The project i like to point to as an example. The indymedia project, an early alt-media network that spread the use of open source software and #4opens organizing around the world at the turn of the century. In the UK the was a #geekproblem vs #openweb fight that became nasty over what we would now understand as “activertypub” the #Fediverse vs more centralized silo approach. In the UK you can see this stress point fought as a proxy war over #RSS
The #openweb aggregation side were sold a dud by the #fashernistas being swayed by the #geekproblem It was obvious that the project had to change and move away from central servers to a more aggregation model. BUT the movement was torpedoed by an obviously pointless open-source project instead of implementing an existing standards based RSS they created their BETTER, BRIGHTER flavour which was of course incomparable with everyone else.
This is an example of a “better” but obviously pointless open source project and also destructive behaver. The #indymedia project in the UK was ripped apart internally from this same divide in the end. A bad “open source” outcome. You can find similar behaver today in the fediverse if you look.
It’s a interesting thing to look at. Actually you can see 3 active sides in the internal uk #indymedia mess and important to see the outcome that they ALL LOST in the end.
Without a wider “ideological” world-view, you have no place to step away from your past mistakes. Everyone needs to look at the world from differing perspectives. The current neoliberal dogma in all its different fashionable clothes is just that, a failed dogma that we clearly need to step away from.
The world can be different, I have lived most of my life in a different world to the one that is swallowing everything around me.
I use the word “blinded” to describe meany of the people I meet in tech and grassroots movements. They are blinded for differing surface reasons, on the hippy side it is conspiracy dressed as empty spiritualism. On the liberal progressive side it is internalized neoliberalism feeding fear, cowardice and greed. Best not to mention the process geeks…
There are paths to step away from this mess, #openweb #4opens is one that would be empowering for both non geeks and the more technically minded.
For the social change we need to survive as a society and flourish as a species for this to happen we need to take some time to go back to basics
All economic systems are based an unspoken idea of what it is to be human. To be clear, if you do not have an understanding of this you have little understanding of anything that matters in this era.
Let’s look back to early Christianity to highlight this idea.
* The Old Testament is based on a negative view of humanity, greed, selfishness and gluttony are the motivations that god is controlling by forcing us to bow down to his authority.
* The New Testament is based on love and common humane society.
* Capitalism is based on greed and the worst parts of human nature
* Socialism is based on altruism and the best parts of human nature
As you can see, the divide between these different ideology’s goes back a long way and likely to the dawn of human history.
These simple groupings live within supposedly sister ideology’s, think for example of how the horizontal’ists and the vertical’ists in progressive movements represent the different views.
When we start to understand this, you can use this clear difference to make judgments on what has value and what is destructive in our current society.
When activisty types of people ansear the #openweb posts on facebook with pessimism then trolling. I am assuming they are talking about the last 10 years of the #encryptionists and in this I agree with them it was a wasted 10 years. But over the last few years we have had a #openweb reboot my question in the end is have they tried that at all? if its more trolling I am starting to mute them as the is little value left in #failbook they can of course step over to the openweb if they wont to keep in touch
You can use a #openweb search engine like http://openworlds.info that will remove the “personalisation/manipulation” of the #dotcons and add alternative views to your search. Ps. We need programers and sys admins for the #OMN project to make these tools work better.
When people deny the history of reposabilerty then they deny reality and join the “post truth world” of Trump and Boris.
The majority of my #failbook friends are both sad and bad on this subject as they don’t remember the times they argued that the #dotcons were not evil and cat memes were the right thing to do as the world heated up and is now catching fire.
A lot of the more tech minded run workshops on campining on #dotcons as our ones healthy #openweb tools were ripped apart by our home grown #geekproblem
You guys need to get busy with spades to compost the shit you spread around in the digital world. And spreading more shit just makes the alt more smelly and uninviteing.
I put up with years of trolling on this subject. it’s a good time to balance this and for the first time in a while do something useful. At some point you have to support a real grassroots media project.
