This mainstreaming/alt mess making is not about real disagreement or dynamic ideas. It’s about channelling noise that flatters the existing structures and silences anything genuinely alternative. This isn’t controversy, it’s signal-to-noise warfare. And right now, the noise is winning.
Let’s be blunt. On the subject of this site, nearly every so-called “alternative” tech event funded or structured by #NGO culture is riddled with parasites – projects more interested in their next grant or their place at the conference table than building anything outside the status quo. They’re not evil – just placated, softly herding us back into the polite cages we were trying to escape.
They block by doing nothing, block by talking too much, block by looking away when real change knocks. They block by turning real signal into noise.
The actual energy, the radical possibility, is elsewhere. The #OGB (Open Governance Body) is designed with this in mind: not to convince the already-compromised, but to build something permissionless and let it loose. Let people feel the value, or not. No “hard” hand-holding, no pre-approval, no gatekeepers.
It’s a #KISS project: Keep It Simple, Stupid. We’re building for the people up shit creek without a paddle, not the people arguing about paddle aesthetics on a conference panel. We don’t need more “controversy” to win attention in the #NGO#PR-sphere. We need real signal, real builds, real grassroots governance to share power.
And yes, we do have a problem with apathy and Laissez-faire “common sense” that lets this cycle repeat. So let’s stop waiting for the right moment or the perfect audience. We build with this problem in mind. We design #DIY structures that can work in the real mess.
In the world of decentralised, peer-to-peer, and federated networks, from the Fediverse to grassroots projects like the #OMN, moderation works differently. It’s not a matter of top-down control or terms-of-service written by #process lawyers. Instead, the basic unit of moderation is trust – and this shifts everything.
Yes, we need practical moderation tools – blocking, filtering, reporting, curation – the whole established toolkit. But more importantly, we need to root these tools in a tech shaped culture of care, responsibility, and openness. This is where the #4opens come in:
Open data
Open source
Open standards
Open process
These aren’t #FOSS buzzwords, they’re guides to building (tech) trust in messy, real-world communities. In this path, you don’t have many hard “rights” in the liberal legalistic sense, there’s no authority swooping in to save you. Instead, you build #DIY community “safety” through the act of creating and sustaining relationships of trust. You find people. You then build a crew to join or establish norms and commoning practices.
This isn’t a call to abandon boundaries, it’s the opposite. You draw your boundaries with others and work to hold those, with #4opens bridges in place. You don’t demand control over others, you build spaces that work for you and find ways to federate, connect, and mediate with others doing the same. Your rights are your relationships. Your safety is your crew. Your power is your network.
This is the #KISS path – Keep It Simple, Stupid – agen, not in a naive way, but in a native way. It’s the opposite of the bureaucratic, compliance-obsessed, legal control systems of the #dotcons and the #NGO gatekeepers. Those are alien models people keep trying to drag into our “alternative” spaces and paths. And every time we do, we replicate the very systems we claim to oppose.
We don’t need more frictionless tech platforms with “Trust & Safety” departments that answer to advertisers and #PR teams. We need open communities of care, rooted in shared values, transparency, and mutual responsibility. On this path its about working to compost the mess and growing something else.
This is how moderation works in a decentralised network, not by pretending we’re neutral, but by showing up with care and accountability. It’s messier, more human, and it works, when we let it.
On this path, we need a reboot of the #Indymediaback Infrastructure. As a core to reboot the radical media commons. Bring back trust based publishing, peer moderation, and local focus Why? Because #mainstreamin media isn’t neutral – it mainstreams the crisis while making resistance invisible. We need native alternatives.
If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.” It’s “I just write the code.” It’s “We’re neutral tools.” It’s “Let’s keep politics out of it.”
This isn’t just naivety, it’s a deep, culturally reinforced avoidance of responsibility. And it’s one of the key reasons why even alternative tech replicates the same failures and power structures as the mainstream.
Worse, this behaviour is too often mainstreamed in the alt-tech spaces themselves, turned into best practice by #NGO people who should know better. It becomes active #blocking of any progress on alternative paths. New governance? Too political. Radical accountability? Too messy. Grassroots involvement? Too slow. Let’s just build it and hope for the best.
