes radical. Capital sees something else: predictable cashflow, brand expansion, safe investment. But these operations are fragile. They depend on one platform (#YouTube), one personality, and an algorithm that can erase a career overnight. Normally, this risk would scare off capitalists. But with $12 trillion sloshing around private equity in the US alone, they’ve run out of businesses to buy. YouTube channels are the new frontier.

This is how grasping control kills creativity, when capitalism takes over, the overhead explodes. Analysts, strategists, managers, lawyers all need their cut. That means: more ads, more sponsorships, more merch, safer, algorithm-friendly content, the same formula cloned across every channel in the for profit portfolio. This “roll-up” logic flattens everything into old-school TV. Risk disappears, the spark that made YouTube compelling at first is smothered by business strategy. We’re already seeing it with channels like Veritasium, slowly shifting away from Derek Muller to reduce “keyman risk.” Once a personality becomes a liability, the accountants start grooming replacements.

Old school #traditionalmedia tried to counter te first wave of #dotcons social media by throwing money at “new media” outfits like Vice, Buzzfeed, Mashable, and Vox. They burned cash, collapsed, and left nothing but layoffs. The new approach is simpler: don’t build, just buy. Disney doesn’t need to grow the next Vice; it just needs to buy a handful of YouTube channels and tell shareholders it’s “ready for the future.”

The same #deathcult logic applies to this, appease shareholders first, audiences last. The cost is paid by viewers, the result for us – #dotcons friendly content becomes blander and safer, sponsorships dominate, but direct support (merch, memberships) dries up, because who wants to fund faceless #nastyfew agendas? “Creators” burn out, and vanish, replaced by interchangeable hosts or locked down with non-compete contracts. It’s the industrialisation of #fashionista “independent culture”.

There is a history to this, and #openweb parallels, we’ve seen this story before, in the 90s, independent radio stations were bought out by Clear Channel, homogenising the airwaves. In the 2000s, blogs were enclosed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter, killing off messy but vibrant grassroots media. Even movements like Occupy or Extinction Rebellion felt the same pressures: a burst of openness and creativity, followed by co-option, #NGO capture, and fragmentation under managed dissent. The lesson is always the same: once capital steps in, the mess is tidied away, and any possibility of change and challenge dies.

I have seen this on the #dotcons platforms we use as backups and hook for the #openweb native projects, our visionontv YouTube loses a video or two every month to not advertising friendly, copyright strike for clear fair use etc.

The #OMN Lesson, YouTube is repeating the same pattern we’ve seen across the #closedweb: a few years of openness and experimentation, followed by enclosure, consolidation, and financialisation. Capitalism cannot tolerate risk, it cannot tolerate diversity, it needs control, predictability, and growth at all costs. And that is the death of any real grassroots media.

The #OMN path is the opposite. We need federated, messy, trust-based networks where media is not just another asset class. Media must be inherently open – created, shared, and remixed under the #4opens. If we don’t build and defend this, the future of online culture is already sold out.

Mess and more mess, “diversity”

We need to look at our paths and current the controversy in “diversity” in our #deathcult worship, to see the need to compost the current mess. The problem with “pushing diversity” isn’t diversity itself. That’s fine – essential, even. The problem lies in the ideology shaping the push.

Much of it comes from #mainstreaming progressive liberalism, which operates inside the logic of the deathcult. It reduces diversity to a checklist, a branding exercise, a way to appear “inclusive” while leaving power untouched. This is not liberation, it’s management.

When we enter into these spaces, conversations about diversity collapse into the same-old mess: the mixing of right and left framings, suspicion on all sides, endless accusations. Instead of solidarity, we end up with #blocking. Instead of building, we burn out. The is no good outcome.

This is the normal worship of the #deathcult, the endless loop of optics and control, where movements fracture and collectives suffocate with “diversity strategies” that have no relation to grassroots realities.

The path as ever is compost. Take the mess – the liberal tokenism, the reactionary backlash, the burnout – and compost it into something alive. Composting means, returning to grassroots voices, not NGO checklists, seeing diversity as lived struggle, not branding. Grounding it in #4opens, where openness makes co-option harder, to turn toxic blocks into fertile soil for collective growth

The #OMN path is simple: it’s not about ticking boxes or replicating liberal #NGO frameworks. It’s about federated, messy collaboration that actually works. Diversity is not a corporate slogan. It’s the lived complexity of struggle. If we can compost the deathcult ideology that poisons it, diversity becomes strength rather than a management tool.

The question is, are we willing to compost the liberal mess, or do we let it keep rotting movements from the inside?

From “Woke” Capital to MAGA Capital – A Case Study

In the US, every presidential election is sold to us as a transformation of the nation. The chattering class pundits and their #fashionista followers tell us: a new people have been elected alongside a new government. Obama, Trump, Biden, each framed as a seismic cultural shift. But if you care to look, the reality is different: turnout is low, margins slim, the electoral college dulls change. What’s hyped as a national rebirth is just a reshuffling of the same #deathcult mess.

Still, perception matters. After Trump’s re-election, the “zeitgeist shift” rippled through politics and corporate boardrooms. Suddenly, dozens of corporations rolled back their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (#DEI) programs. Woke capital simply pivoted into #MAGA capital.

Liberal woke capital was about projecting inclusion as market expansion: Pride logos in June. Minorities cast in blockbuster films. “Inclusive” ad campaigns. It looked progressive, but it was always about markets: new demographics = new customers. Sometimes the invisible hand holds a rainbow flag.

MAGA Capital, in contrast, is about disciplining workers and pleasing investors. It’s about showing loyalty to the strongman, not customers. DEI didn’t collapse because “the people rejected it.” CEOs saw an opening: align with Trump, roll back diversity, keep profits flowing.

The firings of Colbert and Kimmel crystallized this shift. Networks needed mergers approved. “Ratings” were the excuse, but raw political loyalty was the reality. This is crony capitalism: the stockholder and the strongman aligning. Trump, the fake businessman from TV, borrows legitimacy from profits and ratings, hiding authoritarianism in smoke and mirrors “democracy”. This is the logic of the #deathcult: all values are disposable, as long as accumulation continues.

