#mainstreaming#liberalism has lost its way. For the past 20 years, many self-described liberals have spewed out bilge water disguised as “common sense.” But when pressure mounts, they reveal themselves as dogmatic and intolerant, almost as if they aren’t truly liberal at all.
How did we end up in this mess? The #deathcult, #stupidindividualism, and the rise of #dotcons shaped the dominant version of “common sense,” warping it away from collective care and into something narrow and self-destructive. It’s worth reflecting on this if we want to reclaim a liberal liberalism, rooted in genuine openness and social good.
In practice, we can compost this mess by focusing on #nothingnew paths. Two longstanding cultural projects already embody this, working in non-federated ways for over a century. Now, we can add technical federation to the mix, building on 5+ years of #ActivityPub rollout.
This gives us two powerful, #openweb-native paths forward:
Grassroots #DIY culture — Local, self-organized, and messy, but thriving outside corporate control.
Technical federation — Interconnected systems designed to distribute power and ownership.
Both of these paths lead somewhere meaningful:
#indymediaback (part of the #OMN project) to rebuild radical grassroots media.
#OGB (based on #EU outreach on #socialhub) to create open, federated governance.
These aren’t pointless projects, they’re a chance to break free from the suffocating grip of the #deathcult and build something resilient, human, and actually free.
Shall we pick up the shovels and start composting? 🌱
On a positive note, the progressive world of technology has transformed our lives, making things easier, enhancing our, health and well-being. Yet, within this change the is meany challenges, one is the sustainable management of digital data. In the era of rapid technological advancement, addressing lifelong data redundancy, storage, and preservation is needed, especially as decentralized systems reshape the way we share and store information.
Recent discussions have highlighted the complexities of data management, particularly within peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and federated platforms. While self-hosting data offers autonomy, it remains a niche path accessible to only a small fraction of people. To truly democratize data storage and distribution, we need alternative solutions like “blackbox” #P2P on community-run federated servers that balance people and community control with collective responsibility.
The challenge of redundancy, is a critical hurdle, we are yet to solve. People need simple ways to maintain multiple copies of their data, while selectively choosing what subsets of others’ data to store, and integrate these choices seamlessly. A hybrid approach combining #P2P and client-server models would offer the best of both worlds, allowing people to control their data while ensuring resilience and availability across the wider “commons” network.
Managing the data lifecycle, these solutions require clear mechanisms for data retention, filtering, and lifecycle management. Defining how data is preserved, what subsets are stored, and when data can expire is crucial for balancing sustainability with functionality. Lossy processes can be acceptable, even desirable, as long as we establish thoughtful guidelines to maintain system integrity.
The growing volume of high-definition media intensifies the storage burden, making efficient data management more pressing. One practical solution could be transferring files at lower resolutions within P2P networks, with archiving high-resolution versions locally. Similarly, client-server setups could store original data on servers while buffering lighter versions on clients, reducing server load without sacrificing accessibility.
There is a role for institutions and collective responsibility to preserve valuable content. Projects like the Internet Archive offer centralized backups, but on the decentralized systems we need a reimagining of traditional backup strategies. With a social solution grounded in collective responsibility, where communities and institutions share the task of safeguarding data, this would mitigate the risk of loss and create a more resilient achieve and working network.
For a decentralised sustainable digital future, we need a better balance of technological and social, and a step to rethink how we manage data. By seeding hybrid architectures, growing community-driven autonomy, and promoting collective care, we navigate the complexities of digital preservation.
With the current state of much of our tech, we need to do better in the #activertypub, #Fediverse, and #openweb reboot. Projects like #makeinghistory from the #OMN outline how we can pave the way. It’s time to pick up the shovels, there’s a lot of composting to do. And perhaps it’s time to revive the term #openweb, because that’s exactly what the #Fediverse is: a reboot of the internet’s original promise.
Let’s keep it #KISS and focused, the future depends on it.
One of the biggest tensions in the fight to build an alternative, sustainable future is the relationship between mainstream resources and grassroots projects. The reality is STARK: grassroots movements need resources to survive and thrive, yet the very act of receiving funding, if they can access it at all, drags them into the suffocating grip of #mainstreaming culture, where the radical edges that make them valuable are dulled and destroyed. So, how can conscious mainstream actors support grassroots movements without killing the radical energy that creates the value in the first place.
