Rebalance, by shifting focus from tools to cultures

Appropriate technology in activist tech means tools built for our real contexts, not for Silicon Valley fantasies or bunker-dwelling paranoia. It’s about lightweight, repairable, understandable systems that communities can actually run, adapt, and share. Right now, the #geekproblem pushes us toward shiny, #dotcons shaped over-engineered toys that serve developer ego more than people and community need or bloated encryption stacks nobody understands, federated protocols that collapse under complexity, and endless half-finished “next big things” with no grounding in actual social use.

We need to drag the conversation back to fit for purpose, tech that works in the messy, underfunded, real world of activism, where trust and openness are the foundation, and security is woven in without becoming a fetish that locks us away from each other.

The #fedivers #openweb reboot of the last ten years is a good first step, but it embeds meany of the #mainstreaming issues and has the deep #geekproblems embedded into its culture and tech stacks. A second step away from this is, the social understanding, that security doesn’t come from code alone, it comes from the community that surrounds it. Without a living, visible, and shared culture, the best tools are just dead weight.

The path starts with embedding our tools inside open, self-documenting, collective cultures. If you can’t see how decisions happen, you’re just replacing one opaque power structure with another.

Forget the myth of the “perfect” platform. What we need are messy but resilient spaces, a diversity of nodes, loosely connected, each carrying its own part of the load.

Build commons-first infrastructure, to re-anchor our work in openness, federation, and trust-based networks baked in from the start. The baseline is #4opens – open data, open source, open standards, open process – non-negotiable.

On this path, the #OMN (Open Media Network) can be the publishing spine: a trust-based network where stories, actions, and knowledge move between activist spaces without corporate choke points and #blocking.

We must bridge into existing real-world struggles – unions, climate justice, housing fights. Tech that only talks to other techies is just another dead end.

Stop digging the same hole, we stop wasting energy on projects that make us smaller and weaker:

No more encryption fetishism. Encryption is the lock on the door, not the whole house.

No more closed, invite-only dev silos. If you can’t talk openly about the work, it’s either the wrong work or the wrong space.

No more “founder cult” projects that collapse when one person burns out or drifts off.

Security is not enough, survival is not victory, we can be safe and irrelevant – or vulnerable and changing the world by breaking corporate dependency, by building the infrastructure of a post-#dotcons world. This isn’t about perfect software, it’s about building the cultures that can use it – and win.

Stories on this subject:

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/MakingHistory/wiki/Story+-+Oxford%3A+Going+with+The+Flow.-

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/Out+reach+short+story+-+Stalls+and+Code.-

What is it that blocks this needed change and challenge? #Geekproblem is about when the “solution” Is the problem. One of the most frustrating things is how often its defenders mistake their narrow fixations for universal solutions, or worse, offer them up in bad faith to derail the real conversation.

You’ll raise an issue – social, political, cultural – and instead of engaging with the messy, human, collective work needed to address it, the geek brain rushes to replace it with a neat technical patch. The tool, the workflow, the protocol. As if the complexity of human trust, governance, and solidarity can be debugged into submission.

This isn’t just misunderstanding; sometimes it’s sabotage. By framing the “solution” purely in terms of tech or procedure, they strip the problem of its social and political context. What remains is something sterile, depoliticised, and ultimately unfit for purpose.

It’s why I keep bringing this up. Because if we don’t name the #Geekproblem for what it is, we’ll keep circling in the same loops, patching over social fractures with shiny but hollow code. The answer isn’t more complexity; it’s #KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Simple in the sense of clear, human-first, and grounded in open, accessible processes.

The truth is, solving problems in the #openweb isn’t about cleverness or code alone. It’s about people, and unless the geeks can learn to work with that, rather than overwrite it, they’ll stay part of the problem, the #geekproblem

Please, please try not to keep being a prat about this.

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

Security comes from community rather than technological control

It turns out that what hackers yearn for is not raw power but security – not just the technical kind, but an emotional security that is harder to admit to, so it gets dressed up in the language and posture of technology.