Lessons for the #OMN path. The shift from Woke to MAGA shows how fragile diversity is when it’s managed as a brand. It’s reversible, hollow, and always subordinated to capital. For the #OMN and the #openweb reboot, the lesson is simple: Don’t outsource diversity to branding exercises. Don’t confuse representation under capitalism with liberation. Don’t build systems where power pivots on a corporate whim. Instead, compost the mess. Root diversity in lived struggle. Anchor it in the #4opens so co-option is harder and collaboration is resilient.

What should be more obvious is that capital, the #nastyfew, its servants, doesn’t care about values, only accumulation. If we want diversity, inclusion, and justice to be real, we have to build them outside the #deathcult logic, in federated, grassroots spaces that don’t bend every time the political wind shifts.

The question remains: will we keep chasing the mess of spectacle – Woke vs. MAGA, or will we compost it and build something more rooted, messy, and alive #KISS

“Your Party” and the Fluffy/Spiky debate – a working path

A wider view of this https://nathanakehurst.medium.com/whose-party-ce23a8099624

Fluffy side: cautious, slow-moving, grounded in “keeping the peace” and managing optics. Classic problem: avoidance of conflict means bottlenecking decisions, blocking energy, and trying to centralise control, so things don’t blow up. Spiky side: impatient, direct, “get it done” energy. Spikiness pushes things forward, but often burns bridges, creating splits and mistrust. Neither path alone works – one stalls out, the other fragments. Their clash in the UK “Your Party”, just tore apart what was an opening for a broad left #mainstreaming alternative which we do need.

There are lessons here for horizontal/grassroots paths, a big one is that centralisation kills: When “leadership” becomes bottlenecked around personalities (Corbyn as “elder statesman”, Sultana as “young firebrand”), it reproduces the same control problems we see everywhere – #NGO capture, careerist gatekeeping, etc. Energy without mediation burns out: Spiky approaches are essential (they break inertia), but without social glue and open processes, the movement shatters.

Sadly, it’s looking like the political vacuum, is back. The 700,000 people who signed up are proof that there is real mass desire for something beyond the #deathcult #mainstreaming. But they’re now “homeless” – with no trustworthy structures to plug into. That vacuum will either be filled by opportunists (careerists, NGOs, “#fashernista”), or open the path for something like the #OMN: messy, federated, not centralised around personalities. And/Or the Green Party (this needs a separate post).

Focusing on the grassroots path I have been working on: this is exactly why the #OMN and #openweb reboot needs balance, so the signal-to-noise ratio can stay healthy. Otherwise, we just mirror the left’s long history of splits. What it means for the fluffy/spiky debate: The “Your Party” implosion shows us:

You can’t fix spiky by being fluffy. The soft style just frustrated allies and deepened mistrust.

You can’t replace fluffy with spiky.

The only path forward is process, not personality. That’s where horizontal projects like the #OMN can work – by creating open, transparent, mediated structures that don’t depend on charismatic individuals at the centre.

For the #openweb reboot, this bad moment is actually what we are working to fix. It shows how much energy there is (hundreds of thousands signing up). It shows the cost of control blindness. Likewise, it creates urgency for native governance paths and experiments in the #fediverse and beyond – where messy affinity-based groups, guided by the #4opens, can provide a home that doesn’t implode around personality clashes.

The question now is who can see the need for the practical mediation layer of the #OMN, is designed to bridge – not abstract theory – it’s the path that makes messy, spiky, fluffy humans work together without blowing everything up. For the #OMN and #openweb reboot, the answer isn’t “less conflict” or “more central leadership,” but better mediation and horizontal process, so collective energy isn’t wasted on repeating the same old splits.

What we are the seeing is the limits of #fashionista and #geekproblem control blindness.

How do we deal with this generation of people – formed by #neoliberalism, #dotcons, #mainstreaming, #stupidindividualism – when what’s needed is collective change and challenge?

The generation of the last 40 years of “There is no alternative” (Thatcher → Blair → Sunak/Starmer) produced passivity and cynicism. #Dotcons capture: people live inside algorithmic bubbles, shaped for consumption, not collaboration. This is the era of individualism as common sense: many can’t even imagine “the collective” except as a threat. We now face naked, fear + distraction: #climatechaos, wars, economic precarity → endless doomscrolling instead of agency. And this is why movements implode: the raw material (people) have been warped by the #deathcult.

What we can work with, even in this mess, people still show hunger for meaning (why 700,000 signed up for Corbyn–Sultana’s thing). Anger at the #nastyfew elitists (but it often gets channelled rightwards – Farage, Trump, Reform, conspiracies).

There are moments of solidarity (mutual aid, Palestine protests, climate camps). Skill fragments (#geekproblem energy, activist culture, DIY practice – but siloed). We don’t start from zero – we start from these contradictions.

Practical paths for dealing with this generation is in part about: Break the spell by expose #mainstreaming as a control system, using simple, repeatable stories (hashtags, memes, metaphors like composting/shovels) to make the invisible visible.

Then the path, affinity first, not mass. Don’t try to herd 700,000 people. Start with small, trust-based circles that actually work. Show results, not rhetoric. This attracts people who are sick of endless talking shops. Compost the conflict, instead of suppressing spiky energy (which turns toxic), build mediation layers, so conflict gets processed into growth. This prevents the inevitable splits from killing projects before they start.

We need working, visible alternatives, things people can touch: #OMN publishing hubs, #fediverse tools, radical media gardens. Each working piece is a counter-spell against “there is no alternative.” This is about reframing success and stop only measuring change in electoral wins or #NGO funding circles. We need to measure it in resilient collectives, working infrastructure, and shifts in common sense.

The challenge we need to compost, is that, the current generation has been trained in #stupidindividualism. What we need to learn is you cannot beat that as individuals, the only path is to recreate collectives – messy, organic, trust-based – where people can unlearn the #deathcult through practice. That’s why #OMN, #OGB, #indymediaback matter: they’re not just tools, they’re containers for relearning collective life.

OMN projects are tools for YOU to change and challenge the world we live (and die) in

The Open Media Network (#OMN) is an “anything in, anything out” network powered by a mediated trust system. Instead of one corporation or #NGO controlling the flow, the commernerty decides what happens to the data that moves through it. At its core, the #OMN is a data soup: tagged data objects flowing through channels. These flows are shaped by trust. You consume and share based on your trust relationships, not on algorithms designed to manipulate you.

