A call-out for collective tech with teeth

It’s important to be honest about the landscape we’re working in. Just about every so-called “alternative tech” or #opensocialweb event – especially those run under the #NGO banner – is riddled with institutional parasites. They talk a big game about ethics, governance, and decentralisation, but their main role is to capture energy, not release it. The value in these spaces is minimal, maybe a few decent corridor chats, but structurally, they serve the status quo.

What we’re seeing is an attempt to #mainstream change by reshaping it into something more passive and marketable. It’s branding, not building. It’s funding cycles, not freedom. And people are so used to the #feudalism of current #FOSS governance models, full of gatekeepers, toxic meritocracy, and internalised hierarchy, that they don’t see the need to move past this. They double down instead, its just #blocking masked as principled caution.

That’s why the #OGB project (Open Governance Body) takes a radically different approach: build it permissionless and let it loose. No waiting for gatekeepers, no begging for funding, no asking nicely. Just making space for people to actually do the thing – together, in the open. If it works, people will come. If not, we try something else. But we stop wasting energy on the #mainstreaming rituals.

The key is to recognise that there’s a different and much larger group of people, beyond the usual suspects, who can be empowered by tech if the structures are simple, human, and social enough. People who want to work together, share power, and build resilience, not just ship code. Yes, the tools need to exist, the ideas already exist, what’s been missing is a path that doesn’t instantly collapse into control.

That’s why #OGB is a #KISS project, it’s not about perfection. It’s about functioning enough to seed community processes that can grow over time. Something you can pick up and use, rather than argue about forever in a GitHub issue or a grant proposal.

Let’s be real, people are up shit creek without a paddle right now. And most of what’s presented to them as “solutions” are just more mess dressed up in new UX. If we want people to find different ways out, we have to build different places to look. That means creating tech ecosystems rooted in social trust, creativity, and actual autonomy, not more extractive platforms or performative NGOs.

We also need to deal with the deeper issue of apathy and Laissez-faire fatalism. People feel the system’s broken but don’t believe it can be changed. They’ve internalised the idea that trying is pointless. So we need to design structures that take this into account. Systems that don’t rely on constant enthusiasm or perfect participation. That hold space through thick and thin, for the long term.

This is where there’s real space for creativity and care, not just in what we build, but in how we build it, and who we build it with. Not self-promoting conferences, not glossy decks, but compost piles and messy gardens, things that live, change, and root themselves in everyday needs.

The #OGB project is just one shovel. But there are others. Pick one up. The ground’s ready.

The Fediverse is opening, but there is a cost

With the #Fediverse gaining increasing #mainstreaming attention, we’re entering a familiar cycle, an influx of well-funded #NGO-branded projects trying to “fix” the #openweb by reshaping it in their own narrowing and to often blinded paths.

Take this year’s #chatteringclass event, #FediForum. Alongside breathless praise, last year, for #Threads joining the #opensocialweb space, we’re seeing the launch of shiny new tools: #BonfireSocial, #Channelorg, #Bounce. That promise innovation and ecosystem growth, but look closer, and you’ll see the #NGO pattern: branding over substance, silos in disguise, and a creeping return of the mini #dotcons under new, friendlier wrappers.

Let’s take Channel.org, On the surface, it looks like a #mainstreaming version of the #OMN project #indymediaback – community news channels, a grassroots publishing model, maybe even respectful federation. But scratch that surface and the cracks show quickly:

The default feeds are anaemic #NGO fodder
The orgs list reads like a who’s who of liberal foundations, with the usual hidden gatekeeping logic behind the scenes.
And it’s yet another “pay or pray” model: either be a professional #NGO or get nudged out.

In short, it’s likely just more #techshit to compost. A well-polished box built to contain, not empower. A place where “participation” is narrow and boring. This isn’t to say there’s zero value. There will be overlap with what we’re doing in the #OMN and #indymediaback spaces. But experience tells us, these projects rarely cooperate. They prefer to rebuild from scratch, with branding and compliance hardcoded. They see networks as products to manage, not native cultures to nurture. In the end they sell out, it happens.

And the result? A growing layer of parasites attaching themselves to the living Fediverse. That familiar smell of funding cycles, strategy decks, and locked-down roadmaps. We’ve seen this before. We know where it leads. The real question isn’t what’s new? It’s what’s native?

We don’t need a branded reboot of the same paths, what we do need is more funded and sustainable grounded, messy, radically open alternatives. Ones with deep roots in social movement history, not just nice UX. Ones that resist capture, and refuse in the end to turn community into product.

That’s the path we’re on, if the NGO track wants to build parallel paths, fine. Just don’t expect us to be polite about this mess making, we’ve already walked that road too many times. Live and let live, compost #techshit and build real alternatives #KISS

You know your getting big when parasites like this start to attach… salt and branding irons come to mind.

Federating Metadata Flows: Bridging Folksonomy and Categories for the #OMN

These native #openweb activism based projects have been around for the last ten years. In the reboot of #Indymedia and the development of the Open Media Network (#OMN), the challenge of federating metadata flows sits at the heart of how people organize, distribute, and consume media in a decentralized, grassroots-driven native path. We’re actively navigating the space between #folksonomy (bottom-up, organic tagging) and categories (top-down, structured organization). Each approach offers advantages, but bridging them creatively is key to an effective and open media landscape.

