One uncomfortable thing we need to address, calmly and constructively, is this: for the last decade, the right has been better at cooperating around #openweb media than the left.
This isn’t because the right has better politics. It’s because they’ve been more pragmatic about infrastructure. While much of the left argued endlessly about identity, fashion, theory, tone, and purity, right-wing and reactionary groups quietly built linking ecosystems: shared blogs, cross-posting networks, video hubs, newsletters, forums, and self-hosted media that reinforced each other. They understood, often instinctively, that control of distribution matters more than rhetorical perfection.
By contrast, the left has been worse than useless on some of the basics. Something as simple as linking between radical media projects has often failed. Projects compete for attention, split over minor differences, or collapse into internal conflict. Even when the politics align, cooperation doesn’t follow. The result? Fragmentation without any resilience.
Ironically, the few left-wing media projects that have succeeded at scale largely did so by abandoning alternative tech altogether. They built their audiences and careers inside the #dotcons – Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook, Substack – accepting algorithmic dependency as the cost of survival. That choice brought reach, but at the price of autonomy, long-term stability, solidarity and real political leverage.
This isn’t a moral judgement – it’s a structural observation. Platforms reward individual brands, they block collective ecosystems. Once inside that logic, cooperation becomes optional and is often discouraged.
Where progressives have quietly seceded is not primarily in party politics or campaigning, but in lifestyle and cultural subcultures. This is where the #fediverse, #Mastodon, and other #openweb tools first took root. These spaces were driven by values – privacy, autonomy, care, consent – rather than reach or growth.
For a long time, that made them feel “apolitical” in the narrow sense. But in reality, they were deeply political, just not aligned with electoral or media spectacle cycles. They were building infrastructure for different kinds of social relations, not greed feed messaging machines.
Alongside this, we’re seeing tools being used more explicitly for radical and progressive agendas. Projects like #VisionOnTV and #IndymediaBack are reconnecting media with movement. Spaces like #Kolektiva bring an explicitly #fashionista anarchist politics into federated infrastructure. And frameworks like #OMN (Open Media Network) focus on shared process, trust, and governance rather than branding or growth.
This is important because as #mainstreaming accelerates and trust in the #dotcons continues to erode, both progressive and reactionary groups move further into the #openweb. The question is not whether this will happen, it’s how we shape the culture and norms of these spaces.
The right tends to treat tech instrumentally: as a tool for mobilisation, influence, and power accumulation. That can make them effective in the short term, but it often leads to centralisation, cults of personality, and brittle structures that fracture under pressure.
The left, when it’s at its best, treats tech as part of a broader social ecology: something that should support care, plurality, mutual aid, and collective agency. But when the left fails, it fails by refusing to build — mistaking critique for action, and purity for strategy.
The #openweb doesn’t automatically belong to anyone. It’s a terrain of struggle. If progressives don’t show up, cooperate, and do the boring work of linking, hosting, moderating, and sustaining infrastructure, others will fill that vacuum. This is why now is the time to make your space in this network and be heard.
Not by abandoning existing networks overnight, but by practicing a #stepback: one foot in, one foot out. Staying connected where people are, while actively building and strengthening open alternatives. Helping others take that step, rather than shaming them for not already being there.
If we could build #dotcons social media, we can build #openweb social infrastructure. If we could centralise power, we can federate it. The #openweb path is not a retreat, it’s a return to shared ownership, shared memory, and shared responsibility. And it’s long past time the left took it seriously again.
More here: https://activism.openworlds.info (this link is now offline due to lack of support)