Key features are built-in, not bugs: Lossy data – it doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful. Redundancy – multiple instances mean resilience, not waste. Trust mediation – human-scale filters that grow communities. The #geekproblem often resists these messy but living dynamics, demanding rigid perfection. But that rigidity kills creativity. The #OMN embraces mess as the fertile ground where culture grows.

The network is built on the normal #FOSS process, #4opens – open data, open source, open process, open standards. Its focus isn’t inventing new shiny toys. It’s about weaving together what already exists into a functioning grassroots media/news commons. Others are free to build their own projects on top of the framework. What’s exciting is the flows of trust that emerge. These aren’t abstract protocols, they’re the living arteries of new communities.

In short: The #OMN is decentralized, trust-based, open by design. It empowers people and communities to take control of media, to create their own flows, their own networks, their own power.

It’s not about serving users.
It’s about empowering people.
It’s not about control.
It’s about trust.

The #OMN is not a product. It’s a shovel. Use it to compost the #deathcult, and grow something alive.

The #OMN is a simple project

For the more geeky – 5 Functions of the #OMN (#5F)

Think of the #OMN as plumbing for media, a system of pipes, holding tanks, and connectors. It’s designed so anyone (not just geeks) can understand and use it. Every site in the network is built from these 5 basic functions:

Link / Subscribe

Plumb a new pipe into the network. A flow of content comes in or goes out. Each pipe can connect to any other function.

Trust / Moderate

Flow passes through a sieve. Trusted content moves smoothly; noise gets filtered. You can send flows straight through, into holding tanks, or split them into new pipes.

Rollback

Empty the tank, rewind a flow, or remove specific objects. Essential for correcting errors, spam, or bad data.

Edit Metadata

Add tags or notes to the “tail” of a data object. Metadata determines how content gets sieved and aggregated. This is the backbone of news curation in the OMN.

Publish

Add new content objects into the flow. Optionally editable. Publishing is just another pipe into the system. At the core sits the storage tank: a simple database holding all the flows.

Nothing new here. This isn’t rocket science – it’s the same way plumbing works, or how power grids function, or how neurons connect in the brain. The #OMN builds on this #nothingnew principle: simple, understandable systems scaled up to empower communities.

UX/UI then sits on top of these 5 functions. That’s the “macro” – the surface layer people touch – but underneath, it’s all just pipes and tanks for flows of data.

#KISS

If you would like and example of what real #DIY activist grassroots media looks like https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2006/climatecamp/ and https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2007/climatecamp/ and https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2008/climatecamp/

We need to reboot this project #indymediaback #OMN #Fediverse

Content in the #OMN

The #mainstreaming is hallucinating

Let’s look at this problem, the #fashionistas are everywhere in our spaces. They look shiny, sound clever, and always seem “in the know.” But scratch the surface, and you find nothing but mirrors and buzzwords. They are hallucination machines, not listening, not dialoguing, not building, just repeating empty noise to hide their lack of substance.

What we need to do, is to shovel the empty words into piles, turn them over, and use the stink to fertilize something real. The #OMN is one such tool, not polished, not PR-friendly, not built for grants or press releases. It’s messy, grounded, spiky, and fluffy. A toolkit for people who actually want to build, not brand. The #fashionistas will hate it, because it doesn’t need them. Good, that’s how we know we’re on the right path.

These #fashionistas, conscious or not, are about wrapping the #deathcult in a soft blanket of jargon and “professionalism”, to make exploitation sound like innovation. To turn grassroots messiness into #PR. And people keep falling for it. Why? Because the #fashionistas sell the feeling of being respectable, of being listened to by power. They dangle the bait of #NGO grants, seats at the table, and photo ops. But what they deliver is silence, blockage, and decay.

They call it communication, but it’s not dialogue, not listening, not truth. It’s hallucination: Smiling faces repeating empty words. Buzzwords to cover the rot, smoke and mirrors to keep power safe in its head down worship.

This is the work of the #fashionistas of our spaces. They parade their new “frameworks,” their shiny “initiatives,” their endless “community guidelines.” Always dressed up, always polished, always empty. They are masters of looking good while doing nothing.

They sell hallucinations because reality frightens them. Reality is messy, full of dissent, full of challenge. Reality is compost – steaming, turning, breaking down. From compost grows life. From their hallucinations grows only more of the #deathcult. While they hold the space, communities are silenced. When they push themselves, the centre holds only rot. With their hallucinate, the #mainstreaming keeps killing the margins.

What we do not need is their delusions. We do not need their fashion “shows”. Our path is different. The path we take is composting. Shovel in hand, we turn the pile. We let the stink breathe. We break down the lies, the #PR, the shiny reports. We turn their hallucinations back into fertile ground for something real.

Yes tis is work, we need more projects like the #OMN: open process, open data, open code, open standards. The #4opens: sunlight over secrecy, dialogue over control. The #KISS principle is our reminder: keep it simple, keep it real.

Let the #fashionistas keep their hallucinations. We need to be busy with planting the soil.

Sanity means stepping outside the churn. The obstacle is simple but heavy, people cannot see change and cannot face challenge. That blindness keeps us stuck, yes, some say what I write here is “bleeding obvious.” It is, but that’s the point, it’s not for the already converted, not for the initiated. These posts are shovels: tools to compost the #fashionistas and the #geekproblem, to turn the pile of #techshit into fertile soil.

The #OMN project grows from this compost. It’s not a theory to admire, it’s a path to move people out of #mainstreaming and into diverse subcultures where we actually live change and challenge. When rupture comes – and it always does – the strength of that diversity, the lived practice of horizontals, will be seeds for planting a future worth having.

This path is not about being “original.” It’s about being useful. About creating spiky, fluffy translations that help us step aside from the churn, shovel in hand. Use them, or lose them, just dont stand aside like a prat, please.

We keep seeing this mess. The moment grassroots energy spills over into #mainstreaming, something alive, the #fashionistas arrive to “facilitate.” Suddenly the spiky edges are dulled, the fluffy warmth is flattened, and what’s left is another empty process path, they kill with kindness, or worse, with “common sense.”

Let’s be very blunt, these people are not important as individuals. What matters is the path they push us down. The “commonsense” they sell is poison. Every time we let them set the frame, our direction, our spaces collapse back into #stupidindividualism or #NGO capture. Every time.

