Tag: openweb

Rewilding a people-first web, beyond the #dotcons

In the early days, the internet was a wild, open landscape, a place of creativity, collaboration, and decentralization. But over time, the rise of corporate platforms (the #dotcons) turned it into something far more controlled, walled-off, and extractive.

What if we could reclaim that original vision? What if we could build an open, federated, and people-powered web, free from the stranglehold of Big Tech? That’s the mission behind projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN), a radical push to create a truly #openweb, built on trust, transparency, and grassroots collaboration.

What’s the Problem? The modern web is dominated by a handful of corporate giants that:

  • Own our data – You don’t control what you create, they do.
  • Manipulate what you see – Algorithms push engagement over truth.
  • Extract value – Your attention, creativity, and connections become profit streams.

The result? A digital world that feels more like a walled garden than a thriving ecosystem.

The Alternative: The Open Media Network (#OMN) A different way of thinking about the internet, based on open protocols, federated media, and trust-based networks rather than corporate silos.

How does it work? Decentralized publishing – No single company controls what you post. Interconnected platforms – Information flows freely between projects, not locked inside proprietary walls. Built for grassroots communities – Not for advertisers, but for real people creating real change.

It’s inspired by the early #Indymedia movement, the rise of the Fediverse, and the belief that we don’t have to accept the internet as it is, we can build something better.

Why “Stupid” Wins Over “Perfect” A big lesson from past internet experiments is that perfection is the enemy of progress. The web itself succeeded not because it was the best design, but because it was simple and open enough for people to build on.

  • Nobody agrees on “perfect”—so it never gets built.
  • “Stupid” solutions work—because they let people create their own versions.
  • Diversity leads to growth—and growth challenges the corporate web.

This is the philosophy behind the OMN and other #4opens projects, build something simple, open, and adaptable, and let communities shape it for their needs.

How you can help rewild the web. If you’re tired of Big Tech gatekeeping your online life, there are ways to push back by ditching corporate platforms to explore the #Fediverse and self-hosted alternatives. Support open projects by contribute to decentralized media, grassroots organizing, and federated tech. Spread the word to help others see that another internet is possible.

The internet can be beautiful again, but only if we reclaim it. What do you think? Is an open internet still possible? What are your favourite-decentralized projects? Let’s discuss. #RewildTheWeb #InternetIsBeautiful #OMN

The Open Society and its Media (Mark S. Miller at GMU, 1991?)

The video is bad quality VHS, but worth your time to see a progressive #openweb native capitalism, and to find grounding for post-capitalist with the #OMN project.

Mark S. Miller’s presentation on the Xanadu Hypertext System at George Mason University (GMU) in the early ’90s is good to reference when discussing the #OMN (Open Media Network). The ideas explored then were ahead of their time, but the web ultimately took a worse/better path, a “stupid” #KISS implementation rather than the more idealistic and complex vision of #Xanadu.

Why “Stupid” Wins Over “Perfect”, the lesson is clear:
✅ Nobody agrees on “perfect”, so it never gets built.
✅ “Stupid” solutions work because they let people do their own version.
✅ From diversity comes growth, from growth comes change.
✅ Change is what challenges the current #mainstreaming mess.

This is exactly what the #OMN is doing, taking a simple, “stupid” approach that lets people build their own solutions, rather than arguing endlessly about abstract perfection. Just like the web succeeded by ignoring Xanadu’s “perfect” vision, the #OMN will thrive by avoiding over-engineering and focusing on real-world usability.

With the #Fediverse and the #Openweb, it helps to see the Fediverse as a half-decentralized #openweb project that allows people to communicate across different servers. Unlike centralized platforms, it shifts control back to people and community, but it inherits many of the same flawed assumptions from the #dotcons. Strengths of the Fediverse:

  • Decentralization – No single company controls it.
  • (Supposed) Privacy – While privacy is valued, it’s ultimately a #4opens project, meaning transparency is the real focus.
  • Freedom of Expression – No single authority to censor content, it has community moderation.
  • Control Over Data – People can move between servers (to some extent).
  • Customization – Communities can shape their own experience.

    Where the current #Fediverse falls short

❌ It still copies the #dotcons too much.
❌ It struggles with large-scale collaboration.
❌ It isn’t designed for media or broadcasting.

The Fediverse is a big step in the right direction, but it lacks a strong foundation for alternative media and real working #DIY culture. The #OMN is designed to fill this gap, moving beyond microblogging clones and building real federated media networks.

