The #geekproblem is a humane failure of trust and its replacement with control.
The #hashtags add up to tell a story and thus build a way out of this mess.
The #deathcult is the last 40 years of neo-liberalism.
Need to work in shovels, shit and compost to the story. Hashtags a tool for #openweb organizing ideas/stories/community’s. The is obviously a balance with self-expression. At the moment this “balance” is pure #deathcult being pushed by our shared #stupidindividualism
We have a #shoval, common storied #hashtags we have piles of #techshit to shovel for #compost to build up fertile soil for planting flower and vegetables to nourish our soles and actions.
Why talk in “soft” metaphors?
The issues are soft as are the explanations/metaphors. You can’t have a hard explanation of the social world without building it up from an ideological foundation. As most people are in denial of the possibility of different world views/ideologies this makes “hard” conversations a largely pointless way of communicating. People asking for them have not taken the first step so talking their hand to help them will soon lead you down a different/ideology path. As the project is about #KISS and focus this is something we have limited time/focus for.
If you can glimpse the world from different views/ideologies than the soft/metaphor will talk to you and the attraction for hard will be less strong. These people have a hope of building a different/ideology world/process so can help in real ways.
As we need to focus, it’s not an issue to talk to the first and more important to consolidate around the second… question is finding people that have not been “broken” by #mainstreaming agenders.
Q. I am looking for the definition of open standards, and it’s quite foggy. I found on opensource.com something useful, but it’s still a candle in the dark
A. it’s an under resourced process for the #openweb that need input. It’s at the heart of the #OMN project. How we define it at the #OMN is a standard produced with #4opens process which is a bit circler as open “industrial” standards is one of the #4opens 🙂
All “standards” are social agreements/consensuses thus they CANT BE built form #geekproblem#stupidindividualism and the #deathcult we have wasted and will waste more time if we keep pushing this shit.
The idea of the #OMN is that it does NOT host any/meany of projects it incubates rather it is the “holder” of the standards that glues the projects together. Some of these will be “standards body” some will be defacto by use and consensus. In the end we need to look beyond #nothingnew and create new standards #4opens body’s – go slow on this as concessions are hard and only worthwhile if you do the hard work to achieve them.
Almost everything made in alt-radical tech is obviously pointless and only feeds #fahernista churn.
Why #indymediaback is not a pointless radical tech project.
#nothingnew mediates the churning of pointless tech projects by building things that already work.
In the #fedivers we use this tradition to replace existing #dotcons projects as new #openweb projects
This replicating the #dotcons with #openweb versions has its limits. All code is “ideology” so bringing in the #deathcult to the #openweb by direct copying has its own issues to work through.
We mediate this problem by recreating a widely used radical tech project #indymedia with good existing workflow and embedded in wide radical social networks/agreements.
The value balance in #indymediaback is not in the tech though that is needed. It’s in the #nothingnew social side of the project, without this continuity we have a pointless tech project.
Food for thought.
The #geekproblem is not actually interested in the #openweb as a human value network. Instead, they often feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Feeding off the dying #openweb is bowing down to the #deathcult
Looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.
The #OMN is a shovel to compost this inhuman mess.
Q. A bridge for #matrix to #XMPP this is the most important “political” bridge they could build and support so not to look like a #meto#NGO project. Look at what groups do, not what they say.
A. The moment that both communities manage to provide a seamless, first-class, stable integration of #Matrix and #XMPP without finger-pointing each other for the responsibility to do that, the very moment it doesn’t matter anymore which of these networks you initially signed up to, we could see a huge leap forward for open decentralized messaging.
Q. Think the needs to be a carrot and stick aproch to making this happen. Both supporting the coding and hitting them with the shaming stick. #Matrix as a #meto project likely has to make the move.
A. What if for a moment we gave up on blaming each other and started accepting that #matrix started rather late, tried to learn from experiences and tried to fix some things #xmpp folks weren’t able to address for roughly two decades, for whichever reasons? I see stubbornness on both sides as a main cause for this messy situation. 😑
Q. Its completely understable why we are in this #openweb chat mess.
A. Exactly. The only way to resolve this probably is not to let technical people come up with final product decisions. This overemphasizes the importance of technology and downplays the need to solve actual problems. We end up designing better mousetraps while never even trying to actually catch mice.
Q. The #matrix project being a #NGO has reason not to build the bridge, but more power to build it if they are pushed to do so. The #xmpp folks being a disorganization have less power to build the bridge but more reason to do so. Neither wont to do it and feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Thus, both are actually feeding off the dying #openweb looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.
If I look at the metric of “is the banking system gone yet?” I notice that indeed, no, Bitcoin has not made even a ding in the banking system. The same crooks are running the same old international scams, politicians are still stuffing their ill-gotten cash in offshore accounts, and Bitcoin has made no difference.
I can also look at the independent variable of “are people spending bitcoins on stuff they actually need?”, and indeed again no, nobody around here uses bitcoins, or accepts bitcoins as payment for goods or services.