Ok you create a account here https://activism.openworlds.info/about this will put you into a small actavists community that is connected to over a million mostly normal and some weard people spread over thousands of servers. You can now fallow and talk to anyone on the network and they can fallow you.
This will give you a good desktop ui
For mobile https://tusky.app/ install this and add the account you setup on activism.openworlds.info to get a good mobile expirence.
Dont know best apple apps but the are a few
Next stage you need to find 20 or more people to fallow. You can do this by useing the search and hashtags. And/Or the are some lists here https://communitywiki.org/trunk of intresting people. Remember you need to fallow 20 or more people for the system to start to work
Then post a intro, use hashtags etc.
Make the effort to talk to people on the network you will likely not know any of them so its like going to a strangers party. But its a fab party when you warm up and build some connections.
Keep posting each day, comment on others posts. The social flow after a while will become self sustaining. Keep your failbook account active at the same time, start to offer a helping hand to your #dotcons friends to take the step, then spend the time introducing them to your #openweb network.
Its too easey to talk cross purpose about actavisam, media and tech if the is any understaning at all most are talking about the end of indymedia and what came after, am talking about the start of indymedia and what came before. A simple misunderstanding that is surprising hard to bridge. There are now millions of normal non geek people using everyday the tech am surgesting, the UI works fine, the apps are good for a phone experience. What am talking about is already a success… just activists are stuck.
The has been a #block on radical tec for the last 10 years. As most actavisam was in with the #encryptionists which is a 10% project only if they overcome the #geekproblem if they don’t its just a wasteland. No wonder people flocked to the lonely #dotcons. Open/closed is a 90/10% split… not a 10/90% split. This the the difference between the start and end of the indymedia project.
Its a process, as we are on #failbook the #hashtags will not get outside to the #openweb. But they will to a limited extent bypass the algorithm and give you a wider view inside facebook. The power comes from useing them in openweb projects and searches. This gives power to organise alongside and outside the #dotcons
Tagging is at the hart of the bottom up approach the #OMN takes. So think of hashtags use inside the dotcons as a small help and a first big stepaway. Of course if you never take the effort to stepaway then its just a small help and kinda pointless.
The is a pessimism in defeat.
Talking about the possibility of rebooting our own media.
Lets rearly focus, when most people talk about our own media. They mostly talk about the closed/bureaucratic indymedia. When i talk about the open/serendipity indymedia. Lets be positive and try and bridge these views.
The #hashtags are a part of the open process. You can see the whole working of the network, ie its open not closed.
Yes i understand the desire for closed, i see this desire destroy left and right. Yes closed is obviously the way to destroy society and the natural environment. Yes closed is better, not.
Its a simple story.
Idea to escape the media manipulation that puts Trump and Johnson into power and will keep doing this as its the business models of #dotcons and #tredtionalmedia Were are the tools to organize. Am asking a simple question and giving a simple sulution #DIY with as strong a protection against #fashernistas cooption and #geekproblem irrelevance.
The name Open media network (#OMN) as its name implies is about building and holding bridges across the ghettos.
Please ignore all the crap that will be flying about and do something simple and positive.
A bit of history: Do you remember the early open process #indymedia before it died as closed and bureaucratic. It was not a ghetto and helped to shape #traditionalmedia narrative. If leftwing/anarchists history teaches anything usefull power is all about organization self or top down… what tools do we have to organize if the answer is non then we have no power just bubbles… kinda what today tells us. Learn the wrong thing and the next 5 years are lost.
Well that did not go well, were next?
Negative or Positive
Do we have the power and will to choice?
#OMN is a needed first step if you have power and will to overcome your digital addictions.
More ideas? We have 5 years of empty political space, filling this time with negative will be a waste. Who is up for building posative DIY, increasing the commons were we have the power to do this outside the electoral mainstream.
Have you taken a caring step to the #openweb have you stayed in the #dotcons to offer a helping hand to others? The answer to these questions likely sits uneasily with you, it does with meany.