The key to success in all these paths is leaving capitalism out, one of the biggest reasons the #Openweb worked while Xanadu fizzled is that it didn’t try to “fix” capitalism, it just ignored it. Many well-meaning open projects get stuck because they try to compromise with the existing system rather than building outside of it. This is where the #OMN takes its stand: Not trying to “reform” the #dotcons. Not chasing corporate funding or NGO approval. Building tools that actually work for grassroots communities.

If we take the #4opens and #DIY cultural path, we can create an alternative, something that doesn’t get swallowed by the #mainstreaming like so many past projects. In the end, if we don’t build these spaces, the corporate web will absorb everything. Let’s see the current mess as compost, we can either let it rot uselessly or turn it into the soil for something new. We are empowered to act on this, the choice is ours.

The geek path for tech and social change, was always a diverse view, though always full of the #geekproblem. It’s interesting that this all turned into monopoly capitalism with the #dotcons we have now. The problem is the #geekproblem, we need to do better.

One thing to be aware of is that encryption is largely used to introduce scarcity into natural post scarcity digital paths, in this it is about imposing the old on the new. Encryption as a tool of digital scarcity, a core problem of crypto/blockchain hype – it recreates capitalist control structures rather than abolishing them.

Maybe it’s time to stop trying to fix broken tools, to build with a truly native approach?

The reality of trying to build real alternatives, without deep-rooted community support, even the best projects wither. The liberal/progressive crowd shouts into the void, but when it comes to actual action, they tend to retreat into safe, performative bubbles rather than engaging with real, messy change.

Offering a real alternative to the dotcons world

The Mastodon codebase is an example here, it was designed by copying the #dotcons, so the fundamental social architecture reinforces #stupidindividualism rather than community building. Instead of nurturing federated, collective spaces, it encourages a kind of fragmented, isolated posting, which is why it struggles to grow meaningful movements.

Why do we still find it hard to compost this mess making? At the root of this is likely a lack of shared vision, too many people still mentally operate within the #dotcons framework, even when they try to leave it. Then we have tech that doesn’t align with community of activists needs, #Mastodon (and similar platforms) weren’t built for real social cohesion; they repackage old models with a federated twist. No real commitment from “allies”, the move to the #openweb was ignored by the #mainstreaming left who stay on the #dotcons even though they are evil. The liberal crowd loves theory, but often won’t do the hard, unglamorous work of actually shifting paradigms, this leaves in place structural hostility to #DIY Culture, people are so trained to consume rather than create and maintain that even the “alternative” spaces get stuck replicating the same individualist consumption patterns.

So, what’s next? it’s simple we need to compost this, we could look at:

  • Building with different codebases that don’t replicate the #dotcons model.
  • Focusing on non-liberal, real-world community building, finding people willing to work, not just talk.
  • Reframing “failure” as learning and redirecting energy to something that actually fits the needs of a federated, people-driven network.

The current #fediverse model is only a first step, not itself the answer, for the second step we have the idea’s behind the #OMN. Maybe it’s past time to stop trying to fix broken tools and instead build the truly native path?

Ideological traps

The blinding effect of mainstream ideology, whether it’s neoliberalism, conspiracy-laced #spirituality, or rigid #geekproblem worship. These all act as barriers to change, keeping people locked in reactive cycles instead of building something different.

The #deathcult (neoliberalism) ensures its survival by designing failure, carbon offsetting, cap-and-trade, plastic recycling, all engineered to look like solutions while maintaining the status quo. These weren’t mistakes; they were intentional. The same happens in tech, where #encryptionists believe they’re liberating people while locking them into opaque, controlled, isolated paths. Security as fear, rather than trust.

What do we do differently now? We have to stop playing by their rules, whether it’s cancel culture’s purity tests, the process geek bureaucracy, or liberal progressives too afraid to act outside the acceptable neoliberal framework. That means:

  • Break from #mainstreaming narratives – Stop looking to “official” solutions when they are structured to fail.
  • Stop feeding fear, cowardice, and greed – Recognize when “safe” choices are actually surrendering power to systems of control.
  • Step into federated, trust-based models – #openweb and #4opens approaches don’t just shift power; they change how power operates.