The answer lies in sharing resources in non-mainstreaming ways, a difficult leap for many, but an essential one. The only people who can truly be useful in sustaining #openweb paths are those willing to break free from the entrenched habits of top-down control, endless bureaucracy, and the need to polish everything into marketable, bite-sized pieces.
What does non-mainstreaming support look like?
Unconditional Funding: Grassroots projects need funding without strings attached. Too often, funding comes with requirements that reshape the project itself, turning radical experimentation into pointless palatable, measurable outputs. True support means trusting grassroots communities to know what they need and allowing them to allocate resources nimbly. #TRUST#opencollective
Trust-Based Relationships: A “native” healthier approach is to build long-term relationships with grassroots groups, listening to their needs and responding in an organic, flexible way. #TRUST#OMN
Decentralized Decision-Making: Bottom-up governance models. Funding should flow to collectives, not charismatic individuals or figureheads building careers #KISS#OGB
Infrastructure, Not Ownership: A path that might work, rather than buying influence, mainstream actors can provide infrastructure, hosting, bandwidth, servers, physical spaces, without attempting to control the projects using them. Think of it as building bridges, not fences. #Fediverse instances
Amplify, Don’t Absorb: Mainstream platforms and institutions need to amplify grassroots voices without assimilating them. This means using their reach to highlight native radical projects but stepping back to let those projects speak for themselves. No need to repackage the message, people can handle raw, messy reality. #indymediaback
Why this bridge building matters, the current mainstream is crumbling under the weight of its contradictions. As #climatechaos accelerates, as #neoliberalism fails to deliver anything but more suffering, people will look for alternatives. But if those alternatives are already swallowed and sanitized by the current mainstream, hope dims. Grassroots movements are the seedbeds of real change, they hold the living knowledge of how to build differently.
Keeping the bridge in place isn’t an act of charity; it’s a #KISS survival strategy. The future will grow from the compost of the old world, and those willing to step off the conveyor belt of #mainstreaming and into the rich, chaotic soil of grassroots experimentation will be the ones who help plant the seeds.
The path we are on, climate change, mainstream politics, and fear reveals a troubling pattern: in times of crisis, like #climatechaos, mainstream politics instinctively shifts to the right. It’s essential to understand the underlying role of fear in pushing this drift.
Fear is a powerful political motivator. Right-wing ideologies thrive on it, whether the fear stems from economic instability, cultural change, or national security threats. In the current path of accelerating climate breakdown, fears of environmental collapse, mass migration, and resource scarcity intensify are creating fertile ground for reactionary politics to grow.
Yet, an intriguing shift to a counter path is underway: the fading fear of socialism among the western bourgeoisie. For decades, socialism was the boogeyman used to justify capitalism’s worst excesses. But as socialist ideas gain legitimacy, especially among younger generations, that fear diminishes. This shift cracks open space to challenge and thus change the right’s dominance and revive radical real alternatives.
This opening offers a brief flowering of hope. By balancing collective, community-driven projects and advocating for systemic change, we can push back against the politics of fear. Movements like #OMN, #OGB, and #indymediaback are seeds of this potential, growing resilience, equity, and sustainability outside the #mainstreaming mess driving spectacle.
However, hope can be a dwindling resource. Every moment lost to inaction feeds the cycle of despair, reinforcing the right’s grip on public imagination. The urgency of #climatechaos means we can’t afford to waste time or the pointless distractions that #mainstreaming common sense pushes over us.
This struggle is a balance between fear and hope. Fear is the tool of the #deathcult, but hope lives in grassroots action. The future depends on whether we push fear to suffocate change or seize this fleeting opening to build something real — from the compost of what’s been lost all ready.
Best not to one of the prats, who #block this path, thanks.
Radical movements are too often their own worst enemies. The push/pull between the desire for real change and the gravitational pull of #mainstreaming feed the #stupidindividualism that keeps people locked into conservative, performative loops. These loops are not accidental, they are the result of movements that to often shift focus to prioritize (invisible) ideological purity, insular “safety” subcultures, and a morbid reverence for past failures over the messy, unpredictable work of building living alternatives.