We can’t afford this any more, in the midst of #climatechaos, rising authoritarianism, and the enclosure of digital commons, building better tools without building better relationships, better communities, and better politics is a dead-end.
This is the core of the #geekproblem, and if we’re serious about anything more than shiny toys, it’s something we must talk about at our conferences, meetups, and hackathons. Let’s stop pretending code is apolitical, let’s start with this: tech is social, or it is very likely more wortless #tecshit.
Let’s be blunt, “inclusive” tech/#NGO events talk about change but don’t platform the people doing the hard, messy work of building this path. This is a real problem, rooted in comfort, control, and careerism.
Radical grassroots projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN) exist precisely to challenge the #mainstreaming mess, not to dress it up. We aren’t here to repeat feel-good slogans and deliver polished #PR. We’re here to offer lived solutions grounded in the #4opens and decades of collective, hands-dirty work.
So why should OMN and similar voices be invited in?
We speak from the grassroots, not the conference stage.
We build tools that people have historically used, not just write funding proposals about.
We hold space for #DIY, for #p2p, for real change, not only the reform theatre.
If your event doesn’t include these voices, like almost all of them, it’s the #mainstreaming problem of locking out knowledge, networks, and resistance, which the events #PR claims to support. This clearly makes the people involved into hypocrites.
On a positive, #KISS, this doesn’t need to be a fight, let’s make events better together. Can you imagine real dialogue between grassroots builders and NGO funders? Imagine shared workshops where friction leads to function, messy, honest space that acknowledges power dynamics – and really then starts to do something about this mess.
Want a better event?
Put grassroots groups on the stage, not just in the audience.
Pay people for their time — especially those working outside institutions.
Focus on practice, not just policy.
Drop the gatekeeping.
Build open process into your event — make your own structure accountable to the #4opens.
But, remember, we aren’t going just to play nice, to be seen, we’ll come to compost the status quo, and plant something that might actually grow. Let’s try and maybe do this right, please.
In this accelerating collapse – where #climatechaos spirals and #neoliberalism guts the very idea of society – we urgently need to confront a painful truth: it’s simple, the #nastyfew are a parasite class. And that this class feeds on the very foundations of well-being, survival, and joy that the majority of the global population desperately needs. They are the ones who keep the engines of destruction humming, not out of necessity, but out of greed and fear of irrelevance. These people and their institutions flourish precisely because most of us are lost in the distractions of #mainstreaming and false hopes of reform.
The big picture is Capitalism’s global predation – Zooming out, this is the capitalist class – those who own, hoard, and manipulate the resources, labour, and attention of billions. They weaponise economics, push debt, drive resource wars, and now greenwash their way through #climatecollapse while investing in bunkers and surveillance. They bankroll right-wing populism and push for austerity, while lobby for tax cuts as profits soar.
The close-up: People you might know, zoom in, and things get messier. This parasitic drive isn’t only held by billionaire industrialists. In many cases, it’s people close to us, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes not. These are the minor functionaries of capital, the wannabe gatekeepers, and the careerists who believe that “playing the game” will protect them from collapse.
In tech, it is clearer, parasites wearing hoodies. The Bitcoin Bros: Obsessively libertarian, they fetishise decentralisation while promoting hyper-individualist economics that mirrors the worst of Wall Street. They talk about freedom but build systems of exclusion, greed, and extraction. If you spend your energy pushing #crypto as liberation while ignoring ecological and social costs, you are enabling the parasite class – and likely dreaming of becoming one.
#Dotcons Executives: The Zuckerbergs, Bezoses, and Musks of the world are obvious examples. But look further down the food chain: the startup bros who pivot endlessly looking for #VC buyouts, the marketing execs who gut communities for ad metrics, the devs who code endless optimisations to squeeze more value out of users. If your business model depends on surveillance, addiction and enclosure, you’re the problem.
The careerist #NGO tech elitists: Yes, even the “good” sector can be captured. NGO professionals who endlessly hold conferences and produce whitepapers while blocking actual grassroots projects. They take seats at tables designed to exclude the people doing real, messy, transformative work. They don’t oppose the #nastyfew; they stabilise their control.