Because many in these paths and spaces operate with narrow social and political horizons, shaped by individualist tech culture, a distrust of messy collective life, and little grounding in movement history, their insecurity rarely finds healthy expression. Instead, it gets channelled into #mainstreaming patterns: centralising control, hoarding decision-making, gatekeeping access. The feeling of safety comes not from trust, but from control.

This is why in so many “open” projects we see:

Root admin privileges treated like a personal bunker.

Technical gatekeeping replacing collaborative stewardship.

Social disagreements re-coded as “technical issues” so they can be “resolved” by force rather than dialogue.

The power they wield is a symptom, the insecurity is the cause, lack of balance is the disease. The problem is that command/control cultures make insecurity worse, they turn every challenge into a threat, every new contributor into a risk, and every disagreement into a test of dominance. Over time, this drives out the very diversity and collaboration that could create true resilience.

The #4opens – open data, open code, open standards, open process – is not just a governance checklist. It’s a practical, everyday discipline that forces a shift from control to collaboration. It changes the emotional terrain.

Open data dissolves the hoarding instinct, because nothing critical is locked away in one person’s vault.

Open code forces the bunker doors open, making it normal for others to touch “your” work.

Open standards create interdependence rather than dependency, reducing the fear of losing control.

Open process makes decisions visible, accountable, and shared, replacing the hidden backchannel with a transparent commons.

By practising the #4opens, even the most control-driven hacker can start to find a different kind of security, rooted in trust, redundancy, and collective stewardship rather than in solitary power.

The #4opens doesn’t magically fix emotional insecurity, but it creates a scaffolding of transparency and accountability where balance can grow. It turns projects from personal fiefdoms into shared ecosystems, and in doing so, helps people unlearn the reflex to seek safety only through domination.

The way out is not to strip hackers of influence, but to build cultures where influence is exercised in the open, with care, and where security comes from community rather than technological control.

A #fluffy view – Think of a self-hosted community chat platform, something small, privacy-focused, run by a handful of volunteer hackers. The core devs are brilliant, but they see every problem as a technical one: security means encryption upgrades, stability means more containerization, and governance means a GitHub permissions list.

When disagreements arise over moderation, they don’t trust open discussion. Instead, they quietly add admin-only tools that can hide messages or boot users without notice. From their perspective, this is “security”, keeping the platform stable and safe. But because the process is invisible and unilateral, it breeds mistrust. The community feels controlled, not cared for.

Now imagine this same project embracing the #4opens:

Open Data – Moderation actions are logged and visible to everyone.

Open Source – The code that runs moderation tools is public, so no hidden powers exist.

Open Process – Policy changes are discussed in a shared forum where everyone can contribute.

Open Standards – The platform can interoperate with others, so no one is locked in.

This changes the emotional root of the hackers’ insecurity: their “power” no longer depends on guarding the system against imagined chaos, but on participating in a transparent culture where the community itself holds the system together. Security is now mutual care, not technological control. The hackers still have influence, but it’s exercised in the open, grounded in trust, and shared with the people they serve.

A spiky view of this – The problem with too many hackers is that they mistake root access for moral authority. They wrap their emotional fragility in layers of SSH keys and sudo privileges, then strut around acting like benevolent dictators for life. You see it in the endless “code is law” sermons, in the backroom channel decisions, in the smug dismissal of “non-technical” people as if empathy were a bug. They lock down wikis “for security,” gatekeep repos “to avoid chaos,” and implement moderation tools that work like secret police. This is not liberation, it’s digital landlordism, the same power-hoarding rot we see in the #mainstreaming mess, just with a Linux hoodie instead of a corporate badge.

#KISS it’s best not to be either a dogmatic #fluffy or a #spiky prat about this need for balance.

Talking vs. doing in the #openweb

I often hear: “You post a lot, but what practical work have you actually done?” It’s a fair question, there’s far too much hot air in tech spaces, and the #openweb can’t be rebuilt on rhetoric alone. The critique goes something like this:

“You’re preaching an idealised ‘community’ that doesn’t exist. You criticise the mainstream (fair enough) but keep pushing alternatives without showing a tangible model that works. It feels like you’re looking for an audience, not a conversation.”

And here’s my side of this:

I was part of the team that got multiple governments in Europe to adopt the Fediverse — working on the outreach that took the tech to the European Union.