It’s easier to mimic revolution than to risk anything for it. People cosplay as radicals, reenacting historic struggles, as if performing the gestures of revolt is enough to topple ongoing systems of oppression. The rituals of protest, the left pamphleteering, and the echo chambers of online discourse imposed as safe spaces to play at rebellion without any actual danger of dismantling and rebuilding the world as it is.
The #mainstreaming path is insidious. It draws radical energy into a cycle of visibility and co-option, the movements become symbolic representation not material transformation. Meanwhile, #stupidindividualism fractures collective power, as people mistake dogma for meaningful action. The result? A self-policing culture where standing out, innovating, or questioning sacred paths is treated as betrayal not (rev)evolution.
It’s very basic history that radical breakthroughs happen when people break these loops. An example I keep bringing up is the early #Indymedia, an example of when people embraced uncertainty and acted as if the world could be different, not just talked about it. These moments weren’t perfect, and most collapse under internal contradictions, but they proved that stepping beyond lifestyle/ideological safety nets is possible.
This is where the #OMN come I as a real path, that, by creating decentralized, native #4opens networks for storytelling and organizing, we build infrastructures that resist the gravitational pull of mainstream capture. Instead of reinforcing ideological bubbles, we make space for radical plurality, a compost heap where competing ideas decay and fertilize new growth. The goal isn’t another subculture; it’s a living, breathing movement capable of evolving while still linking and bridging to the wider world.
In this area of activism, the uncomfortable truth is that the biggest obstacle is way too often the anarchists themselves. I have spent years stepping into and outa anarchist spaces, and it’s clear that anarchists struggle to embody the autonomy they talk about. The #fashernista cultures discourage people from stepping beyond the established narrow paths, dress, behaver and language, reinforcing a cycle of self-isolation and easy to see failure. It becomes a lifestyle, anarchism, in practice, can to often look less like a rebellion and more like a subculture adapted to coexist with the paths it claims to oppose.
When real revolutionary moments arise, familiar rhetoric, feels safer than the unpredictable leap into real stateless freedom. Faced with the potential for anarchy, many anarchists cling to “anarchism” instead, sabotaging movements like the #OMN and older #openweb out of fear of losing their place within the struggle. Even without formal organizations, anarchist recreate hierarchy, influential figures shaping discourse while subtly suppressing critiques that could disrupt their status. This hidden power structure, where decisions are made without accountability, is still the normal paths anarchism claims to reject.
The core of anarchist thought, the rejection of imposed authority and the belief in voluntary cooperation, still holds radical potential. The problem isn’t with the ideas; it’s with the way they’re enacted. The state, with its machinery of control, has created the conditions that make itself seem necessary. Anarchy won’t come from rigid adherence to this ideological brand but from people who shed the weight of anarchism as a subculture and start living anarchically, forging relationships based on mutual aid and direct action, without waiting for permission from the past.
If anarchists could step away from the trap of anarchism, the state wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s time to stop venerating failure and start cultivating the seeds of real, messy, lived anarchy.
The #OMN social tech projects are an example of this step.
This has been going on for more than ten years, I have been at the heart of this movement, at many of the steps, I meet defeatism and negativity. It’s frustrating, especially now, when the mainstream is visibly stepping away from the #dotcons and looking for a place to land. We should be building that landing space, but instead, we’re tangled in the wreckage of failed ideas and cynical inertia.
Yes, stupid fashionable ideas have failed again and again, but that doesn’t mean the basics no longer work. The #openweb grew from simple, powerful principles: decentralization, collaboration, and a belief that media should be in the hands of the people, not locked behind corporate walls. It worked then, and it can work now.
The #blocking wall, the #dotcons built to dam this flow, just might be crumbling, but I don’t think people realize just how much defeatist noise we had and still have to break through:
“Old tech. Nobody uses torrents anymore.”
“That’s been tried — it failed.”
“This is better, nobody’s interested in that.”
“You should be using XYZ instead. I have a better idea...”
It’s an endless cycle of negativity, driven by a #geekproblem that values novelty over function, and a #fashernista culture that chases trends rather than tending to the messy, necessary work of composting old ideas to grow something real. The #openweb tools still work, If we use them. The core tools of the #openweb are still powerful:
#RSS feeds for simple, open distribution.
#Torrents for decentralized, resilient file sharing.