So what do we do? First, see clearly, name the parasitism. Understand that systems don’t just fail; they are designed to benefit the few and contain the many. Second, build bridges away from this mess – rooted in the #4opens: open data, open source, open process, and open standards. This is the beginning of composting the parasite class. Third, support native projects: not the VC-funded copies or the corporate-friendly NGOs, but the messy, local, collaborative tools and networks that build resilience and joy from the ground up. Projects like #IndymediaBack, #OMN, and others pushing against the tide are places to start.
Because in the end, the parasite class only exists as long as we feed it.
Let’s look at this from a prospective, both the W3C statement and the #OMN recognize that the early web was built with open sharing, decentralization, and public good in mind. The #W3C calls for a web “respectful of all participants,” which aligns with the #OMN goal of building an open media infrastructure based on the #4opens: open data, open source, open standards, and open process.
Where this W3C #mainstreamin alt path falls short (and why #OMN matters). The W3C vision speaks of “taking responsibility” and “addressing the impact of our work” through technical standards, but in reality, the current web’s architecture has been co-opted by centralized, profit-driven platforms (#dotcons) that dominate communication and content flow.
In reaction to this, the #OMN is grounded in the reality that technical fixes alone won’t solve these social problems, we need working activist cultures, grassroots governance, and federated media networks to actively challenge #mainstreaming and #deathcult values.
What #OMN brings is a social layer: W3C focuses on technology and ethics at the standards level. The #OMN focuses on the cultural and organizational infrastructure needed to build, sustain, and govern alternative media networks.
Scaling what worked: The W3C admits we’ve lost the “openness” to misinformation and data abuse. The #OMN is about bringing back what worked (e.g., early Indymedia, radical tech collectives) and scaling it using tools like #ActivityPub and the #fediverse.
Compost and regenerate: The W3C wants reform from within. The #OMN recognizes the need to compost the #techshit, grow anew, and create autonomous, federated spaces where community processes are native, not retrofitted.
A positive reboot (from within the #openweb), where the W3C gives us a narrative frame. The #OMN gives us a path to act. We can reclaim the web not only through better standards, but through working, lived alternatives – composting what failed, and growing based on what we know works.
We need bridging, if the W3C and groups like them are serious about rebuilding a humane web, then the #OMN path as much to offer:
A bridge to activist governance.
A working example of the Ethical Web Principles being practiced socially, not just technically.
A push for native, grassroots agency, not just safeguards built by the same #NGO centralizers who failed the first time.
Let’s do better, yes, but let’s also be native, that’s what the #OMN is about.
A thread on a different project on the same subject, “Open Source and Open Standards nerds like me ought to know by now that the protocol is the least compelling thing about a service. Who cares if your home is built using only Stallman-blessed tools, when the walls are full of rats?” https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-never-going-back-to-matrix
This post is talking in the sense of structure rather than individual experience. Let’s be honest, much of the so-called “alternative” tech scene is still stuck. Yes, we fled the #dotcons for something better, but ended up with copies of the same broken models. The #Fediverse, with all its potential, is still as often dominated by “mainstreaming meta” chat (“Twitter refugees incoming!”) or conspiracy-laden, #fashionista rabbit holes. It’s little wonder that even the nerdy privacy crowd struggles to find meaningful content or community. And no, shouting “fuck the system!” isn’t enough.
If we’re serious about systemic change, we need to do much more. The question is not if people will come, some always will, the real challenge is what they’ll find when they get here. Right now? It’s messy, insular, and missing the tools people need to use for change and challenge, let alone feel at home. We must move beyond building clones of corporate platforms and start composting the path that got us here.
This is why we need a reboot, not from scratch, but from memory. Projects like #indymediaback aim to reclaim 20+ years of working grassroots media practice. With tools like #ActivityPub we now have scalable tech that can bring those old social processes – based on #4opens (open code, open data, open governance, open standards) – into the present. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is such a path: combining the solid tech foundations with the radical social methods that we know worked (but didn’t scale).
To move at all, we must change and challenge the toxic norms of the #mainstreaming#deathcult, and yes, this means building real alternative identities and spaces that don’t live in the shadow of big tech. Being “alternative” used to mean something, and it can again, if we stop ONLY copying the mainstream and instead focus on nurturing something more strongly rooted and real.