Mediating the #geekproblem is core, we have the tools to build alternatives, but the very people who have power to make the change happen are often blinded by their own logic traps, trapped in a false neutrality that serves power, or in rigid frameworks that make real-world change impossible. If we can challenge this blindness, we can bring them into broader movements instead of leaving them locked in their own subcultures.

  • Non-geeks need pathways to access, understand, and shape technology.
  • Decentralisation and federated trust models should be built with social movements, not just coders.

The #4opens is a path, the commons-based approach to software is an example of an alternative that works. The stagnant ideology of capitalism blocks innovation that already exists in open, federated models. What we need to compost is the blinded majority keeps trying to push radical tech back into the broken frameworks they understand instead of embracing real alternatives. That’s the cycle we need to break.

If we don’t step outside our own ideological traps, we won’t see the paths that already exist. The world doesn’t have to be this way, but we need to start living the alternatives, not just critiquing the failures.

#NLnet #EU #NGI #NGIzero – Will we get it right this time?

With the hard shift to the right in US tech, Europe can no longer afford to sit idly by in tech development. The myth of neutrality has always been a convenient lie—if we don’t actively counterbalance this shift, we risk watching the #FOSS and #openweb movements collapse, taking with them a core pillar of our democratic and digital future. These movements aren’t just about code; they are the foundation of a fair, open, and just society. Now is the time to step up, not stand by.

For the past five years, I’ve been applying for funding for native #openweb projects—projects rooted in real, grassroots needs rather than corporate gatekeeping and academic abstraction. The problem? #NLnet and the wider #EU funding landscape lack people who can actually judge #FOSS projects in this space. The results are predictable:

  • Bureaucratic checklists
  • Conservative, incremental funding
  • Projects chosen based on who fills out forms best, not who builds the tech we actually need

So the real question is: has this changed? Because right now, I see the same mistakes repeating. We have proposals like:

  • #MakingHistory – Restoring a radical, federated approach to storytelling and digital archiving.
  • #IndymediaBack – Rebooting independent media with the lessons of past failures baked in.
  • #OGB (Open Governance Body) – A vital step toward decentralised, federated governance—something we desperately need to keep tech in the hands of communities, not corporations.

These proposals should not be niche. They should not be afterthoughts. They should be a part of the core of NGI funding strategy, the checks and balance on the bigger tech projects, if the EU is to be at all affective about counterbalancing the rightward shift in global tech.

So let’s ask again: Has #NLnet and the #EU stepped up this time? Are we funding the future, or are we just shuffling papers while the #deathcult eats our humanistic heritage and the last remains of the #openweb?

The risk, as always, is that the funding just shifts to the next well-polished pitch deck, rather than the real, messy work of change. But hey, one can but prod—because without that, nothing moves at all.

UPDATE: they did not

Activism for tech development and #FOSS paths

Open source was always political, the very idea of #FOSS was always a radical, left-leaning stance.

Let’s be honest, you’re giving away your labour.
Not for profit, not for career points,
but because you believe we’d all be better off together
if we stopped rewriting the same bits of code in isolation
and started building commons instead of empires.

That’s not apolitical – that’s solidarity.

The #openweb was never just about better software.
It was about building a world where cooperation
beats competition,
where transparency outlasts control,
and where freedom comes from sharing, not hoarding.

People forget this because the #dotcons spent twenty years
repackaging #4opens code into the thin layer of closed platforms,
wrapping our collective labour in corporate branding,
and calling it “innovation.”
They turned our commons into their capital.

But the roots of the movement, the #4opens,
the free software ethos, the hacker culture of mutual aid –
were never neutral.
They were radical acts of refusal.
Refusal to sell out creativity.
Refusal to turn knowledge into property.
Refusal to let gatekeepers define what freedom means.

So yes, the open source community is political.
It always has been.
Every act of collaboration is a quiet rebellion
against the isolation and control of the #deathcult.

When you write open code, you’re not just solving problems –
you’re composting capitalism.
You’re proving that another way of working exists,
that cooperation scales better than greed,
and that shared tools make freer people.

That’s why projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network) matter.
They’re not just technical, they’re social, cultural, revolutionary.
They remind us that freedom isn’t built on code alone,
but on the courage to share, to trust, and to keep things open
when everything around us screams for control.

Open source was always political, it’s time we remembered what side it was on.