#Fedivers networks like #Peertube, #Mastodon, and #Wordpress for publishing and connection.
Mesh networks and local-first tech to break dependence on centralized infrastructure.
None of these are new, that’s the point, they work. The failure wasn’t in the tech, it was in our inability to hold space against the relentless creep of the #deathcult. Reclaiming the compost heap is a first step, we need to stop chasing the next shiny thing and start digging through the muck. The #OMN, #indymediaback, and #4opens are all rooted in the idea that we can rebuild from what we already know works, not by reinventing the wheel but by getting our hands dirty and composting the failures into fertile ground for the future.
The defeatism is loud, but it’s not unbeatable. We’ve been here before. We know the way out.
Decentralize.
Publish.
Connect.
Trust the process.
We (re)build the #openweb one small, stubborn step at a time.
One thing to keep in mind is that these people largely think they are good people, doing the best they can in the world as it is. And will become upset and very #spiky defensive when pointing at them on their knees prostrate worshipping. Like they said in the seminar, “I don’t know what to do about this”. I don’t think most of us do.
The Clarendon Lectures 2025 – Designing the Future: Multidisciplinary perspectives on designing better futures
Systems thinking challenges traditional approaches to management research and practice. In this second Clarendon event, Tima Bansal engages in conversation with academics in #Oxford who are integrating research and practice with the ambition to co-create futures rather than simply analysing solutions.
An outsider, polemical look at this event: Most university panels have a #NGO-thinking academic for process box-ticking. This is the representation of the fluffy side of #mainstreaming social change. This lettuce person is at best a #fluffy careerist and at worst a #NGO parasite. If there is any content at all, it’s box-ticking to create the illusion of consent and goodwill.
Then the meat of the business school is the worship of the #deathcult — people climbing the gravestones of hierarchy in the shiny, crumbling mausoleums. Even then, it’s mostly careerist. This one is talking about embedding in more fluffy NGO groups to build their story. It’s all about community and relationships. She lets go of the ego she pushed first, to step back to embed. No idea what the outcome of her work is — it’s all process. She ends with a call for nature and holism, the world her work destroys.
The currency is theory; on this, the business school is completely bankrupt from an academic point of view — not to get into the subject of morals, let alone basic human survival. She says they push their content out into science journalism, as these people are not able to judge the value of abstract academic work.
The next is an accounting bureaucrat, who does mention the green limits. He touches on the real and talks about the language in documents of bureaucratic regulation. He says it’s a mess and doesn’t know what to do. Trusting what companies say is not going to be enough. You need to change the economic relationships, and changing this is very difficult — and it’s currently simply not working.
The summing-up person is excited with an issue? Not sure what — no idea what she is actually saying. She is back to not talking about anything. She touches on statues and embarrassment. Finally, she asks an interesting question: who is the ordinance, us or somebody else? We have no idea who?
She says we need strong institutions, as individual companies are not going to do it — they capture the levers of power and pull them to keep the mess, and money, flowing. She has no answer to this. She does mention moving past “markets” in passing for a moment.
Boundaries come up — the answer is fluff, then more substance, accounting has hard boundaries, but useful change comes from stepping outside this. Systems thinking — no answer.
These people are lost and are training up the next lost generation. It’s interesting to see that they have some understanding of this, but it’s looking like they will do nothing to change it.
Wine and nibbles were OK.
Talked to many of them after the event. A few said they were undercover academic “radicals” infiltrating the business colleges — which was maybe a tiny bit true, or not. The students I talked to were blank and staying in academia.
The “consultants” were interested and animated; they found it a little shockingly invigorating to have a counter-culture conversation.
To sum up, mostly hopeless. I am always surprised the place doesn’t stink of rotting zombies, a metaphor, maybe? They need some real content… they really need some real content, but you get the strong feeling that they are not even going to change until the Thames is flowing up under the nearby railway bridge. Even then, there will be calls for more sandbags while talking more about careers — all they know — but underneath this, they have the fear that these careers will likely not exist.
This is it. What to do?
It’s a bleak cycle: academics pump out theory to feed the chatting classes, who in turn guide the #fashernista, spinning ever more refined justifications for the status quo. The echo chamber reverberates with hollow soundbites while the world burns. What we end up with is a layer of intellectual manure, with no one doing the work to turn it into compost.