This isn’t about being purist, #FOSS and Open Source already works in this way, the #OMN just brings this path to media and community infrastructure. It’s not utopian, it’s compost. And yes, that means dealing with hard questions, including our own funding. Let’s stop pretending we’re neutral when we’re not. Let’s build from honesty. It’s time to dig, plant, grow, and repeat.
NOTE: the comments below are a useful example of #stupidindividualism, and remember this hashtag is about social groups and their #blocking of social thinking. The history matters, flaming is not a useful response.
#mainstreaming narrows the field of imagination and excludes non-conforming ideas that could offer real solutions to systemic crises. Mainstreaming smooths the rough edges of society. It normalizes hierarchy, filters dissent, and packages politics into manageable narratives. It’s how radical demands are turned into reforms, then paperwork, then slogans, then forgotten.
Absorbing opposition into bureaucracy (e.g., NGOs, dead end consultancy)
Rewarding compromise and incrementalism, as blocking
Silencing or caricaturing grassroots resistance, as common sense
Making real alternatives seem "unrealistic", in the end
This is why grassroots #DIY matters as a counterbalance. On this path, Anarchism is not just rebellion or chaos, it is a living tradition of thinking and organizing that keeps real change alive when mainstreaming works to bury it.
Direct democracy, In a world of managed participation and elitist mediation, anarchism says: decide together, act together. It reminds us of grassroots power that doesn’t flow through institutions but grows in assemblies, co-ops, camps, and communities.
Mutual aid and cooperation, where mainstream narratives focus on competition, profit, and security through control, anarchism champions care, solidarity, and trust-based networks—a needed cultural shift to navigate crisis and collapse.
Decentralization of power, in the face of #dotcons, technocracy, and corporate-state collusion, anarchism is a map toward decentralization and autonomy. It’s the logic behind federated systems, commons governance, and resilient localism.
Critique of state power, mainstreaming always ends up strengthening state structures, even when it claims to oppose them. Anarchism pulls back the curtain on the violence and coercion baked into “order”, whether in border regimes, policing, or “benevolent” welfare systems.
Cultural compost: “We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism.” at its best this isn’t an identity, it’s a provocation, a composting force that keeps movements from hardening into systems of control.
This is why balance is key, without radical, un-mainstreamed perspectives, the so-called “left” drifts into hollow #NGO work, tech utopianism, or sanitized liberalism. The #openweb becomes a product instead of a commons, movements become brands, justice becomes PR. Balancing #mainstreaming means, keeping the imagination alive, creating space for alternatives and building systems that don’t replicate domination
In practice, projects like the #OMN and #4opens are examples of this balance: using basic tech to empower trust, not control. They are rooted in values without needing any label, community autonomy, voluntary association, transparent processes.
To reboot the #openweb, we need the cultural DNA of anarchism, without necessarily the costume. We need people unafraid to challenge power, even when everyone else says, “play nice, get the grant, follow the roadmap.” So yes, we need anarchism, not as a lifestyle, but as a counterweight, a cultural inoculation against decay to challenge the centre from the edge.
And we need to compost the rest.
The mess we make trying to move away from the mainstream…
“Doing the same thing in the same context and expecting different results is one of the clinical definitions of insanity.” 😄
The truth is, we’ve already solved many of these problems. From grassroots media to consensus decision-making, from tech co-ops to decentralized organizing, we had working solutions. What we lacked was a way to scale them without breaking them. That was always the sticking point. But the irony: the activist culture that once created these solutions has eroded, just as the tech finally caught up, the tech is ready, it’s the culture missing. This is the mess we’re in.
It’s about social trust, human-scale processes, messy cooperation, and doing things differently, this time with tools that match our values, not bury them. Let’s stop acting insane, let’s try something new, built from something old, let’s get biblical 😉
If we want to build meaningful alternatives, we must deal with difficult issues head-on. Sweeping things under the carpet – especially in radical spaces – always comes at a cost.
One of the more complex, and often misused, areas is around identity politics, particularly the playing of the race/gender card in ways that obscure rather than clarify the real issues at stake.
Let’s be clear: systemic racism and sexism are real. We all live with the deep, painful legacies of colonialism, patriarchy, and class oppression. These power structures are embedded in our cultures, our institutions, and, yes, in our own organizing spaces. Naming and addressing them is vital.