To look at why this is important, we need to move outside the comfort zones of #mainstreaming thinking. Let’s start by touching on the role of #protestcamps in direct action: protest camps are temporary activist spaces set up in public areas to bring attention to social, environmental, and political issues. These camps create a direct action environment where people gather, discuss, and demonstrate. They range from #fluffy (peaceful and symbolic) to #spiky (disruptive and confrontational), depending on the nature of the cause and the activists involved.

This raises the question of who uses these strategies and spaces, some examples of protest movements: #Occupy Movement – Challenged economic inequality and corporate influence. #ClimateCamp – A radical grassroots direct action movement to counter #climatechaos through awareness, policy pressure, and direct disruption. Climate camp was active in multiple countries, it peaked in the late 2000s and early 2010s, influencing both public debate and government action. #CriticalMass – A decentralized cycling activism movement, founded in 1992, that uses monthly mass bike rides to reclaim public space and challenge car culture.

These examples are all of grassroots politics operates from the bottom up, empowering people to engage directly rather than relying on mediating political parties or institutions. This long traditional path give communities a voice and enable change outside the #blocking power of traditional structures. Direct action & grassroots politics is always the working change and challenge when activism bypasses traditional political intermediaries, using disruptive tactics like strikes, sit-ins, and blockades.

Together, these methods provide the non #mainstreaming democratic, practical paths to challenge authority, disrupt harmful policies, and drive real change. Let’s look at another example, the debate around #XR (Extinction Rebellion), founded in 2018, #XR uses nonviolent civil disobedience to push governments to act on the #climatecrisis. The movement is divisive, some see it as #spiky, using direct action to force political change. Others argue it’s too #fluffy, adhering to liberal ideas of legality and nonviolence, that limits its real radical potential. Whether #XR is a radical or liberal movement remains an active debate, but the impact it has had on public discourse and activism is undeniable. This living active fluffy/spiky debate is core to affective grassroots activism.

This experience is what we need to pass onto the current #4opens alternatives & horizontalist paths in tech, which to often, have the assumption that liberal legality alone will fix systemic problems, which is an easy to see #geekproblem fantasy we need to focus on balancing. A path to do this is learning from the above history of activism, native #FOSS and #4opens structures, which, yes are not without challenges, are needed to build alternatives that avoid the false hope that #mainstreaming institutions will voluntarily dismantle themselves.

As I keep highlighting, activism isn’t separate from tech development, with the #FOSS traditions coming from tech activism already. Movements like #Indymedia, #Fediverse, and #OMN show that #FOSS paths can be built with social movements in mind. In the end, if we don’t shape our own digital tools, they will be co-opted by #dotcons and restricted #mainstreaming “common sense”. The solution? Rebuild tech from the ground up, not just by resisting, but by actively creating the alternatives we want to see.

#KISS

We need real shifts to things that matter in #openweb tech dev

The Open Governance Body (#OGB) is a radical approach to decentralized governance, designed from the experience of the failures of existing governance models by combining activist organizing techniques with decentralized federated technology like #ActivityPub. It provides a very flexible governance framework that can be used across different communities, from local markets to the #Fediverse itself, creating a scalable and human-centric decision-making path.

Examples: Local Market Self-Governance: Stakeholders, such as vendors, customers, and authorities, can collaboratively make decisions without reliance on centralized institutions. Fediverse and Online Communities: Federated instances can adopt the #OGB for cooperative decision-making, ensuring grassroots control over digital spaces.

Why this path works, activist organizing as a foundation, social movements have driven radical change for centuries using decentralized, trust-based governance. The #Fediverse itself is a proof of this concept, it has demonstrated that federated, open-source technologies can scale without corporate control. Human-centric governance is built by merging these time-tested approaches, the #OGB fosters sustainable, non-hierarchical governance models rooted in #4opens values. This combination ensures adaptability and resilience against co-option by #mainstreaming forces.

Then we have permissionless rollout, the #OGB is designed to spread organically, self-initiated setup: Any individual or group can start an instance, onboard participants, and begin governance discussions. This will push network effect growth, as more people engage, the system scales naturally, shaping governance from the ground up. This bottom-up path challenges traditional top-down governance structures and paves the way for a more equitable #openweb. This needs supporting with more political paths, funding and support.

Using #RSS and #ActivityPub as core technologies offers significant advantages in grassroots politics:

  • Decentralization: Resistant to censorship and corporate control.
  • Interoperability: Enables seamless communication across platforms.
  • Transparency: Enhances accountability and public engagement.
  • Ownership & Autonomy: Empowers people to control their own data.
  • Accessibility: Breaks down barriers for marginalized voices.