With projects like the #OMN social tech could be the spade that digs through this mess, breaking down the dead ideas and aerating the soil for something new to grow. But instead, we use #dotcons tech to pile up more waste. Every app, platform, and algorithm is designed to reinforce the system, not break it. The closed loops of influence, profit, and prestige just churn on.
If we want to prod this beast, one way I am working on is to embrace the disruptive potential of the #openweb. What if we built platforms that exposed the rot? Imagine public academic review systems where research couldn’t hide behind paywalls, or tools that tracked the influence of corporate funding on “objective” scholarship. There are some seeds for this, what if we grow them #4opens
Or more direct action, maybe we just crash the garden party. What if we hijacked their panels, flooded their Q&As with real questions, or set up rogue alt-conferences right outside their events? The goal isn’t destruction for destruction’s sake — it’s breaking the illusion of inevitability.
What do you think? How do we spark that shift in behaviour, that even they, softly, say we need to do.
The internet’s origins are tangled with the military-industrial complex, designed for resilience in the face of catastrophe. But the protocols themselves, once set loose, created a playground for anarchistic experimentation. The lack of centralized control allowed people to build without permission, and that openness birthed the wild, decentralized internet we briefly glimpsed.
It was an accident, but an accident we can repeat. The #dotcons crushed that brief era of freedom, but the same dynamics that let the early #openweb flourish still exist. The #4opens, the #Fediverse, #OMN — these are our tools to recreate the “mistake” deliberately this time.
What if we embrace the idea that technology can escape its creators? Maybe we can compost the current #techshit and let something even more resilient grow. What do you think? Should we lean into the idea of building “mistakes” on purpose?
It’s well past time to pick a side. For decades, the internet has been being enclosed. The one’s living decentralized network of commentary sites, blogs, forums has been corralled into a handful of paved prison yards controlled by the #dotcons. With most people’s attention and thus freedom being in the hands of a #nastyfew oligarchs. Every post, every ‘friend,’ every creative work is locked behind closed doors, and when push comes to shove as it is now, you will increasingly find that you don’t have the keys.
But the keys still exist, and it’s not so hard for you to pickup them up. There has been a #openweb digital jailbreak going on for the last 5 years, if you value your humanity you need to become a part of this blackout, put the key in the lock and turn it.
OK, yes, maybe a little strong, the #openweb isn’t a utopia, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got to freedom online. It’s built on the #4opens: Open Source: The code is public, hackable, and accountable. Open Data: Information flows freely, not hoarded for control. Open Standards: Interoperability beats lock-in monopolies. Open Process: Transparent governance, not shadowy boardrooms.
This #fediverse path is an escape hatch from the #closedweb. It’s not a product. It’s not something you can buy stock in. It’s a network of interconnected platforms like #Mastodon, #Lemmy, and #PeerTube to name a few, all running on the open protocol #activertypub. It’s messy. It’s human. And it’s yours if you take it.
It should be easy to see that the #closedweb is a digital prison, a mausoleum for human creativity, dressed up like a theme park. It’s run by billionaire-controlled #dotcons and polished by the illusion of safety sold by the #encryptionists. Who keep misshaping our paths. What did they offer? Control: Your identity, your data, your connections — all owned by them. Manipulation: Your timeline, your reach, your visibility — dictated by algorithmic gods. Exploitation: Every interaction, every word, every click — another drop in their profit bucket. We’ve eaten their lie that the internet had to be this way. That Meta, Google, and the hollow husk of Twitter are the price of admission to digital society. But simply, it was never true.
OK, I get your apathy, why does it matter? Because when we blur the lines, we lose the fight. People pour energy into platforms that wear the clothes of progress but are stitched with threads of control. We need to clearly label projects as #openweb or #closedweb, so people can choose where to dig in and build. The #4opens are our shovels, and the remnants of failed #web03 promises are good compost to start on. Let’s turn the decay of false hope into fertile ground for real digital commons.
The internet wasn’t built to be a machine for ad revenue. It was built to connect the paths for radical, collective steps we need in today’s mess.
Looking back now, we can see that the #web03 noise were #dotcons in disguise, wearing the clothes of decentralization while perpetuating the same extractive models. They took the language of progress, twisted it, and fed it back to us as an illusion. All the projects that claimed to be building a better future ended up accelerating the same closed, greed-driven dynamics. It’s not innovation; it’s the #deathcult hiding behind #geekproblem#PR smoke and mirrors.