Take the time to outreach your friends onto #openweb media projects is a basic step. https://campaign.openworlds.info if you try this one then you should take the time and effort to find 20 new to you people to follow otherwise it will not work. There are NO addiction algorithms on the #openweb projects so will only work if you make it work. Gather the people like you outside the #dotcons is a good first step.
If the election is a disaster over the next few days this is directly connected to your use of the #dotcons as your media source. This with the billionaire #traditionalmedia is pushing social control of the #deathcult over us all.
You have had plenty of time and opportunity to reboot the #openweb as your source of news. That you have not lifted a finger to do this is your own responsibility.
Of course maybe it will not be a disaster, as it clearly should not be. Cross fingers and get out into the streets to knock doors.
This election is human being vs the mashine, Labour supporters knocking doors vs dark targeted negatively adverts on Facebook.
The labour spending, much less than the tories is positive, in the light. The majority of tory spending, much more, is in the dark targeted by algorithm to swing the marginal, to push the darkness.
The problem we face for a progresive future is that the #dotcons that dominate our media were built to push dark agenders. its a built into their business models, the #deathcult is strong oneline
It’s well past time to step away from this mess #OMN
In more than 20 years of activism I have seen our use of language fail us. There mainstreaming language, all we have, has no power it is just hot air.
If we are to have hope. We have to reclaim our language, we have to recreate our language. We need to call everyday things by what they are.
#deathcult the neo-liberalism that has ripped our society and ecology apart for the last 40 years. This is inside everything we touch and shapes our thoughts.
* liberalism is seen as a good, it is, the small “neo” is meaningless in our language.#XR has made mainstream that it is about death and despair at an unimaginable scale. A cult? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult its invisible death that we all share and believe in, the glue that binds us.
#dotcons are the new internet based media companies such as#failbook who are the #deathcult in code and algorithms, all the new economy which shapes us every hour of our lives.
* it took 10 years of fighting against the#openweb for us to accept our digital addictions. We knew that they were cons to make lots of money, what we did not know was that they were about social control.
These new#hashtag words need a growing community to reache a critical mass. Then the door to the mainstreams will open. Until then it is locked and bolted and hot air of our current languages stinks.
Throwing ideas into the air to see where they land, this is a sketch, not a blueprint – a thought experiment. As if we’re serious about using the #openweb to challenge #mainstreaming, and build alternatives to failing capitalist status quo, we have to start somewhere. So let’s ask: what does a world built around the #4opens look like?
We’re talking about a soft move away from capitalism, not an apocalyptic collapse or utopian leap, but a pragmatic, grounded shift in how we live, relate, and build together in the digital era. A society governed by openness, not profit, future rooted in collaboration, not control.
The End of Money as the Primary Motivator
In a #4opens world, exchange is no longer driven by the blunt instrument of money. The logic of scarcity fades when information is abundant and freely shared. With open data and transparent process, value can be tracked, distributed, and balanced – not hoarded.
Imagine a path where you give not to accumulate, but to re-balance. Where you’re recognized and supported for what you contribute, openly. This doesn’t mean the end of value, it means the end of commodification as the only language for it. Capitalism made money sacred. The #4opens world breaks that spell in the digital paths, which can then be used as a lever to re-balance this in the more physical world.
Radical Reductions in Inequality
The current digital economy centralises control in the hands of the #nastyfew, the platform owners, the server landlords, the data hoarders. In contrast, a #4opens world puts common infrastructure – physical and digital – under #FOSS democratic stewardship.
Open code, open governance, open data, open processes. These tools dismantle the gatekeeping logic of closed silos. We stop renting access to our lives and can then stop working to make the rich richer. What results is not just a redistribution of resources, but a recomposition of power. Rich and poor stop being natural categories, we start down the path of inequality becoming a historical memory.
Ecological Transformation via Digital Abundance
In this world changing, we break the toxic loop where growth = progress. As digital goods expand – freely shareable, replicable, adaptable – the material basis of economic growth shrinks.