The #Fediverse exemplifies this by offering a decentralized alternative to #dotcons. But the is still an often invisible ideological battle for the #openweb, the issues we aim to mediate is that programming is never neutral. Ideology inevitably shapes the systems we build. We see this in:

  • The Fediverse mirroring the #dotcons, many platforms unintentionally replicate centralized models rather than embracing true decentralization.
  • The risk of #mainstreaming takeover, without active resistance, corporate and NGO interests will attempt to co-opt the #openweb.
  • The #OMN as a counterforce, focused on linking alternative and grassroots media, the #OMN is part of a broader push to prevent the enclosure of the digital commons.

The #openweb needs to remain a space for radical inclusion and self-determination, free from corporate and direct state control. This challenging of the status quo needs real alternative paths, to get this we must critically examine the ideological underpinnings of our current world and ask:

The answers to these #blocking forces lie in building, not just critiquing, alternative paths and structures that embody the change we wish to see. The #OGB and wider #OMN projects, and the #4opens framework are part of this effort to reclaim community, autonomy from the ground up.

The challenge for #OMN & #openweb

There are a lot of mental health issues that are pushed over us in what remains of our open alt spaces, we need ways to mediate the damage, to help the people who spread this mess. The path of the #mainstreaming is corrosive to the alt cultures it feeds on. The cycle is always the same:

  • Radical ideas emerge → They are raw, open, and challenging.
  • Mainstreaming co-opts them → Dilutes them into something marketable.
  • They become performative → Used as branding by the #fashernista left, while the right weaponises the left’s discarded tools (like direct action).
  • The original movement is discredited → The real alternatives get buried under a mess of victimhood narratives, NGO bureaucracy, and “respectable” gatekeeping.

Composting this mess, one way is radical openness, but in a way that is intentional rather than naïve:

  • #4opens as a grounding principle → The more we expose the internal workings of a movement, the harder it is for power politics and NGO rot to take hold.
  • Affinity-based organising → Trust-based, decentralised, and responsive, avoiding the traps of rigid structures that get hijacked.
  • Resisting the urge to close → Every time a movement feels under attack, there’s a knee-jerk reaction to centralise and control. That’s how we lose.
  • Recognising how #dotcons manipulate OPEN/CLOSED → They’ve mastered open for them, closed for us, and turned it into a system of social control.

To take these step we need to admit we live in a gatekeepered world, yes the old media gatekeepers are gone, but what we have now is worse. The illusion of openness in the #dotcons masks a totalitarian model of control that makes traditional media censorship look almost quaint. Until we acknowledge that, every alt project will keep getting swallowed or broken from within.

The challenge for #OMN & #openweb is that we need to rebuild media and organising from a place of resilience, not just reaction. The #geekproblem, the #NGO mess, and the left’s failure to defend its own tools have left us in a weak position, but there’s still compost to grow something from. So, who’s ready to get their hands dirty?

Cutting through 99% of the #techshit

How we describe things matters, in this our #fashionistas “common sense” needs work to compost. The #openweb is a much better framing than #fediverse when trying to break out of the tribal bubbles. It speaks to something broader and historical, whereas #fediverse is just one (flawed) expression of those ideas.

Why #openweb matters, it’s not new, which is actually a strength, this is the original internet vision before it got hijacked by #dotcons. It avoids the self-referential nature of the #fediverse, which often turns into a closed loop of devs talking to devs. It’s a term that can bridge communities rather than reinforcing in-group/out-group dynamics.

The limits of mirroring #dotcons, the first stage of the #fediverse, was largely about copying corporate social media platforms but without the profit motive. That was useful, but it’s hit a ceiling. Why? Lack of real community support – Devs build stuff, but actual social infrastructure is missing. Scaling the wrong way – Just copying individualist, engagement-driven models doesn’t actually create an open, healthy network. Reinforcing the #geekproblem – Developers remain in control, not communities, which leads to predictable NGO-style behaviour creeping in.

Shifting the balance in tech, we can’t just keep replicating the #mainstreaming mess in different codebases. The tech itself needs to reflect the values of the #openweb, decentralised in governance, not just code, community-led, not dev-controlled, process transparency, not just ‘open-source’ performatively.

Dealing with the #geekproblem, devs are used to solving problems in isolation, but society isn’t a coding challenge. They often bring #NGO behaviour into the #fediverse, expecting deference to their authority—and then act surprised when there’s kickback.