But sometimes, identity markers are used as shields, not in the pursuit of justice, but to avoid accountability. When this happens, especially in grassroots or activist collectives, it creates paralysis and prevents us from dealing with actual abuse of power.
A real-world example. This happened to me some years ago at a community-run space in Dalston. One person dominated meetings, spoke over others, and made every decision-making process a battleground. It was classic power politics, silencing others through constant assertion and manipulation.
When I finally took responsibility to challenge this, the room froze. Instead of engaging with the issue, some defaulted to “both sides are equally problematic.” Then, when pressure built, he played the race card, asserting that my criticism was racially motivated. No one knew how to respond. The conversation shut down. I became “the problem.” He continued unchecked.
It took 6 months of dysfunction and damage to the project before he was finally removed from collective meetings. In the end, people realised: yes, he was mentally unwell, addicted, controlling, and yes, he had useful skills. But we had all failed to support him and the group because we didn’t deal with the real power dynamics early and honestly.
Hard truths, sometimes someone uses identity-based arguments not as a reflection of structural injustice, but as a way to deflect accountability. When that happens, we can end up with unchallengeable behaviour patterns that destroy collectives from within. This doesn’t mean ignoring or downplaying racism, sexism, or mental health, far from it. It means being brave enough to hold multiple truths at once:
Someone can be from a marginalised background and be acting out of line.
Someone can be struggling with mental health and still be causing harm.
Power politics doesn’t disappear just because it’s wrapped in the language of social justice.
What Can We Learn?
Deal with issues when they come up. Don’t defer hard conversations. Don’t wait for people to burn out.
Support everyone – including people acting out – with clear boundaries, not blanket exclusion or indifference.
Distinguish real oppression from manipulative tactics. It’s not easy, but it’s essential to long-term health of communities.
Don’t collapse into false equivalences – not every confrontation is “two monsters fighting.” Trust your political instincts.
Ultimately, we need to reclaim the messy, complicated work of building trust, of calling in rather than calling out, and of recognising power wherever it appears, even when it wears familiar or “progressive” clothing. We won’t fix any of this with purism or purity politics. We’ll do it by grounding ourselves in collective care, lived experience, and honest struggle.
To use technology as a part of this social change, we need better working with the #dotcons generation. This generation is a mess. No surprise after 20+ years of submission to the #deathcult:
#Neoliberalism hollowed out our economies and replaced solidarity with consumerism. #Postmodernism fragmented identity into a battlefield of individualism over collective action. #Dotcons centralized control, turning the internet into a corporate surveillance machine.
The real question is: how do we break free? Our #fashernistas still dodge this, trapped in cycles of performative activism, #NGO co-option, and endless distraction.
The activist path out of this mess is not more chasing trendy tech stacks or branded illusions of progress. What we need is a grounded, #KISS path forward, #OMN (Open Media Network) to building grassroots, independent media beyond corporate platforms. #4opens for transparency, collaboration, and trust baked into our tech + social governance. And, reclaiming #DIY activism real-world organizing, not just digital spectacle.
Originally written at Occupy St. Paul’s, October 2011 — expanded with more stories and reflections.
At every protest camp I’ve ever been involved with – and there have been many – disorder is inevitable. It’s not a failure, it’s a stage of the process. If we embrace this, we can learn how to navigate it rather than panic or burn out.
Scene: St Paul’s, London, Occupy 2011
One vivid example: a health and safety rep shouting and waving a petrol can around, frantically unscrewing the top in the middle of a crush of tents. “We must shut this down now,” he yelled, his voice echoing across the church steps.
He had a point. Safety was a real concern. But he was also clearly at the end of his tether, breaking under the pressure of being responsible in an inherently chaotic space. I’ve seen this moment many times, the burnout spiral. The people who take charge at the beginning of a project are often the first to ignite when things go sideways. They can become the kindling that burns the whole space to the ground.
This isn’t new, we saw this at:
Climate Camp (2006–2010): The early camps ran beautifully on invisible networks and shared purpose. But later camps ossified with layers of bureaucratic consensus, and burnout led to factionalism and collapse.