I co-ran 5 Fediverse instances with thousands of users in its early years. We eventually had to shut them down — an experience I now talk about openly because we need to make this work better next time.

I’ve worked on meany of #openweb projects going back to the birth of the WWW. That history is here: https://hamishcampbell.com

Projects include UK #Indymedia, #VisionOnTV, the Open Media Network (#OMN), the #4opens framework, and the #OGB — all aimed at building governance, infrastructure, and culture outside corporate control.

Here’s the crux: building outside the mainstream is messy, fragile, and uncertain. There’s no guarantee that any of this will “win.” But the alternative – doing nothing and letting every commons be enclosed – guarantees failure.

The work is #DIY culture. If you don’t want to build, you don’t have to. But if you do, you have to accept the risk, the mess, and the fact that you won’t get the same dopamine hits as shipping a VC-backed app. You also have to resist the slide into trolling when frustration builds.

The real challenge is cultural: how to support tech that walks outside the dominant paths long enough to make new ones. That means building infrastructure that runs on trust, openness, and care, not just control, profit, and scale. If we stop doing this, every alternative will keep collapsing back into the defaults.

Compost the Chancers: How Careerists Kill Horizontal Tech Movements

It happens every time. A fresh grassroots project kicks off, chaotic, joyful, full of promise. The code is rough, the conversations messy, but the energy is real. People come together not for money or prestige, but because something needs doing and no one else will do it.

Then, they arrive, the careerists, the chancers, the opportunists who talk a good game of “community” and “values” while quietly positioning themselves for influence, funding, reputation. You know these people, they start “facilitating” things, pushing for “professionalism,” organising pointless panels, and – without fail – introduce hierarchical management logic dressed in pseudo-horizontal language.

Soon, the messy collective space becomes an application form, organic conversations shift to curated “working groups”, governance becomes gatekeeping, code becomes control.

Careerism is a cultural virus, OK, these people aren’t evil villains, they’re simply products of their environment, trained to extract value, shape narratives, and build CVs. But their impact is destructive, even if unintentional. What they bring with them is the #mainstreaming mindset, a default toward #NGO logic, safe liberalism, risk-aversion, and the slow suffocation of wild experimentation.

They start to block with niceness., they silence with process, they smother with “inclusivity” until there’s no air left to breathe. When people question this, then they start to become nasty, trolling, blocking and finally ignoring runs its predictable course…

Examples? Let’s name some very formiler patterns:

The Self-Appointed Spokesperson – Shows up late, speaks the loudest, builds a personal brand on the back of others’ labour.

The Grant-Whisperer – Always chasing the next funder, reshaping the project to fit what’s "deliverable" instead of what’s needed.

The Gatekeeping Ally – Claims to represent the marginalised, while shutting down dissent and complexity with soft authoritarianism.

The #NGO Zombie – Thinks every grassroots space needs a board, a charter, and a code of conduct before it needs trust or purpose.

The Pivot Junkie – Tries to steer the project toward startup land “just to be sustainable,” and ends up reinventing capitalism in #FOSS clothes.

These types thrive when horizontality lacks grounding. On the path we need to take, “cancel culture” is a cul-de-sac. Blocking them just makes them martyrs. Ignoring them lets them take over. The alternative? Compost them, let their bullshit rot in the open, call things what they are. Tech is political, values are not neutral. What to do? Compost, don’t cancel.

To reboot the #openweb and keep it rooted in the #4opens: Open Code, Open Data, Open Standards, Open Process. Rebooting needs resistance, we have to build spaces that are both porous and protected, we need, paths and spaces with membranes, not walls. Trust-based collectives with clear boundaries. If someone’s treating your community like a stepping stone, show them the compost bin. If someone’s building with care, humility, and rootedness, then share our tools with them.

This is not a purity test, it’s composting as culture, if something smells off, trust your nose. Because if we don’t get serious about this, the chancers will take over. They always do. Unless we make the path too muddy for them to walk it.