What this #indymedia reboot video leave out is this:

Folksonomy vs. Categories:

#Folksonomy is a people and community -driven method of tagging content, allowing communities to organically build a taxonomy that reflects their interests and needs. It’s flexible, dynamic, and rooted in grassroots culture.
* Advantage: Captures the diversity and fluidity of bottom-up organizing.
* Disadvantage: Can be messy, inconsistent, and hard to scale across diverse instances.

#Categories are a structured, hierarchical way of organizing information, providing clarity and consistency.
* Advantage: Easier to search, sort, and maintain across larger networks.
* Disadvantage: Top-down imposition is restrictive and alienate grassroots contributors.

The OMN path: Combining Folksonomy with Categories

The #OMN and the Indymedia reboot are grounded in bottom-up grassroots projects, so we obviously start with a folksonomy approach. However, we recognize there’s some practical use for categories as well. Here’s a draft proposal for how to bridge the divide:

Folksonomy First: Every media object enters the OMN network with a set of user-generated tags (folksonomy). These tags represent the grassroots nature of the content—open, fluid, and community-driven.
Category Grouping: Allow instances to group folksonomy tags into category clusters. These clusters could be shared across instances, making it easy to adopt community-agreed categories while respecting the folksonomy origin. This means that folksonomy items are not discarded, but instead enhanced by grouping them into more structured categories. The folksonomy items, now part of category groups, flow through the network and can be treated as extra tags, maintaining transparency and openness.
Metadata Flow is the project: The OMN is not just a content distribution network but also a metadata flow tool. It allows media objects to move across instances, while each instance can enhance the object’s metadata (tags/categories) in a transparent and open way. The magic here is in building a path where meaning, the media, tags, and categories are fully federated and can flow effortlessly between decentralized nodes.
Subscription to Category Flows: Instances can subscribe to category flows, essentially saying, “I want to see all media tagged under a specific category or tag group.” This gives structure without forcing it, enabling diversity of content flow while still benefiting from categorization. This flexible subscription system empowers the grassroots while creating a bridge to more top-down consumption or categorization models.
Trust-Based Growth: The entire system is built on trust networks. Instances that trust each other’s tagging and categorization can share media freely, with the assumption that the metadata accompanying it adds value, not friction.

The Philosophy: “Transparency is the New Objectivity”

The OMN is rooted in the philosophy of transparency over objectivity. The flows of metadata, whether from folksonomy or categories, are transparent for to see, remix, and improve upon. This radical openness, guided by the #4opens, ensures that the system remains flexible, accessible, and grounded in the needs of people not corporations. Truth bubbles up from this, lies exist, but they are pushed to their own spaces, which people can choose to ignore.

Conclusion: Building the Age of Creative Anarchy

On a positive, we could say that the 19th century was the age of capitalism, the 20th century was the age of social democracy, and the 21st century could be shaping up to be the age of creative anarchy. In this era, the challenge is to embrace diversity while building tools that help us collaborate across differences. The OMN is a practical tool to move media objects and metadata around in a way that encourages creativity, transparency, and bottom-up control, all while allowing some degree of organization through category flows. This is a positive future for media, that is native to our current openweb reboot as our #fashernista like to call this #opensocialweb but the problem it is what we are doing is not social media… bad choice of naming.

The future is messy, but we can compost this mess into a thriving, decentralized media path. Let’s start with trust, folksonomy, and the #openweb, and grow from there #KISS who is coding this, who is funding this, help needed please as I don’t have the focus to see this through, it needs crew and funding, that might be you.

Why We Need the Open Media Network (#OMN)

The problem with fragmentation

The #openweb is inherently social, as it’s a people to people network, so pushing the term Open Social Web and resulting hashtag #opensocialweb or #socialweb by NGOs and #fashernista groups is adding mess at best and real damage at worst. While the intention might be well-meaning, it introduces confusion and fragmentation, by unthinking mirroring #dotcons thinking. We need to be more creative with how we label and focus our efforts, especially in grassroots and community-driven movements like the openweb which is already people to people, so the is no need for the #dotcons term “social” in this naming.

The problem with fragmentation of focus, where the openweb is a clear and powerful term that encapsulates the vision of a decentralized, user-controlled internet built on #4opens software. The adding of more confusing hashtags like #opensocialweb dilute these values and attention, creating complexity in #KISS movement messaging. When there are multiple competing narratives and names for the same or similar movements, pushed by misalignment of goals, different agendas, these feed the draining, infighting and confusion. Reducing efforts better spent building, maintaining, and promoting “native” paths and projects. It’s very easy to get sidetracked into debates over terminology, brand-building, and differentiation, we are doing exactly this here.

The need for mediation and focus, It helps to have a unified message that resonates across all levels of engagement, from developers and activists to end-users. The openweb as a concept is comprehensive enough to encompass social, technical, and ethical aspects without needing to create splinter terms. Together with the existing “native” 4opens, we really should not be pushing and focusing on vague or nebulous terms, we should double down on the 4opens, an actionable framework that guides our development, organization, and communication. This clear foundation allows for KISS coherent and effective advocacy, outreach, and development work.

Let’s try and moving on this by encourage honest reflection, critically examine our use of terms and reflect on whether they align with the broader goals. The path we need is the support of community driven efforts, prioritize grassroots projects and initiatives that adhere to the 4opens rather than being swayed by NGO-driven and funding narratives that dilute this simple path.

The focus should remain clear and strong on building a robust, decentralized, and user-controlled #openweb. With diversity in unity and clarity in disagreements, not a proliferation of “fluffy” terms that distract from the #KISS path. Mediating these tendencies towards jargon and fragmentation is important to the momentum needed for real change. Ideas please?