Occupy Wall Street and Occupy LSX: Self-appointed leaders stepped in “for the good of the camp” but ended up creating informal hierarchies, which broke trust and caused more damage than the problems they were trying to solve.
Evictions at Dale Farm (2011) and Balcombe anti-fracking camp (2013) both showed how trust-based affinity groups made the camps sustainable, while imposed control often failed.
In each of these, disorder wasn’t the enemy, the fear of disorder was. Disorder is not collapse, it’s a moment of possibility. We forget that self-organisation is not neat and tidy. It’s not an #NGO strategy doc. It’s not a Slack channel or a Notion board. Real self-organisation looks like this:
A kitchen is full of smoke because three people decided to cook at once.
The medic tent ran out of supplies because no one restocked — but someone just showed up from another camp with a box of bandages.
The camp loos are blocked — but a crew forms spontaneously to dig a new trench.
Someone's shouting at 2am — and instead of calling security, a circle forms to listen and de-escalate.
These moments feel chaotic, but they’re also full of agency, trust, and rebalancing. Firebreaks in the forest, just like in actual wildfires, we need firebreaks in our organising structures, planned spaces where the flames of burnout can’t leap from person to person. Here are a few examples of firebreaks I’ve seen or used in movements:
Rotating roles — No one holds a role for too long. Responsibility moves before burnout sets in.
Structured chaos — Clear boundaries, but loose forms. Example: the “clown crew” at Climate Camp took on confrontation duty in creative, silly ways that defused tension without control.
Open circles — In decision-making, people step in and out without stigma. No hidden “core” group.
Quiet zones — Space for mental and emotional decompression. Held with care.
Exit with grace — A culture that celebrates stepping back, not shames it.
These practices are harder than they sound. But if we believe in horizontalism, consensus, and real community, then we have to accept that disorder is part of the process, not something to be stamped out.
Creating open space by stepping aside, the hardest lesson for organisers and activists, especially the ones used to holding everything together, is learning to step aside. But this is how new leadership emerges. By creating gaps, we invite people in. When one person stops doing the dishes, someone else realises they can.
If we always control the space, we never let it grow.
If we always fill the silence, we never hear new voices.
In conclusion, every protest camp, movement space, or radical project will hit a wall of disorder. Burnout, conflict, disorganisation, or just entropy. That’s not failure. That’s life. The trick is to stop panicking, and start trusting.
Disorder is not the end. Disorder is the compost. New growth begins there.
Let’s stop trying to fix everything and start letting things evolve. You don’t plant a garden by telling the weeds where to grow. Want to build better firebreaks in your organising? Join the conversation here and help out with the Open-Media-Network to co-create horizontal structures that actually breathe.
And what would that actually look like? Let’s be honest about what the #Fediverse is, despite all the code and standards talk, the heart of the Fediverse is anarchism – not in the chaos sense, but in the older meaning:
The letter A for anarkhia (‘without ruler’), circled by an O that stands for order or organization.
We have plenty of the A with decentralization, voluntary cooperation and resistance to imposed authority. But where’s the O? Of clear coordination, transparent process and federated trust and mediation?
Right now, we’re herding cats – each server, dev group, and community running off on their own, building tools and protocols, often without clear ways to connect, share governance, or defend against capture. This worked when we were small, it will not work now the big boys have arrived.
Warning from experience: The #EU outreach failure, we had a direct taste of this during the 2023–24 EU outreach process. It worked, but was quickly transitioned to the infrastructure of the #Fediverse without its soul. This isn’t theoretical, it is what happened to #FOSS transitioning to #opensource in the 2010s. This is what happens if we keep doing nothing? If we don’t act:
The foundation model is imposed — not built.
The fig leaf of “community governance” will be ignored.
A self-selecting oligarchy will form — friendly faces, perhaps, but still an eliteist power cleqe.
The Fediverse will be co-opted — just like we watched Google and Microsoft do to open source over the last 20 years.
Yes, #ActivityPub is “open” but openness alone doesn’t stop capture. Ask the #FSF, or look at meany #NGO paths in tech.
What would “native” governance look like? Built from our values, not imported from the institutions we’re resisting.
Soft Structure – Not no structure. The #OGB (Open Governance Body) project is one possible model: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody It’s based on the #4opens and rooted in the real history of grassroots organising, not rigid control, but visible, participatory trust-based structure.