Being #openweb native, if you’re coming from the NGO world, you’ll have a much better time if you actually engage with the native culture of the #openweb rather than trying to impose external hierarchies. Otherwise, you’ll just recreate the same socially and self-destructive patterns that have wrecked everything else. So yeah, to boost this thinking, we need to start using #openweb more and move beyond the #fediverse branding trap.

The #4opens and #nothingnew both cut through 99% of the crap so the few people who are going to do something can do something that would be useful rather than unless. From useful you get a few more people, rinse and repeat, and you get social change and challenge, even if this is repressed or implodes, it will be more fun, and interesting than the current mess making.

Let’s try a #spiky view of #fluconf

Am sure these are all “nice people”, but they are also the parasite class https://fluconf.online/program/ events like this are as much problem as solution – likely more so in the current mess. Nice as a facade, hiding small-minded, petty, nasty, invisible rot of the commons as a community.

What a mess we keep making. Yeah, it’s the same old cycle – polite, well-meaning polishing the surface while the rot spreads underneath. These kinds of events present themselves as solutions, but they’re a part of the problem, consolidating small influence, reinforcing the same tired invisible hierarchies, and sidelining anything truly change and challenge that we need.

They build in closed, insular circles, focusing on their own comfort and tiny carriers rather than the actual struggle happening outside their “curated spaces”. It’s all managed dissent – safely disrespectable, and ultimately toothless. They won’t rock the leaky boat because they are the leaky boat, floating uncomfortably along the wreckage of our tech paths

The invisible rot is the worst part. It’s not just individuals being “bad” people; it’s how structures of control creep in through do-bureaucracy, funding dependencies, and #fashernista gatekeeping. What starts as an open, messy movement shrinks, institutionalised, and turned into #techchurn at best or a cog in the #NGO machine at worst.

Meanwhile, real alternatives, we need, the commons, the #openweb, grassroots movements are not here, the cycle repeats. That’s a #spiky view what would a #fluffy view look like, we need more composting #fluconf

A #fluffy view, is more that the problem is less “them” than “us”, we are not creating the spaces that they could be better people though. So we fucked up here, what are “we” going to do about this mess making?

The difference between struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.

Power in tech isn’t neutral, and our issue over the last 20 years is that we have allowed the #dotcons to hoarded and weaponised it. The answer to our failer isn’t to retreat or seek more “ethical” enclosures, it’s to reclaim our power through radical, commons-based networks like #indymediaback and the #OMN.

This argument is #nothingnew, we don’t need endless reinvention, we need continuity. The #openweb isn’t about mimicking #dotcons; it’s about breaking their privatisation model and returning power to collective hands. Hashtags, metadata, and federated networks help on this path, but the real strength is social, not just technical.

Examples of this: #Indymediaback isn’t just a project, it’s a continuation of a proven model that worked before the #dotcons stole the narrative. It was a social technological project embedded in radical movements, used real-world trust systems, and functioned outside of state/corporate control. Rebuilding it isn’t nostalgia; it’s a practical step toward rebalancing power.

We need ongoing arguments about power, opting out or running to “better” #dotcons just dodges the issue. Power is always there. The question is who holds it, and for what purpose? Right now, the #dotcons wield it for social control, profit, and policing. The #openweb flips that, if we build it as a “native” path.

The fight isn’t about making people “feel good” about tech choices, it’s about removing power from enclosures and putting it back into the commons. That’s the difference between real struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.

Paranoia is one of the biggest blockers in alt-tech and radical spaces. It breeds mistrust, isolation, and internal sabotage, making collective action impossible. While some caution is necessary, too much just feeds into stasis and control, mirroring the systems activists are trying to break away from.

The #4opens is a direct antidote to this. Transparency counters paranoia, when decisions, processes, and networks are open, there’s less space for suspicion to fester. Trust isn’t built by secrecy but by consistent, open, and accountable action.

The irony is that a lot of these paranoid actors think they’re resisting control, but by shutting everything down, they’re just self-sabotaging. The solution isn’t more walls—it’s more flows. The #4opens provides the framework to move past the paranoia blockade and rebuild trust in practice, not just theory.