The #OMN is a simple project

Composting the #techshit is about:

Raw waste → The constant flood of mainstreaming, broken promises of #dotcons, bad-faith #NGO capture, shallow “innovation theatre.” This is the smelly mess we are swimming in.

Shovel work → Activists and communities don’t just sit in the mess. We turn it over, exposing the rot, adding oxygen. This is critique, transparency, and the #4opens in action.

Aeration → Sunlight + openness turns stink into something useful. Lies are exposed, corruption made visible, hidden power structures dragged out.

Soil of change → The same waste that poisoned us becomes fertile ground for new growth, but only if we do the work of turning it. This is how trust-based networks sprout, how #OMN emerges.

What it means in practice

Don’t delete the shit – we compost it. Bad actors, bad processes, and bad tech are made visible and contextualized.

Don’t hoard the shit – silos just trap the stink. Share, federate, distribute — so communities can add their own oxygen.

Don’t wallow in the shit – critique alone is not enough. The point is to grow fertile alternatives.

The composting metaphor says: yes, we’re drowning in #techshit, but we have the tools to turn it into the soil for something humane, resilient, and alive. #KISS

The #OMN is a simple project. But simplicity is deceptive, what makes it difficult for many #fashernista and #mainstreaming people is not the code, not the servers, not even the logistics.
The difficulty is that the #OMN is rooted in a different path of human nature.

It isn’t designed to fit the old path of #stupidindividualism. It isn’t built to serve the greed of #dotcons. It isn’t here to bend the knee to the #deathcult.

The #OMN is designed as a transition tool, a bridge to a different path, commons, trust, a living path. Once people arrive, they can build what they like. That’s why the #OMN isn’t just tech, it’s a toolkit for social change and challenge.

#KISS. Keep it simple. Keep it real. I’ve been building this bridge for 20 years, agenst a strong counter flows, we were all pushed off the path when we handed our voices to the #dotcons. When #openweb culture gave way to #stupidindividualism, I was ready to give up.

So I bought a boat and sailed away. #boatingeurope. Not a metaphor – survival. But then came the ActivityPub reboot. The #openweb with the #Fediverse rose again. I came back. Because there was hope. There still is.

And now – five years into this reboot – we face the next predictable crisis: #mainstreaming, the sell-outs, the “respectable voices”, the NGO parasites. It’s normal. It happens to every alt project. And now it’s happening here.

The solution? Compost the mess. Not to attack individuals – most of them aren’t important. What matters are the paths they push us down. Because their “common sense” is the true danger. These are the paths that turn living networks into dusty, dry creeks.

That’s why I keep writing the #hashtag stories: to make these hidden paths visible. So we can see what’s going on. So we can choose differently. Compost the #techshit to grow something real.

OMN projects are tools for YOU to change and challenge the world we live (and die) in

I started by saying the #OMN is a simple project, let’s illustrate this with the #OMN Process

Gather

People, projects, and content come together.

Anyone can publish by trust, share, and tag media.

Use open standards (#4opens, #openweb).

No gatekeepers, just openness mediated by trust.

Describe

Content is enriched with metadata -tags, descriptions.

Human-readable and machine-readable.

Stories are linked by meaning, not silos.

Feeds are syndicated (via RSS, ActivityPub, etc.).

Content flows across the network.

Local projects display, remix, and reframe.

Distribute

Decentralized hosting: many small servers, not one #dotcons.

Mirroring + redundancy = resilience.

No central point of failure.

Contextualize

Communities add their perspective, framing, and translation.

Different views can co-exist on the same story.

Keeps the commons diverse and contested, not controlled.

Compost

Bad ideas, #mainstreaming, and #NGO co-option are made visible.

Instead of only deleting, we contextualize and critique.

This “compost” becomes fertile ground for better growth.

Grow

New media projects emerge from the toolkit.

Each can shape the #OMN path to fit their community.

A living, adaptive commons.

Principles in practice, KISS → tools stay simple, human-readable, small pieces that fit together. #4opens → open data, open code, open process, open standards. Trust-based networks → rooted in commons, not control. Resilience → many weak ties are stronger than one big silo.

The #OMN is not an app you install. It’s a set of processes + tools to move us from isolation to commons, from #dotcons back to #openweb.

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network

We need an honest conversation

To make real change and challenge, we need much better functioning activism. The current generation of activism is crap – fragmented, self-referential, lost in identity wrangles, #NGO capture, and #fashionista online posturing. What can be learned to work to compost this mess.

Affinity and Trust > Bureaucracy and Branding

The 1990s/2000s alter-globalization movement and early #Indymedia weren’t “organisations,” they were ecosystems. Small affinity groups moved fast, trusted each other, and shared infrastructure without needing a brand deck or a funder’s approval. Lesson we can learn: build movements through trust, not paperwork. Organising should be messy but alive, not tidy and dead.

Media as Commons > Media as Market

#Indymedia was open “trust” based publishing, anyone could access, and no corporate ad trackers attached. Compare this to today’s #NGO “campaign media” or endless Twitter/X outrage cycles: closed, shallow, fleeting. What lessons can we learn: if you don’t own your media, you don’t own your message. The #OMN and #4opens try to restore this, we need grassroots media infrastructure, not more silos.

Direct Action > Endless Process

From anti-roads to climate camps, action mattered more than Zoom calls or social media petitions. Protest camps, blockades, squats: they disrupted the system physically, not just discursively. Lesson from this is to got off the digital timeline. Occupy space, take risks, make it visible. Without action, all the online noise is just background music to the #deathcult.

Messy Coalitions > Purity Politics

Earlier waves brought anarchists, trade unionists, students, farmers, hackers, and faith groups into loose alliances. Today, movements too often fragment into micro-identities that cannot scale. The lesson: you don’t need to agree on everything, you just need a shared enemy and a common tactics. #KISS.

Culture Matters

Camps and protests weren’t just strategy meetings, they were lived experiments with free kitchens, pirate radio, temporary autonomous zones. Joy and play sustained the struggle. What we can learn? Activism that feels like homework will burn out. Activism that feels like life will endure.

What, can we learn from this? The current generation needs to relearn: activism is not a brand you attach yourself to, it’s a practice of building collective power. You don’t need permission, you don’t need a platform, you don’t need an #NGO to bless you. You need each other, and tools you can trust.