Real federation of trust -Imagine something like “trust instances”, each instance or org can choose to endorse certain process and values (e.g., 4opens, PGA hallmarks), creating a visible network of aligned projects. Not a central body, but a web of consent, the #OMN is an example of this.
Self-accountability + Diversity of tactics. Everyone agrees to transparency and openness. Everyone chooses their own path. Nobody is forced, but the community can see what you’re doing. This is essential for resisting #NGO co-option without creating more gatekeeping elitists
Are Platform Co-ops the Answer? Maybe, but… proceed with caution. Many tech co-op projects I’ve seen:
Become ossified in bureaucratic process
Elevate process geeks over users and communities
Reproduce #NGO behaviours under a different name
We’ve seen this in the #techcoop movement, especially in the UK, where platform co-ops often start with radical aims and drift into “doing B2B consulting for ethical startups.” Fine, but not the revolution we worked for. The stakes are real, we’re not just talking about tech here, we’re talking about:
Climate collapse
Social fragmentation
The rise of digital authoritarianism
We need an #openweb that reflects our values, #fediverse governance that protects the commons, and to move from just the A to the full A inside the O – the anarchist circle of voluntary structure. Let’s not wait for another hijacking, we need to build something native to the Fediverse before it’s too late.
The signal-to-noise problem of our #geekproblem in the #fediverse and the wider #openweb. Let’s be clear: platforms like #Mastodon and the #Fediverse are native openweb projects. They embody the values of the #4opens — open data, open source, open process, and open standards.
The value here is not in hardening and securing these systems to the teeth. People who are pushing for hyper-“security” are missing the point entirely. This isn’t about “common sense” dev practice. It’s about use-case. Public media content should be open — and that’s what the Fediverse is good at. It’s media. It’s conversation. It’s public dialogue. That’s what #ActivityPub is designed for. For private communication, we already have mature and well-tested encrypted tools: #Matrix, #Briar, #Signal, etc. Use those for whistleblowing, direct action, or anything sensitive.
Trying to bolt high-security models onto public communication tools breaks the value of the #Fediverse – its simplicity, accessibility, and low barrier to entry. Right now, the #Fediverse is a functional part of the #OMN – it’s a mesh of many small pieces, loosely joined, low-barrier, easy to host, easy to adapt, easy to grow. This is a fragile ecosystem, not a fortress. By pushing unnecessary “security” requirements, this #geekproblem are:
Scaring away potential users and admins
Raising technical barriers
Spreading #FUD
And most dangerously — undermining real-world activists who rely on open visibility and reach, not secrecy.
The #geekproblem, pushing complexity, abstraction, and fear over usability and trust, has been blocking the alt-tech world for over 20 years, it’s happening again. Let’s not let them smother this moment, the open web works when it’s messy, simple, and human.
Let’s talk about the tension at the heart of the modern #openweb, and why so many grassroots builders and radical technologists find themselves on the outside looking in. Scene: A typical “open internet” conference in Europe. Excited NGO-funded attendee toots:
“Just booked my place for ePIC in Lille! My first Eurostar trip! It’s where I started 10 years ago with Mozilla. Time flies. #OpenBadges#VerifiableCredentials”
Me (a social tech outsider):
“These things are hopelessly expensive. To attend you have to worship the #deathcult. Hard to know what to do with these two-track approaches. Kinda can’t be #openweb if they’re locked behind temple walls.”
PS. It’s a metaphor. But not an empty one.
Two economies, two Internets, the #mainstreaming of the #openweb means that most so-called “open” events are inaccessible unless you:
Work for a #NGO, startup, or university with a travel budget
Have a career track aligned with #neoliberal frameworks
Can spend hundreds of pounds on accommodation, tickets, and travel
That’s not grassroots, not radical, not open – it’s branded openness for the networking class. The Reply:
“I think that’s a complicated way of saying you can’t afford to go?”
No, it’s not, it’s a social critique, and a common one from those of us who have spent decades building grassroots tech infrastructures and activist media, unpaid or underpaid, mostly ignored. It’s about asking: Who is the #openweb for, really?