The victimhood narrative is often a trap, weaponised by the right and co-opted by the #fashernista left to shut down alternatives. It can be used as a tool of control, not liberation. Composting the mess, in part, by refuse to play their game, victimhood, is in part real and in part is used to create moral authority without real action. If we engage on those terms, we just get dragged into performative battles.

Expose the power dynamics, by asking who benefits from this? In the negative sense, it’s often gatekeepers who want to control the narrative. NGOs do it for funding, #dotcons for engagement, and #mainstreaming activists for status. A path out of this is reclaiming direct action, which sadly meany in the left abandoned, and the right picked up. We need to take it back, not through reactionary purity politics, but by actually doing the work outside their controlled spaces. A healing path is shifting from identity to process, the current model is all about who is speaking, not what is being built. That’s a dead end. We need #4opens process-driven organising, not personality cults or gatekept “safe spaces.” Make failure visible, one of the biggest weapons against alt movements is pointing out their failures, while #mainstreaming projects hide their rot. If we embrace messy openness, we take that power away.

Breaking the cycle:

  • The right weaponises grievance → to mobilise.
  • The liberal left weaponises grievance → to control and suppress real challenge.
  • The alt-left needs to weaponise transparency → to break gatekeeping and rebuild trust.

So the question is: how do we make “openness” an effective tool in this? The #4opens is a step.

Songs that matter, in our times

The La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, one of the bloodiest and most revolutionary anthems ever written. It’s a war song, a call to arms from the French Revolution, dripping with the spirit of resistance and rage against tyranny. Unlike the polite, polished nationalism of modern times, this one doesn’t hold back. It’s about rising up, fighting back, and paying the price in blood when necessary.

And yes, we need this for the coming #climatechaos. The urgency is the same, an existential crisis, the threat of total destruction, and the need for people to move rather than just mourn. So where’s our battle cry? Where’s our marching song for an age of collapsing ecosystems and corporate #feudalism?

Who are the bad guys? Same as always: the kings, the traitors, the plotting tyrants, only today they wear suits instead of crowns. The CEOs, the oil barons, the lobbyists, the financiers, the politicians who smile while signing our death warrant. The #deathcult that prioritises profit over people, extraction over regeneration, and control over cooperation.

The fight isn’t just climate collapse, it’s against the entire path we are on. The enemy isn’t just rising seas, but the hands gripping the wheel as we drive off the cliff.

So yes. It’s time to start singing again. Loudly.

The Digger Song is a call to action, that still matters now as we try to compost the mess of capitalism, climate collapse, and broken politics. It’s about taking back what was stolen, land, resources, autonomy, by working together, not waiting for permission from those in power.

The Diggers weren’t dreamers, they were doers. In 1649, they squatted land, grew food, and built communities outside feudal control. They understood that private property is violence, that hoarding land and resources is the root of inequality.

Fast-forward 400 years, and we’re in the same fight. The enclosures never ended, they just shifted from fields to data, ideas, culture, and technology. The #dotcons fence off the #openweb, billionaires hoard wealth while people freeze and starve, and everything, from social movements to ecology, is turned into a commodity.

“We come in peace, they said, to dig and sow…”

We need this spirit in today’s fight, whether it’s radical media, grassroots organising, or the battle against #climatecollapse. Instead of begging for scraps, we take what we need. We compost the rotting systems of control and plant something better.

“You lords and you ladies, so proud of the earth,
Think that you maintain us in power and mirth;
But down with your fences, all nature reclaim,
For the earth was made a common treasury for all!”

The Diggers weren’t waiting for permission. Neither should we.

The English equivalent is Jerusalem, we are drowning in defeatism, nihilism, and passive despair. Blake’s words, set to Parry’s soaring melody, are a defiant call to build, to resist the decay and corruption, to forge something better with our own hands.

Blake wasn’t celebrating the past, he was raging against the present. Against the industrial hellscape replacing the green and pleasant land. Against the exploitation, the greed, the machine of empire grinding people into dust. Sound familiar? The climate is collapsing, communities are atomised, and the rich build fortresses while the rest drown, burn, and starve. Yet, we are told to accept it, to sit down, be reasonable, and wait for the same path that caused the disaster to save us. This is a call for activism:

“I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand…”

We need this spirit, this refusal to surrender. Not just in politics, but in how we rebuild the #openweb, how we fight the #deathcult, how we create spaces outside of corporate and state control. This isn’t about nostalgia; it’s about taking up the hammer and the spade, writing the code and stepping into the storm, to make something better.

Please add more in the comments.