This is the foundation that today’s issues stand on, our current leaders and gatekeepers are shaped by the these foundations of the last 20 years of digital decay. But the tide is always turning, change is happening whether we like it or not, and the only real choice is whether we steer that change to the right or the left. The centre is an illusion, crumbling as we speak.
The way out isn’t through another cycle of empty promises. It’s through composting. Use the #4opens as your guide: open data, open source, open standards, and open processes. Strip away the illusions and turn the rot into fertile ground for real alternatives. Support projects like the #OMN, which are built from the ground up with community, trust, and collective empowerment at their core.
The people current pushing emptiness as an escape from the current mess help no one. Instead, we need to, with care, navigate meaningful outcomes. The centre was never the centre — it was always a holding pattern for the status quo. It’s time to break free. Pick up a spade, clear the ground, and start composting. The future grows from what we choose to cultivate.
This starts so Nazi. Then goes onto the use of force, but the heckler gently leaves, which hides this. They then move to protect the border… and then pushes the internal border to exclude people internally who they don’t want on the inside. Then the celebrating the braking of the old world order, and the dismantling of its structurers and norms. Then back to me, me, me, a recurring theam. They are removing the last 20 years of #fashionista paths, but only to go back to a mythical past, nothing progressive.
This is a powerful #KISS populist move, for a reactionary outcome. The words “common sense” comes into play, the mix of the language of left and right is filling the space.
OK, can’t watch much more of this mess making… what’s the plan beyond running round like headless birds #stupidindividualism
UPDATE, skipped through to end, he celebrates the genarside of the Native Americans and calls for more American imperialism. It ends with fight, fight, FIGHT, so it’s pretty clear what they plan to do. The liberals walk out glum and dispirited at the end.
In my thinking, this is a grimly familiar cycle, the stripping away of even the shallow veneer of progress to reassert control, all while dressing it in the language of “common sense” and “protection.” The mythical past they reach for is just a tool to consolidate power, feeding off fear and division.
The building of external and internal borders mirrors the #deathcult logic: anything outside the rigid, nostalgic framework becomes an enemy. The “use of force” becomes not just physical but ideological, policing thought and community through propaganda.
The real mess making is the mix of left and right language — it’s a classic strategy, flattening complexity into soundbites, so people feel like they’re part of something bigger, even as they’re herded into smaller and smaller enclosures.
The need for a plan is key. Without collective grounding, we fall into the trap of #stupidindividualism, spinning in place while reactionaries move as a bloc. The path forward is less about grand plans and more about steady, stubborn composting, rebuilding from the bottom up with every tool we’ve got, even as they try to burn the garden.
How can you see the #OMN or the #OGB fitting into composting this mess? What seeds do you have to scatter? Or is it time to sharpen the tools for some direct pushback?
The problem with #closedweb paths on the internet isn’t just “greedy” Big Tech, it’s the inevitable outcome of #capitalism itself. Where companies endlessly grow or die, grabbing profits from every possible source. This in the end leads to tricking users into handing over their data, treating them with contempt, and ultimately dehumanizing them.
Criticizing the #dotcons and pointing to #FOSS copies as a solution is a simple first step. But only doing this is like blaming #BP for abandoning green goals while ignoring the paths that reward environmental destruction. Big Tech’s, the #dotcons, behaviour is a symptom of the #deathcult, a dead economic system where profit trumps people. Copies of the #dotcons no matter how well meaning carry some of this DNA into the #openweb reboot.
The web started as an open ecosystem, a collection of independent applications and communities connected by common protocols and stories. The walls went up in the name of profit and convenience, and now it’s time to tear them down. For the #OMN and the #4opens to thrive, we need to break this cycle. To do this we need tools that make self-hosting accessible to everyone, reconnect people to the value of the commons, and dismantle the tech oligarchies piece by piece. At the moment this is way too hard and the change to make this possible is being #blocked by the #geekproblm.
To move past this blocking we need to recognise that the scaffolding is tech, but the building is people, mythos, and traditions. Let’s get back to work with our shovels and compost the social and tech mess. ✊