Why this matters, when we raise issues like this, we’re not “being reply guys.” We’re making a point about the structural divides that are silencing and marginalising the very voices we need most in these spaces, the people actually building and defending the #openweb on the ground. You can’t build democratic tech by replicating elitist spaces and calling them “inclusive” just because the code is on GitHub. The pushback:
“You can’t live outside the mainstream, throw rocks at it, and complain when it doesn’t accommodate you.”
“I’ve never had a positive interaction with you. You wear that like a badge of honour. I’m muting you.”
Pause here, is this really the attitude we want? If you’re part of the #NGO world, if you have stable income and access to conference budgets, then you are in a position of power. When someone critiques that system, not you personally, but the structures you inhabit, and your reaction is to mute, dismiss, or mock them… something has gone wrong. This is exactly how we lose the #openweb. Not to tech giants, but to social silos within our own communities.
A different approach? Imagine this instead:
“You're right, many of these events are structurally exclusionary. I’ll raise this at the conference. How do you think we can bridge this divide without compromising either side?”
That’s the kind of solidarity we need, that’s how we stop #mainstreaming the death spiral, how we build together. If we want an #openweb that isn’t just another branded ladder for careerists, we have to defend the messy, painful, and vital presence of the grassroots, even when they come knocking without a conference pass.
Muting critique is easy, building bridges? That’s harder, but it’s the only thing worth doing right now.
At its core, #mainstreaming is how we, often unconsciously, uphold and reproduce the values of the dominant system. In our time, that system is #neoliberalism, or what I metaphorically call the #deathcult. It’s the air we breathe: shaping our politics, our economics, even the food we eat and how we relate to each other.
In activist terms, #mainstreaming too often means pushing this dominant worldview into alternative spaces, building careers and institutions that play progressive on the surface, but ultimately reproduce the very system that’s driving the crisis. It’s what happens when people take grassroots energy and repackage it in #NGO boxes or #dotcon business plans. The result? We end up feeding the monster we’re supposed to be fighting.
This is the path to #stupidindividualism, where neoliberalism “common sense” didn’t just attack unions, welfare and public goods – it atomized our very identities. Over the past 40 years, we’ve been trained to act as isolated economic units. Individualism replaced solidarity. Competition replaced care. This is what we metaphorically call #stupidindividualism – the corrosive belief that the only way forward is by looking after yourself, even when your actions are part of a system that destroys community and climate. And as history has shown us, when communities collapse, what rushes in to fill the vacuum is fear, resentment, and authoritarianism, in a word: #fascism.
In real-world examples, let’s take @NovaraMedia. They produce great content. But their distribution strategy is rooted in #dotcons (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram), and their cultural aspirations are aimed at becoming the next @Guardian – a new node in the old system. They’re playing inside the media ecosystem of the #deathcult. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow an audience. But if we don’t also invest in building and sustaining #grassroots alternatives, we’re just treading water in the mainstream’s tide.
Most NGO agendas follow this same mainstreaming logic: speak in respectable tones, aim for policy tweaks, never rock the boat too hard, and above all, protect your funding. This echos my experience of doing media training and its limits, i’ve spent 25+ years training thousands of people to create radical, grassroots media, through projects like #Undercurrents, #Indymedia, #visionontv, and now the #OMN. Here’s what happened: Most of those trained went on to have careers in mainstream journalism or #NGO communications. Almost none stayed with grassroots projects. And honestly, I kinda don’t blame them, it’s hard to survive outside the system. But that’s the problem: without long-term support for non-mainstreaming work, there’s no soil for alternatives to grow.
We trained them to change the world, but the world trained them to change careers. So what do we do? If we don’t build real, working alternatives, then the only future left is one where billions of people die or are displaced over the next 100 years, from accelerating #climatechaos, and the rise of digital authoritarianism and political fascism. That’s why we need to push back against mainstreaming, not with purity politics or infighting, but with tools and structures that offer real alternatives.
Technically solid
Politically grounded in the #4opens and #PGA hallmarks
Designed to resist co-option by the #NGO sector or #dotcon logic
Rooted in peer-to-peer cooperation instead of hierarchical control
This path is a seed of something better, not perfect, not finished, but growing from decades of experience. We can’t blame people for trying to survive, but still we can and must build and defend spaces that nurture something, different, better.