That’s the rebooting of the #openweb and the #OMN path. Compost the crap. Pick up the shovels. Plant again. To take this path seriously, we need to remember a little history. In 1933, German conservatives thought they could “manage” Hitler. Two years later, they were being shot in their own homes.

Q. is there any time in history where fascists were voted into power and then peacefully voted out? The answer is brutal. Not once. Ever.

The Germany’s story, is useful for people to better work on the current hard right paths. Von Papen said, “We’ve hired him.” Within 18 months, his allies were corpses. The clever men who thought they could tame the beast were either dead, exiled, or crawling for survival.

Italy? Worse. The king could have crushed Mussolini’s blackshirts in an afternoon. Instead, he handed him the keys. Twenty years later: mass graves, partisans hanging Mussolini upside down like rotten meat.

Spain? A bloodbath. Franco staged a coup, the “democracies” wrung their hands, and fascism ruled for 39 years. He died comfortably in his bed. His victims are still being dug up in 2025.

Hungary? Orbán walked in through the ballot box in 2010. Within three years he controlled the media, the courts, the state. Fourteen years later, the EU is still “deeply concerned” while Hungary is a one-party state.

The only clean win? Finland 1932 – fascists jumped too soon, tried a coup before winning elections, and the army crushed them. That’s it. One time in a century.

The pattern is obvious:

Conservatives panic about socialism.

They ally with fascists as the “lesser evil.”

Fascists seize power.

Fascists immediately purge the conservatives.

Then you get 30–50 years of dictatorship, and mountains of corpses.

How many times did conservatives actually control the fascists they backed? Zero.
How many times did the fascists purge them once in power? Every single time.

A. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: violence works for fascists. They smash their enemies while whining they’re victims. They sow chaos, then impose “order.” Meanwhile, democrats write editorials, pass resolutions, and file lawsuits – while the fascists laugh and consolidate power.

The numbers don’t lie:

Fascists removed peacefully after winning elections: 0

Average length of fascist rule: 31 years

Removed by voting: 0

Removed by asking nicely: 0

Removed by war or coups: almost all of them

The historical record gives us three choices:

Stop them before they take power.

War.

Wait for them to die.

We missed the first. The window’s not closing – it’s closed.

And this is where the truth bites: fascism isn’t some freak accident. It’s not “outside” the system. It’s the sharpest edge of the #deathcult – the same system that sells endless growth on a dying planet, that privatizes solidarity, that mainstreams cruelty while smiling about “freedom.” Fascism is not an exception, it’s the rule, 40 years of #mainstreaming is now trying to enforce as the smoke and mirrors slips.

If history teaches us anything, it’s this: the centre will always betray, the right will always unleash fascism, and the people will always be left to dig up the bodies.

Please take note of the working activism at the start of this article. You can support and take part https://opencollective.com/open-media-network and https://unite.openworlds.info/ are entry points, there are likely more post them in the comments.

#openweb vs #closedweb is the battle for the Internet

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

In the tech world of social change and challenge, we’re living with a strange imbalance. Too often, the spaces we use and try and build are crowded with useless, self-destructive prats – people more interested in ego, control, and clout than in making anything grow from the roots. And when they do very rearly act, their “help” is often poison: it blocks, slows, and derails.

At the same time, the number of people doing truly useful, collective, grounded work feels small. You can see this in every grassroots project, tech or activism, whether it’s, coding radical #FOSS projects, building alternative media, running servers, or planting food forests. The people who actually show up and keep things moving are always fewer than we need.

Then into this gap steps the parasites of #mainstreaming. Yes, they look like they’re helping. They reach out, they polish up the image, they “outreach” grassroots tech projects to wider audiences. But under the surface, this isn’t really helping. What they are doing, shifts focus away from what makes grassroots powerful – trust, messy collectives, stubborn autonomy – and towards something glossy and hollow.

Real help doesn’t come from smoothing out the rough edges for palatability. Real help is messy, reciprocal, and based in care. It’s, shipping working code, turning up to maintain the server, to keep the firewood dry, to cook food for the meeting, to argue about governance without walking away. It’s staying rooted when everything pulls you towards the easy path of compromise.

The good news? The work that does happen, when it’s done by those few stubborn and lovely souls who commit to it, is real and lasting. Every #fediverse instance that survives another year, every scrappy #openweb tool that stays online, every cooperative that resists collapse – these are proof that grassroots power is alive.

So yes, most of what gets labelled as “help” from outside is damage. But the grassroots path is still there. If we keep it simple – #KISS – and keep choosing trust over polish, collectives over branding, we can tip the balance back to where it needs to be.

Let’s look at some examples:

#Indymedia worked because it was built on trust, open publishing, and direct participation. But once the dogmatic #eekproblem, the NGOs and professional activists came sniffing, the energy shifted. Gradely the rough edges, the wild openness, became a “problem to be managed” instead of a strength. And with that, the vitality drained.

Or look at the #Fediverse. It thrives when it stays scrappy, with collectives running their own servers and shaping their own cultures. But already we see #Bluesky, #Threads, and NGO-backed “Fediverse Foundations” pushing. They’ll say they’re amplifying the movement. In reality, they’re clipping its wings, taming it for the same #mainstreaming logic that gutted Indymedia.

The #OMN (Open Media Network) was always an attempt to resist this drift. Instead of begging for a seat at the mainstream table, it builds trust networks from the ground up. No gatekeeping, no branding games – just collectives #4opens sharing content, tools, and governance in open, federated ways. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t polish well for a TED talk. But it works, because it stays close to where publishing and power actually happen: at the grassroots.

I’ve seen this first-hand in my own work. On the boats at Rummelsburger Bucht, in affinity groups fighting #climatechaos, and in rebuilding #indymediaback, the same pattern repeats. The parasite #mainstreaming arrive smiling, but what matters is the stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust. Those are the people who keep the fire burning. The #KISS truth, it doesn’t take everyone. It just takes enough of us who refuse to give in.

While it’s easy (and justified) to call out the parasitic #mainstreaming types, it’s harder (and more important) to think about how to bridge to them without being captured or co-opted.

1. Meet them on fluffy values, not hard projects. Most #mainstreaming people say they care about openness, creativity, and inclusion. Use those as starting points. Instead of hitting them with #4opens or #OGB right away, talk in simple, human terms: trust, care, mutual aid, freedom. Then show how the OMN already embodies those values with examples like: When talking about #indymedia reboot, don’t begin with federation protocols; begin with “this is a people’s newswire where communities publish, and no single organisation can control it.” Then connect that to the tech.