A core problem is that too many “open” tech projects try to model social relations after code workflows rather than shaping code to reflect healthy social processes. Ersatz writing, ersatz governance and the slow death of the #openweb. We’re living through a wave of fakery. The #AI hype machine spews endless streams of ersatz writing – grammatically perfect, stylistically smooth, and hollow. It feels like content but carries no lived experience, no rooted context, no risk. Unedited, it’s a shadow play of culture.

The same hollowness infects too many horizontal tech spaces. Here, we find ersatz governance – systems that borrow the forms of openness and collaboration, but replace the substance with tech bureaucracy. Instead of starting from lived social practice, they mimic software workflows: people reduced to issue tickets, trust replaced by “process,” culture swapped for sprint planning. The result is the same as with AI: the outputs are technically competent but socially dead.

When governance is reduced to process, the door swings open for the chancers, the careerists, and the #NGO climbers. They’re fluent in the language of inclusivity and consensus, but they’re not here to build, these people thrive in systems where nothing is anchored in lived trust or collective history. In such environments, appearances are reality, and they control the appearance.

The mirror needs to flip, healthy social production can inspire healthy code production, but trying to run human interaction like a Git repo produces brittle, alienating cultures. We see it in the #Fediverse right now: meetings full of procedure but no warmth; #PRs merged while communities fracture; polished governance documents for projects this pointlessness.

The #openweb was never meant to be safe for professional managers of openness. It was meant to be a living commons, messy, unpredictable, full of disagreements and breakthroughs. If we can root our governance in actual relationships rather than corporate abstractions, we can build tech that reflects community rather than forcing community to reflect tech. Otherwise, we’ll just have two hollow empires – AI’s Ersatz Writing on one side, and our own Ersatz Governance on the other – both looking open, both feeling dead.

The #OGB: A Native Path for Open Governance

The #OGB (Open Governance Body) isn’t built around the smooth, efficient ideals of platform logic or institutional control. It’s messy by design, because it’s rooted in real-world activist practice. It draws from the hard-won experience of protest camp organising, where consensus, affinity, and trust are the foundations of action.

The #OMN governance model we’re working with doesn’t come from corporate boards or #NGO playbooks. It comes from the mud, the rain, the late-night meetings under tarps and tents, where people work through differences because they have to – because they’re doing something together that matters. This is people-to-people trust, built over time, grounded in shared struggle. We’re not designing for online autocracy. We’re designing for affinity groups.

So yes, the #OGB is trying to do what many others won’t. Not because it’s easier (it’s not), but because it’s necessary.

We already know this kind of organising works, not in theory, but in practice. Sometimes badly, sometimes slowly, but it works. People come together, they make decisions, they take action, and they build power without needing top-down control. But we also know it doesn’t scale well – that’s always been the limit of these methods. Consensus is powerful at small scales, but it breaks under weight if there’s no structure to hold it.

That’s where the #Fediverse and #ActivityPub come in.

The #OGB is built on the idea that the horizontal protocols of the Fediverse can scale this kind of messy, native governance, not by centralising it, but by networking it. Federation isn’t just a technical model; it’s a political one. It mirrors the way affinity groups operate: autonomous, loosely coordinated, sharing enough common ground to work together without collapsing into uniformity.

This is what we mean when we say the #OGB is native. It’s growing from within the world we’re already in – not imposed from outside. It respects mess. It embraces friction. It understands that governance isn’t something you tack on later, it’s something you live through, build with, and struggle over, together.

You can see the work in progress here: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody

If we’re going to have a real #openweb, we can’t keep mimicking the logic of platforms and empires. We have to build our own paths, grounded, imperfect, resilient.

We invite you to walk this path.

A story for outreach: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/Out+reach+short+story+-+Stalls+and+Code.-

W3C How this fits into #OMN the Shared Origins and Intentions

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

Dig, Plant, Grow. Compost the #Techshit. Repeat

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.

#OMN #4opens #indymediaback #openweb #fediverse #techshit #KISS #NGO #deathcult #mainstreaming #altmedia #DIY

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.

What does mainstreaming do?

#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.” 😄

This is the core of the #mainstreaming problem. Our hashtags try to name it: #stupidindividualism #deathcult #dotcons #nothingnew in that we repeat the same patterns, inside the same systems, and wonder why nothing changes.