The energy consumption of Bitcoin exceeds that of the Netherlands (https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons) in this Bitcoin is clearly a crime against our habitat and a crime against humanity.
Bitcoin is not a “net positive for the globe” it set out to disintermediate the banking system, it failed. What it produced was a horrendously inefficient energy-guzzling monstrosity, which only really empowers people who already had a lot of money in the economy prior to Bitcoin’s invention. The usual suspects got richer out of Bitcoin and the banking system wasn’t obsoleted by it.
So on every measurable indicator, Bitcoin has been a failure.
My thought. Bitcoin is the ‘#geekproblem solution to the worship of money, its a meto project. The #geekproblem has meany sins of which the #encryptionist project has been a destructive one for the last 10 years. It is inhuman to make mashion into gods. The smile, trust, a helping hand are the currency of life. The fundamentalist money worship of the last 40 years is going to kill billions of us #XR
We need to start to shovelling this shit, not worship it #OMN is a shovel, compost is the bases of life.
Are a simple way to judge the value of a “alt/grassroots” tech project.
* Open data – is the basic part of a project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data without this open they cannot work.
– you can likely download your chats and metadata, seams to be there so that a open
* Open source – as in “free software” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software this keeps development healthy by increasing interconnectedness and bringing in serendipity. The Open licences are the “lock” that keep the first two in place, what we have isn’t perfect, but they do expand the area of “trust” that a project needs to work, creative commons is a start here.
– its maybe be technically open-source but it is the most restricted open-source you can get so give it half a open
* Open “industrial” standards – this is a little understood but core open, it’s what the open internet and WWW are built from. Here is an outline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
– it looks like it uses no open standed for chat? Not sure for encryption so no open for now
* Open process – this is the most “nebulous” part, examples of the work flow would be wikis and activity streams. Projects are built on linking trust networks so open process is the “glue” that binds the links together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process
– looking at the github the process is locked down and not excessable to normal people, the company structure is a #dotcons so no open.
– so its 1 and ½ opens and is thus not a #4opens project so do not recommend using it.
It’s easy to become a 4opens project and join the #openweb family:
EVIL – At the stinking end you have the #dotcons with full on technicology and privacy nightmare. Facebook messenger, whatsapp (facebook) and telegram (who lies) imessage (just trust us)
NEUTRAL – At the next stage you have the ethical, good technologically working, socially problem apps like signal (king who dose not federate) and matrix (a non-industrial #NGO standard)
GOOD – Then you have the usable, but complex good tech like modern jabber/XMPP that ticks the boxes but still suffers from the #geekproblem
Then you have the #geekproblem with IRC and blockchain spam.
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Or for a less “moral” view on the same subject, a post from the #openweb
You could have a chat compass. Centralized/decentralized on one axis, Open/Closed on the other.
One uncomfortable thing we need to address, calmly and constructively, is this: for the last decade, the right has been better at cooperating around #openweb media than the left.
This isn’t because the right has better politics. It’s because they’ve been more pragmatic about infrastructure. While much of the left argued endlessly about identity, fashion, theory, tone, and purity, right-wing and reactionary groups quietly built linking ecosystems: shared blogs, cross-posting networks, video hubs, newsletters, forums, and self-hosted media that reinforced each other. They understood, often instinctively, that control of distribution matters more than rhetorical perfection.
By contrast, the left has been worse than useless on some of the basics. Something as simple as linking between radical media projects has often failed. Projects compete for attention, split over minor differences, or collapse into internal conflict. Even when the politics align, cooperation doesn’t follow. The result? Fragmentation without any resilience.
Ironically, the few left-wing media projects that have succeeded at scale largely did so by abandoning alternative tech altogether. They built their audiences and careers inside the #dotcons – Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook, Substack – accepting algorithmic dependency as the cost of survival. That choice brought reach, but at the price of autonomy, long-term stability, solidarity and real political leverage.
This isn’t a moral judgement – it’s a structural observation. Platforms reward individual brands, they block collective ecosystems. Once inside that logic, cooperation becomes optional and is often discouraged.
Where progressives have quietly seceded is not primarily in party politics or campaigning, but in lifestyle and cultural subcultures. This is where the #fediverse, #Mastodon, and other #openweb tools first took root. These spaces were driven by values – privacy, autonomy, care, consent – rather than reach or growth.
For a long time, that made them feel “apolitical” in the narrow sense. But in reality, they were deeply political, just not aligned with electoral or media spectacle cycles. They were building infrastructure for different kinds of social relations, not greed feed messaging machines.
Alongside this, we’re seeing tools being used more explicitly for radical and progressive agendas. Projects like #VisionOnTV and #IndymediaBack are reconnecting media with movement. Spaces like #Kolektiva bring an explicitly #fashionista anarchist politics into federated infrastructure. And frameworks like #OMN (Open Media Network) focus on shared process, trust, and governance rather than branding or growth.
This is important because as #mainstreaming accelerates and trust in the #dotcons continues to erode, both progressive and reactionary groups move further into the #openweb. The question is not whether this will happen, it’s how we shape the culture and norms of these spaces.