2. Frame the commons as abundance, not scarcity. Mainstreaming comes with a scarcity mindset (“we need funding,” “we need gatekeepers”). We counter with an abundance story: the #openweb grows by sharing, remixing, and federating. Emphasise that our strength isn’t owning the pie but baking more pies together. An example might be: OMN flows content between blogs, small sites, and #fediverse projects. This isn’t competing with “platforms,” it’s weaving a bigger web where everyone benefits.

3. Offer them low-stakes ways to join. Not everyone is ready to dive headfirst into spiky, fluffy, grassroots culture. Make lightweight on-ramps: federated publishing plugins, easy “flows not silos” demos, or spaces where they can share without having to fully sign up.

4. Keep the tone sometimes fluffy, sometimes spiky. People new to grassroots tech often get scared off by the first bit of conflict. Fluffy spaces – campfires, storytelling, art – can bring them in. The spiky edges – calling out parasitism, blocking #NGO capture – should remain, but not be the only door in.

5. Make co-creation visible. Show them that grassroots projects don’t just “talk” about collaboration – we live it. When people see decision-making without bosses, publishing without gatekeepers, and coding without silos, they realise it’s possible. An example of this can be found in #OMN wiki pages on Unite Forge which are messy, open, and collective. That’s not a bug, it’s a living record of co-creation. Point to that messiness as proof of trust-based work that they can make more “tidy”, this is work as gift.

The #bridgeing isn’t about diluting grassroots culture into “NGO-speak.” It’s about keeping our paths, our politics sharp, while offering ways for curious people to join with less fear. Some will drop off (parasites always will), but others might step over the bridge and become part of the messy, hopeful commons.

#KISS

Who are the #nastyfew?

They are the people who always rise to the top when #mainstreaming takes hold. You see them on TV, in parliament, running #NGOs, managing #dotcons tech projects.

On the surface, they don’t always look bad – in fact, they often present as competent, articulate, even charming. But scratch that surface and the pattern is clear: their drive is not shared flourishing, it’s possession and control.

This minority #nastyfew, from a historical view, are today’s bourgeoisie. Marx outlined (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie), that the bourgeoisie historically gained their power through ownership of the means of production – factories, land, capital – while the working class had nothing but their labour to sell. The bourgeoisie used their control over wealth and coercion to keep society in balance, a balance where they stayed on top and everyone else stayed dependent.

The same dynamic runs through our present, the #nastyfew work to preserve a status quo that serves them. They exploit labour (waged or unwaged), capture resources, and use subtle or blunt coercion to suppress any change or challenge.

Those who hold power – social, technical, financial – remain the #nastyfew unless we actively work to compost them.

Then, in our cultural circles, we have our own “common sense” #blocking, the “parasites” who feed from progressive paths.

#fashernistas – chasing visibility, hashtags, and trends instead of substance. They drain energy by endlessly cycling the latest buzzwords while ignoring the compost underneath.

#Blinded dogmatic liberals – well-meaning perhaps, but so trapped in their own ideology that they block radical change without even seeing it.

The wannabe #nastyfew – those who orbit power, adopting the habits of control in hopes of rising up themselves.

Neo-liberals in disguise – the most dangerous, because they consciously wear the clothing of other paths: climate, diversity, openness… while quietly feeding the #deathcult of enclosure, growth, and control.

Some of these act blindly, reproducing harmful patterns without much thought. Others are deliberate: they know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it to consolidate control.

The unthinking #mainstreaming majority are shadows of the above. They’re not directly malicious, but they absorb the surface story: They repost the slogans. They nod along with “common sense” solutions pushed by the #dotcons and NGOs. They go with the flow, even when the flow is a sewer. Without working composting, they become the mulch for the #nastyfew to grow stronger.

The “nice liberals”. Not all liberals are destructive. Sometimes they play a healthy role: They keep projects afloat by doing practical work. They can mediate between radicals and the #mainstreaming. They often mean well, and can be allies if they’re not left holding the steering wheel all the time. They’re not the compost, they’re more like the worms: sometimes useful, sometimes wriggly, but part of the soil cycle.

And beyond, there are what has value, the progressive radical paths – both #fluffy (trust, care, openness) and #spiky (confrontation, defence, rupture). That’s another layer of the compost pile, and deserves its own focus. The key point: the #nastyfew and their parasites will always try to rise up in any fertile ground. The progressive trick is to compost them early – recycle their energy, block their possessiveness, and keep the soil rich for new seeds.

To recap, let’s look at some history. When the #openweb reboot began about a decade ago, it was rooted in grassroots values: #4opens, federation, collective governance, affinity trust networks. But as soon as the energy started to gather, the #mainstreamin pushed in:

#Dotcons pivoting into the space – Facebook rebranding as “Meta” and trying to swallow the Fediverse through the #Threads/ActivityPub move. This is enclosure dressed up as “openness”.

Standards capture – The #NGO actors increasingly gatekeeper the “neglected” #W3C processes, pushing, more corporate-driven priorities while blocking messy grassroots paths that did the shovelling to grow the reboot during the seedling years.

Control of resources – a few “elitist” individuals began hoarding power over infrastructure, domain names, and repos, reproducing the same top-down model we’re supposed to be escaping.

The result? We are seeing the #mainstreaming channeling energy away from collective growth into more controlled, branded silos. The Fediverse started as messy, small-scale, radical. But the same pattern repeated:

SocialHub degeneration – once the buzzing hub for ActivityPub, it decayed into a handful of blockers. The sometimes competent-and-charming surface masks a deeper instinct for control. Threads stagnate, dissent is suppressed, and the soil turns barren.

Mastodon centralization – while #Mastodon has been vital, its dominance has also let a single dev-team shape the Fediverse “common sense”. That concentration of reputation and technical control looks very much like a wannabe mini-bourgeois class rising.

#NGO incursions – funded NGOs present themselves as allies, but bring managerialism, paywalls thinking, and “stakeholder” logic. Instead of composting conflict, they plaster over it with workshops and careerism. Then #block the people who complain.

This is the #Fediverse version of “workers remain workers, employers remain employers”: contributors remain contributors, gatekeepers remain gatekeepers. We face the issue of possession over collaboration – we see that collectives fracture when individuals cling to admin roles, mailing lists, funds, and leadership positions. Possession rots trust and then groups wither.