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 😉

Power Politics and the Race/Gender Card – A Contemporary Reflection

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.

We don’t need more #geekproblem “fixes” or slick branding exercises. We need radical, collective agency. The tools are here, let’s build. #openweb #climatechaos #socialchange #indymediaback #OMN

Talking to the Bureaucratic Co-op Crew – Governance, Culture, and the Fediverse

Let’s take a step back. In an old thread about online governance, I found it revealing – and a bit frustrating – that almost nobody actually engaged with what the thread was about: building a lightweight, federated, working governance layer.

The project in question is the OpenWeb Governance Body (#OGB):
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/

We were writing a funding proposal to take a simple, well-tested social workflow (which we already know doesn’t scale in its current form), and federate it, to scale through distribution, not centralization. Think of it like this, we already have a proof-of-concept that this can work. It’s called the #Fediverse. Yes, there will be a lot of “smoke”, confusion, distraction, bureaucratic inertia. But we’ve got practice cutting through it, and could use the funding to bring in more people who see clearly and act with purpose.

A cultural problem, not just a technical one. This isn’t about personal attacks, it’s about recognizing a systemic cultural issue. Many people (often, but not exclusively, middle-aged white men) simply can’t see that some projects have value despite being outside their frameworks or institutional comfort zones. It’s a kind of intellectual and emotional poverty endemic to the late capitalist #deathcult era.

“Distilled, grassroots, radical governance is a good fit for the fediverse.”

And that’s what we’re doing. This work comes from decades of experience, 30+ years of distilled practice from social change spaces:

Squats and protest camps

Climate camps and Reclaim the Streets

Indymedia, XR, and even Occupy

And Rainbow Gatherings — still running on consensus-based governance born from the Vietnam-era anti-war movement (not “hippy dippy” utopias, as some imagine)

What we’re doing is embedding this lived practice into the tools and frameworks of the #openweb, giving people digital tools that reflect real-world collective experience. These are bottom-up, permissionless, and rooted in doing and trust built through doing. This is not about technical fixes. It’s about giving people the space to get messy and find their own path to cooperation.

Why we don’t use #processgeek paths like “Sociocracy”? Some suggest alternatives like sociocracy. And sure, if that works for your group, go for it. But from our side, sociocracy is often the equivalent of a well-meaning hippy round the campfire saying “can’t we all just get along?” while someone pisses on the garden they planted and another person ignores the washing-up rota they just taped up. It’s a structure that presumes goodwill and compliance, and that’s not enough. We’re building for mess, for people who don’t agree, for trust that emerges through doing, not rules imposed from above.

Multi-stakeholder Co-ops? Yes, but not from your typical bureaucratic blueprint. What we’re proposing looks like a multi-stakeholder co-op at times, but it’s far more grounded in anarchist and community-based models. It’s not about creating legalistic enclosures or hierarchical enforcement, we deliberately ignore that logic.

About centralization, Yes, Mastodon’s >90% of instances are in five countries. Yes, some instances hold way more users than others. And yes, that’s an issue. But we address this differently, we recognize centralization as a problem and create space for alternatives by encouraging small, local, resilient hosting.

If you run an instance in the #Fediverse, you already understand, It’s your voice, there’s a positive feedback loop here, the more care you give to your space, the more your voice matters. No need for complicated representation schemes. This is the natural governance of federation. You don’t get a vote unless you actually show up, that’s fair, if you want influence, spin up an instance, participate in the culture, do the work.

Governance isn’t something you build from scratch. It’s something you distill from lived experience.

We don’t want complexity. We want clarity, action, and real tools that reflect how people already cooperate.

#KISS wins — every time.

The project matters more for what it refuses to do, than for what it builds.

The #OGB path is not #mainstreming, it’s a counter current, it is about building shared governance for the #openweb, grounded in the #4opens and real-world collective experience. Want to help? Step out of your institutional box, get your hands dirty, help make governance useful again.