The right tends to treat tech instrumentally: as a tool for mobilisation, influence, and power accumulation. That can make them effective in the short term, but it often leads to centralisation, cults of personality, and brittle structures that fracture under pressure.
The left, when it’s at its best, treats tech as part of a broader social ecology: something that should support care, plurality, mutual aid, and collective agency. But when the left fails, it fails by refusing to build — mistaking critique for action, and purity for strategy.
The #openweb doesn’t automatically belong to anyone. It’s a terrain of struggle. If progressives don’t show up, cooperate, and do the boring work of linking, hosting, moderating, and sustaining infrastructure, others will fill that vacuum. This is why now is the time to make your space in this network and be heard.
Not by abandoning existing networks overnight, but by practicing a #stepback: one foot in, one foot out. Staying connected where people are, while actively building and strengthening open alternatives. Helping others take that step, rather than shaming them for not already being there.
If we could build #dotcons social media, we can build #openweb social infrastructure. If we could centralise power, we can federate it. The #openweb path is not a retreat, it’s a return to shared ownership, shared memory, and shared responsibility. And it’s long past time the left took it seriously again.
We are talking on the #openweb about what to do with the waves of shit that will flow onto our projects from the perging of the far right in the #dotcons
We have widely spread moderation – the instances with committed crews will grow and the ones with flaky mods or large number of users and few mods will be swamped. This is a normal outcome, we can help to mediate this by brining in more mods into the instances we care about and value.
Having clear communication tools for mods to support each other will help, would setup chat rooms and maybe start a BBB weekly meeting for sysadmins and mods to compare notes and best practice.
The tools to solve this wave are human, we need to build “trust” links that bring the “good” #fedivers together, so it is strong anufe to shead off the shit, in this, shit makes good compost, lets take this time to plant flowers and grow vegetables.
(For the complex crew, hold the shit and mud throwing as this post is not speaking to you)
You might be wondering and feeling depressed from all my posts talking about YOUR responsibility for creating the current mess. And yes I do point my finger at YOU as you clearly are responsible, you empowered the current social and political shit heap we live in. Why is this a positive statement you might be wondering, in a negative depressed sought of way. The ansear is clear and positive you had the power to create this mess, thus you have the power to clear up this mess, a better world is up to YOU.
The example I always use is the growth to globle domination of the #dotcons such as #failbook and its siblings, YOU feed this domination by posting cat pics and memes, all the “user generated” platforms have nothing and no value without YOU feeding this value to them. YOU gave them control of the media that shaped Trump and Brexit.
Its important to separate course and affect, the effect is Trump and Brexit, the course is complex and on the level am talking about here goes back 40 years, though has seeds deeper.
Worth the time to watch a few times as this is the history of the mess we are in and how our current technological/social shitheap was built to shape this agender.
Liberalism, fascism and the neo-liberal #deathcult share a NEGATIVE view of the human condition, of human nature. Socialism, communism and anarchism share a POSITIVE view of human condition/nature. Of course there are meany who throw mud and shit onto this simple view/divide but its useful to clear this mess off to look at the human scale #KISS ideas that these complex views are based on.
My thinking in this post is that YOU get to choose the POSITIVE or the NEGATIVE and are empowered to do this, in my example above, by stepping away from the #dotcons and back onto the #openweb the main thing you have to do is choose and stick to that choice, keep it #KISS, and clean the shit and mud off the simple things in life, compost, grow flowers in the digital realm as well as in the soil that shapes us all.
POSTITNOTE: And yes, for the complex crew, I am feeding #stupidindividualism to itself, eat and grow, plant and sow, build and prosper, be happy, keep it simple.
What we are pushing at the #OMN is x10 to hard for normal people to use. When we outreach meany people come aboard to try and push onto the project 10x harder to use tools than what we push – this is the #geekproblem expecting people to user tools that are x100 times harder to use than the tools the #dotcons offer them for “free”
This destructive behaver has to stop.To have hope of a #openweb reboot., lets try and be human as we have piles of shit to shovel all ready without adding more.
If you would like to help with moving away from this current world/media mess please create an account: https://unite.openworlds.info this is the organizing space, yes this is to complex and needs to be made simpler and more #KISS but for now it’s what we have and works fine. Have a read through the issues and wikis on each #openweb project.
We have a public chat room here where you can get to know the crew and talk about the projects. Yes we know its complex, but agen it does work – here is a “easy” link for android phones https://conversations.im/j/indymediaback@conference.chat.openworlds.info or you will have to be geeky/ask for help and work it out from here: indymediaback@conference.chat.openworlds.info for other platforms.
Sorry about this it’s the #geekproblem that we are working to mediate and with your participation we CAN build useable tools.
If you feel you cannot help with tech/user side then you can support the core project with money here https://opencollective.com or if you don’t have money (we all understand) turn up and make tea at your local protest camp to talk about the #indymediaback#OMN project.