The people who hold (and hored) resources, contacts, and media attention become more deadened than path, even if they started with good intentions.

The composting lesson, is that over and over, the #nastyfew and their parasites repeat the bourgeois pattern at scale: They present as competent and charming. They consolidate possession and control. They preserve the status quo by suppressing dissent.

And over and over, the solution is the same: compost them. Turn the piles of #techshit and #NGO mess back into fertile ground. Protect the seeds of grassroots tech trust, keep the social soil messy and alive.

The #OMN is based on
human beings doing the right thing.

And they will not,
and it will fail.

Human beings doing the right thing,
and they will not,
and it will fail.

And they will not,
and it will fail.

And will fail.

This is the challenge
in the era of the #deathcult:
A culture that feeds on fear,
on greed,
on possession.

Seeds are planted,
but the soil is barren.
Trust is offered,
but hands close into fists.
A path is drawn,
but the walkers scatter into shadows.

The #OMN is fragile,
thin green shoots
in a field of ash.

It asks the simplest thing:
Do the right thing.
Not once,
but again,
and again,
and again.

And if we do not?
It will fail.

And if we do?
Perhaps,
seeds will take root,
and grow beyond the compost,
beyond the #deathcult,
into the messy, open,
living forest.

Compost the blocking, keep the seeds alive, and make space for growth

Compost the blocking, keep the seeds alive, and make space for growth

It’s good to see more people turning their focus back to the #openweb. For the past five years of the #reboot we’ve been distracted in a signal-to-noise mess from the #fashionistas. That time needs to be over, we need to start looking clearly at both internal rot and the external threats.

A good first step is in balancing the realisation that we actually have far more direct power to deal with the internal mess than we do over the eternal #dotcons and their #closedweb “common sense”. That’s why we need to put activism into composting the internal #blocking (see: https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=compost). Composting isn’t just a metaphor – it’s a way to recycle the piles of #techshit we’ve built up into soil that can grow new #openweb seeds. #KISS

I understand the focus on the external #dotcons, yes, we also need to keep pushing back against the external enclosures. But inside our own spaces, it’s clear that possessiveness, in code, in reputation, in control over projects, undermines cooperation. It destroys trust, it wastes resources, it corrodes integrity. People often destroy what they love, not out of hate, but out of possession.

This is directly relevant to the degeneration of the #SocialHub project (see: https://hamishcampbell.com/why-teach-everyone-to-code-has-become-a-dead-end-slogan/). What was once the lively centre for the #ActivityPub and #Fediverse reboot is now reduced to a handful of unthinking “problem” people circling the drain. That’s not unusual, it’s a normal outcome when we fail to compost.

The lesson is simple: compost the blocking, keep the seeds alive, and make space for growth.

#OMN resources we can support

Drafting blog posts, polemics, and rallying calls to sharpen the #OMN narrative. Use the compost metaphors (#techshit, seeds, soil) into accessible messaging that sticks. Editing to transform the long posts into shareable, short-form content for Mastodon, Fediverse, and allied networks.

Curating and organizing existing #OMN writings into a structured wiki-style knowledge base. Building summaries, FAQs, and primers for newcomers who hit the projects cold. Draft “composting guides” – how to deal with #blocking, #fashionistas, and #geekproblem inside communities.

Writing simple documentation for the Unite Forge and other #OMN tools. Helping draft roadmaps that explain what’s built, what’s missing, and what needs contributors. Produce explainers on why #OMN is different from #dotcons and #NGO capture, grounded in #4opens.

Write out templates for horizontal decision-making (#OGB style) that projects can adapt. Suggest practical ways to “compost” blockers while keeping the wider network fertile. Help draft neticate rooted in #KISS + #4opens rather than #NGO-speak.

Each of these can be grown into living resources: wiki pages, blog posts, shareable guides, or activist toolkits – depending on where you want the energy to flow.

Coding work https://unite.openworlds.info/explore/repos

Funding work https://opencollective.com/open-media-network

Thinking work https://hamishcampbell.com

Who are the #nastyfew?

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the fake illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from protest camps to #openweb projects – I’ve seen this pattern again and again. Projects like early #Indymedia were messy, radical, and fiercely autonomous. That edge, that wildness was slowly excised until what remains is either safe, bland, and powerless or locked down and paranoid, both smother the naive grassroots paths.

At late era #climatecamp i’ve witnessed activist planning groups that masquerade as open and inclusive, but doom radical ideas by policing language. If someone speaks candidly about power or inequality, they risk being labelled as “derailing.” Not unlike what I describe on the Fediverse: “a consensus ritual where insiders quietly veto contentious proposals, pushing them offstage.” The effect is chilling – the bold, and meaningful, get diluted and then silenced.

I’ve also seen “horizontal” groups adopt soft authoritarianism: a handful of insiders subtly side-line contentious voices with endless calls for care, safety and more research or structure, this is simply polite gatekeeping, in those quiet pauses, power consolidates. These practices don’t just kill energy, they devour possibility. They cannibalize the chance for communities that are both fluffy (nurturing) and spiky (radical).

Smiling-face vileness is not satire – it’s simple #fashionista postmodern gaslighting, that slowly smothers life with calm care and precision. To compost this mess, the task of the grassroots is to replant what’s been stomped. That means cultivating friction -mess, disagreement, negotiation – because that is how community grows, trust is built, and real alternatives emerge. Let’s embed this friction into our code, our community practices, our shared care. Let’s compost the #NGO and fashionista chokeholds so we can grow radical, tender, collective futures #KISS

A lot of the “smiling-faced vileness” comes from a mix of personal psychology, learned behaviour, and the systemic incentives that shape #NGO, institutional, and #mainstreaming culture. It’s not usually deep evil – it’s something more banal, entrenched, and self-justifying. Examples of this mess makeing:

Fear of losing control when change threatens the structures they know how to navigate, so they subconsciously (or consciously) try to stop it. Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil idea applies here: harm is done by “ordinary” functionaries protecting their turf “The real danger is not that people will rebel, but that they will acquiesce in doing what they know is wrong.”

Cognitive dissonance management, as they see themselves as “the good guys,” so any action – even blocking positive change – must be reframed as “responsible” or “prudent.” #Postmodern self-protection: everything can be justified with enough narrative spin, “No one is the villain of their own story.”