Conversations on Compost, Bridges, and the Future

A few recent conversations remind me: we’ve already done the work of building alternatives. Twenty years of grassroots tech, radical process, and messy social organizing. The trouble is, that soil has been hollowed out, scattered, exhausted, and composted into the #dotcons

Our current mission isn’t to “start from scratch,” but to rebuild bridges, spread compost, and replenish the soil. That’s why I keep coming back to this moment, the bridging of the #openweb back into #mainstream via #ActivityPub. This is a rare window, let’s not waste it.

The #SocialWebFoundation (#SWF) and others organizing around this space need to think hard about where the bridges land. If we build only toward control, influence, and safety, we miss the point. The #Fediverse wasn’t meant to become a “cleaned-up Twitter clone.” That path leads us back to enclosure.

We need to keep the messy stuff alive, the radical roots, the collective compost piles, the experiments. Because if our worlds keep shrinking, if we make everything tidy and branded, we lose the alternatives that might save us in an age of #climatechaos and hard-right acceleration.

And yes, some of them do understand, the #nastyfew they ran the numbers, and concluded they don’t have to care. In their calculus, the collapse is survivable (for them). The rest of us? We’re disposable. We need different maths, rooted in care, commons, and continuity.

Personally, I’m tired, I no longer have the energy to push these projects alone. So the next step? Abstract the flows, share the compost, and hand the maps to the next generation. I’m still here to mentor. Still sailing, thinking of writing a book to document the 40+ years of practice that shaped this works

If you want to help build something that actually matters, not just another platform, but a commons, the tools are here. The ideas are ripe. The soil can be restored. Let’s keep building, linking, and #makinghistory.

The Open Media Network: More Than Just a Tech Project

At first glance, the #OMN (Open Media Network) might look like a technical project, a collection of code, standards, and protocols. But to think of it only this way is to miss the point entirely.

What we’re building is a social and technological fabric for the #openweb, woven together by shared values and practical needs. Yes, there’s tech, but the tools and standards we develop are not neutral. They lean, by design, toward openness, transparency, collaboration, and grassroots control, the principles of the #4opens.

These standards are not delivered from on high by lone developers or institutional committees. They emerge from the lived, everyday use of technology, from how communities interact, what they need, and how they grow together. They evolve from practice, leading to theory.

The code is nothing without people. The protocol withers without participation.

So, we’re not only building tech, we’re growing a community, and that community gives the technology life. It’s a symbiotic process: the social side shapes the tech, and the tech enables new social formations. One cannot thrive without the other. If you treat it only as a technical solution, it will fail, no matter how elegant the code. If you treat it only as a social project, it will stall, no matter how good the intentions. We have to hold both in balance. In that balance, real change becomes possible.

In this spirit, the #OMN is not just an infrastructure project. It’s a call to those who want to reboot the web from the grassroots up, reclaiming the digital commons from #dotcons and #deathcult systems. Let’s get to build it together, simple, federated, and open.

We all know the current state of independent and grassroots media: scattered, under-resourced, and mostly invisible to the wider public. While the content exists, the connection between producers, platforms, and audiences is too often broken. Meanwhile, corporate platforms like #Failbook, Google, and YouTube work for a few, they continue to dominate how people access and experience media and use this to push down any real radical change.

We need a reset, not by building shiny new silos or reinventing the wheel, but by connecting what already exists into a living network. This is where the Open Media Network (#OMN) comes in. The core idea is to link together the fragments of the #openweb. Rather than replace everything, OMN builds bridges between existing activist sites, blogs, podcasts, and alt media using open standards and simple, low-barrier tools.

The idea is simple: Producers publish content on their existing sites (blogs, podcasts, etc.). Aggregators bring it all together, curating, tagging, and redistributing content through RSS, ActivityPub and metadata flows.

What this means for people is easy discovery of relevant content on the topics they care about. A gateway back to the #openweb – away from algorithmic manipulation and ads. A better browsing experience than siloed social media.

What it means for media producers: Syndication, content appears on dozens or hundreds of relevant sites. More traffic, more engagement, and better visibility without having to chase algorithms. Simple tools to embed rivers of content from others, so you give back to the network while benefiting from it. In short, publish once, appear everywhere, no need to grind content for each individual silo.