Status preservation, NGOs and funding orgs reward stability over creativity, hierarchy over challenge. If this position, funding and reputation depends on maintaining the current order, so will fight disruptive change, even if it’s obviously better “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Incompetence + insecurity, breeds paranoia. If you don’t know how to manage real change, you start to fear those who do. The façade of competence becomes more important than actual results, “When a man’s only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Groupthink & conformity pressure, #mainstreaming cultures reward going along with the majority, even if the majority is wrong “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

This is why these people who cling to “power” often look “nice” on the surface while quietly gutting or neutralising anything spiky, challenging, and any change of path. It’s not just personal malice, it’s a cultural immune system against change, fuelled by fear, vanity, and comfort.

An example of this is when the tiny few “secede” in #mainstreaming media (and the history it writes) it is not neutral, it’s a kind of #PR machine. It launders power and polishes away dissent. The smiling faces and “respectable” voices then are just the velvet gloves over the iron fist. It’s fake history as PR – it isn’t history as lived memory or contested struggle, it’s official narrative, a “storybook” written to flatter the winners and confuse the rest. That’s why it feels vile and pointless: it distracts, pacifies, and reframes mess as inevitability.

We need to be clear, the people who produce this are not innocent. Yes, many are clueless functionaries who internalize the system’s values without question. Others are parasitic aspirants, desperate to climb into the #nastyfew by copying their methods. Even when they do “small goods” (a sympathetic article, a cultural puff piece), in the larger pattern they still serve the mainstreaming #deathcult machine.

The compost metaphor is about instead of raging endlessly at the mess, take what can be siphoned off (attention, fragments of narrative, disillusioned individuals) and redirect that flow into the alt systems (#OMN, #4opens, Fediverse, grassroots histories) then compost the rest: let it rot, break down, and become the fertilizer for something alive and grounded t seed. Because otherwise we get stuck in their cycle: doom-scrolling their fake stories, wasting energy on only reacting instead of building. Yes, the challenge is mediation, not just rejection. Spot the toxic flows, tap them for useful nutrients, and feed the roots of alternatives.

https://opencollective.com/open-media-network

Activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch

For two decades, activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch. We’ve built bunkers (security tools, encryption layers, anonymity networks) but very few bridges. That’s left the field fragmented, insular, and often unattractive to the people we’re supposedly trying to empower.

If the aim is to push social change and challenge rather than just survive, here’s what I think needs building:

#4opens-native infrastructure Open data → not just sharing docs, but making activist knowledge queryable, remixable, reusable. Open source → tools that anyone can template and that are designed for non-geek participation. Open process → transparent decision-making, recorded and accessible, not locked in Discord chats and private Signal groups. Open standards → making sure our platforms talk to each other rather than becoming new silos.

Right now, most “secure” activist tools violate at least two of these, which is why they never scale socially.

Publishing-first culture (#OMN approach)

Defensive tools keep activists inside – whisper networks, encrypted groups – but change needs broadcast. We need infrastructure for:

Collaborative publishing (like a modern Indymedia, federated rather than centralised)

Native-to-activist communities, not corporate platforms with activist skin

Embeddable media flows that any group can plug into their own site and feed back into the commons

Bridges between the “geek” and the “street”

We keep losing people at the handover point between coders and campaigners. This means:

Building social UX: not just “usable” but welcoming, narrative, and easy to onboard without a training camp

Open governance for projects, so they don’t ossify into closed dev clubs

Mixing online and offline organising so the tech is embedded in the movement, not floating above it

Messy but live governance (#OGB model)

Most activist tech projects fail when the original team burns out or falls out. We need:

Federated governance where each node makes its own calls but can still coordinate

Lightweight, transparent conflict resolution instead of exile-by-moderator

Structures that reward contribution over gatekeeping

Narrative + polemic

Tech alone doesn’t move people, stories do. The #4opens path should be wrapped in cultural work: films, zines, podcasts, political memes, all pointing back to live, working tools people can join today.

Why this matters: If all we do is encrypt ourselves into tiny rooms, we’ve already lost – the social fabric will rot away outside those walls. Encryption is necessary for many struggles, but it’s not sufficient. Positive activist tech must be porous, messy, and visible, because change needs an audience and a route for people to join.

Bridges: An activist tech roadmap

We’ve made excellent hiding places – but the point was never to hide. What we need to stop building. (Let it compost – it’s done its job, or it was a dead-end from the start?)

Paranoid toys for the already paranoid. Endless “yet another secure messenger” forks for people who already have six installed.

Security fetishism that confuses obscurity with safety.

Crypt bro sandcastles. Blockchain “liberation” projects that replicate Silicon Valley greed, gated by tokens and VC hype.

Anything that smells like replacing corporate overlords with slightly more smug overlords.

Single-issue encryption fortresses. Tools so focused on privacy that they have zero public presence or outreach capacity. Result: the tech survives, but the movement starves for connection.

Endless horizontal-but-empty governance “frameworks” Looming Google Docs full of aspirational process that nobody follows in practice. No real community roots, just “process cosplay.”

What to start building (This is the real #4opens + #OMN work)

Social-first tech stacks. Start with people, not protocols.

Build interfaces that encourage conversation, collaboration, and collective memory.

#4opens principles applied to UX, governance, and hosting — not just the code repo.

Native governance baked into the stack. #OGB-style decision-making visible and accessible to every user. Influence exercised in the open, with accountable stewardship, not backroom admin chat.

Open media networks that publish first, secure second. #OMN-style federated publishing where public content flows freely, while personal data defaults to private. Focus on amplifying radical stories instead of just hiding them better.

Tools that make bridges not walls. Mediating the signal-to-noise rather than blocking at the first whiff of disagreement. Spaces where trust can grow between different grassroots tribes without falling into the #NGO/#dotcons gravity well.

Composable, messy, repairable tech. #KISS principles, with the option for local hacks and templates. Document the how and why so that when projects die, others can compost them into new growth.

The call-out is we can’t code our way out of the #deathcult with bunker software. The way forward is messy, social, and built in the open. Let’s stop pretending that better locks will save us, and start making better streets for our movements to meet, cooperate, and fight together.

The #4opens + #OMN path is the stepping stone back into the light. Take it, or stay buried.