Why this works, all content remains owned by the original publishers. The system simply connects and enhances what’s already there. It’s not a new platform, it’s the missing glue between platforms. Why this matters socially, we’ve been burned by both: The #geekproblem of over complication and privacy tunnel-vision and the NGO/foundation/brand-washing of horizontal, activist culture

OMN avoids both by hardcoding openness and cooperation into the foundations, using the #4opens as a social and technical guide. This isn’t a system that can be easily captured or siloed. It’s designed to move faster than co-option, and built for people who want to do, not just talk.

If this sounds old-fashioned, that’s because it is, and it works, we don’t need innovation for its own sake, we need media compost, not just another layer of glossy tech bling. We’re creating the soil for tomorrow’s social movements. Want to help us shovel the #techshit and start planting?

Join the project: https://unite.openworlds.info
Learn more: http://hamishcampbell.com
Spread the word: #OMN #openweb #4opens #grassrootsmedia #reboot

The #Hashtags Tell a Story: Building Trust in a Messy World

We live in a time of crisis. Climate, community, communication, all are breaking down. Our tools and platforms no longer serve us. To make sense of this, we need to tell stories. And in the digital world, hashtags are one of the most powerful ways we do this. But our hashtags don’t just tag, they trace the roots of our problems, and signpost paths out. Each one is a seed. Together, they are a map.

#dotcons – From #openweb to walled gardens. Once, the internet was a place of openness, built on free tools, shared protocols, and community spirit. Then came the #dotcom era, where profit became the driving force. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, what we call the #dotcons, reshaped the web to lock us in and sell us out. A handful of corporations own the highways of our communication, and their algorithms guide what we see, say, and believe.

#dotcon = profit for a few, con for the rest.

#stupidindividualism – A trap we set for ourselves, we were promised empowerment. But what we got was individualism without solidarity. We’re told: brand yourself, hustle alone, curate your reality. But without community, there is no resilience. Without cooperation, there is no change.

#stupidindividualism is the cultural poison that tells you “you’re on your own.” It weakens us from the inside.

#deathcult – Forty years of neoliberalism. The last four decades have been shaped by a ruthless ideology, that markets solve everything, government should step back, and people must compete, not care. This is the #deathcult – a term for the deadly logic of late-stage capitalism. It’s taken over politics, media, even our sense of self.

Climate denial, gig work precarity, housing crises, mental health collapse - these are all symptoms.

#geekproblem – The failure of trust in tech. Even our allies, the people building tech to fix things, fall into a trap. The #geekproblem is when developers replace trust with control, more permissions, more encryption, more complexity. Instead of building with people, they build over them. The result? More unusable tools, more silos, more #techshit that ends up needing to be composted in abandoned GitHub repos.

#4opens is a way out of the mess, we need this new paths, based on simplicity, humility, and openness, a compass. If a project doesn’t pass the #4opens, it’s not building for the commons, it’s just making another silo.

#OMN, shovels and compost, we already have the tools, projects that build media flows, not platforms. To connect blogs and podcasts into open rivers of content, using simple tech instead of complicated “Web3” vaporware or #dotcons mess.

We’ve built up piles of #techshit. It’s time to pick up our #shovels, compost the waste, and grow something new.

Hashtags = Soft tools for hard times. We use soft metaphors because we live in soft systems: culture, emotion, trust. You can’t “solve” these with code alone. You need care, community, and storytelling. Yes, many demand hard, scientific “proofs” or “frameworks.” But if someone can’t feel the metaphor, they’re probably not ready for the work of rebuilding. We need to focus on those who can, who’ve seen that a different world is possible.

If you can understand that different ideologies shape different realities, then these hashtags will start to speak to you.

Let’s recap the key tags in the story:

#dotcons – Corporations that own and fence in our web

#failbook – Facebook and its culture of manipulation

#openweb – The decentralized, people-powered internet

#4opens – A compass for ethical, sustainable tech

#geekproblem – Tech that controls instead of empowers

#stupidindividualism – Isolation sold as freedom

#deathcult – Forty years of neoliberalism and its collapse

#OMN – Building networks, not silos

#techshit – All the unusable tools that ignore real needs

#shovels – The work we must do

#compost – Making good soil from past mistakes

We don’t need heroes, we need gardeners, grab a shovel, let’s build a future please.