Instead of growth for its own sake, we can choose to sift focus to ecological outcomes. Energy systems localise, circular economies flourish. The planet breathes again because we’ve stopped mistaking consumerism for culture. On this post-consumption, we can meet human needs without destroying the biosphere.
Real Community, Not Algorithmic Spectacle
When your networks are open, knowable is modifiable, you stop being a metric or a data point. You become a person in a community again, who can re-build networks of care and trust. The #4opens give us tools to know each other better, to collaborate without permission, and to keep relationships alive across distance and time. We escape the isolation of the #dotcons by remembering what it means to belong, not to brands, but to people.
Reclaiming the Meaning of ‘Common Sense’
In this transition, we’ll have to rethink almost everything we take for granted. Why do we work so much? Why do we compete instead of collaborate? Why is everything a secret? Why are we trained to distrust?
The capitalist world naturalised its own ideology, it taught us that exploitation was just “how the world works.” The #4opens world undoes this conditioning. We’ll discover that our “common sense” was a prison, and that open thinking makes new realities possible.
We already lost privacy, let’s be honest that the #dotcons and the surveillance state see everything. This isn’t a warning, it’s the present, there’s no going back to closed data. Not legally or technically. The dream of sealed-off privacy is gone. So what can we do?
We open the #metadata bag. All of it. We make the hidden flows of power visible. We stop pretending that corporate surveillance is okay while peer-to-peer is dangerous.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable. But in a world where we’ve already been stripped naked by Google, Amazon, and the NSA, radical transparency becomes the preferd path to justice. The question isn’t “how do we hide?” but “how do we share wisely and govern openly?”
What Does a Post-Capitalist, Open Society Look Like?
It’s not utopia, it’s messy, it’s federated, full of tension and debate. But it’s also a world where:
Decisions are made in the open, not behind closed doors.
Software is built to be forked, not locked.
Platforms are governed by people and communitys, not shareholders.
Care is more valuable than control.
Collaboration is default, not an afterthought.
This is the vision of the #4opens, not a theory, but a practice. A lived, everyday politics. A shift from passive consumption to active creation. It’s the beginning of something new, rooted in #FOSS, a real path, where everything we already know works if we just trust each other enough to try.
So, what does a #4opens world look like? It looks like the world we’re already building, underneath the rubble of the old one. Time to pick up your shovels.
Putting content into #dotcons creates a feedback loop with diminishing returns. The impact is marginal – and shrinking – because all you are really doing is training #failbook’s algorithms to better sell you, and everyone who interacts with your content, more “stuff.” This includes not just products, but ideology: the subtle shaping of thought, behaviour, and community through algorithmic social control.
It’s very easy to get pulled into a #flamewar on #failbook, because conflict drives engagement, and engagement drives ad views for the #dotcons. The system is designed for this. Outrage is profitable.
If you’re serious about progressive change, you could instead be having a grounded, meaningful conversation on the #openweb with millions of other people, where human activity and community are the outcome, not ad-driven consumerism.
I use the #deathcult tag to highlight the neo-liberal era of the last 40 years which has left us in this current mess. A cult as few of us inside can see outside “common sense” and death as #XR has made the climate chaos cliff we are facing and billions of deaths visible to the mainstream. Of course neo-liberalism is just an extream form of capitalism we had it before in the UK during the irish potato famine with its millions of deaths and displacements. When people realised the problems mainstream moved to social democracy (soft) capitalism before “forgetting” agen in the late 1970’s. Corbyn and Sanders are trying to move us back to social democracy, which is of course no sulution BUT much better than the current mess. We as radicals need to do better #OMN
My point is that sanders and Corbyn are old mainstream and the current #deathcult are the current mainstream that’s dieing now. Ie we should create real radicalism to make Corbin and Sanders the centrist they actually are if you look back for a moment to the 20th century. We could get some real change then, if we keep them as the “radicals” then the is no future #XR
Calling the current lot a #deathcult is about opening up the space for Corbin and Sanders to be centrists in our minds. No matter what we do the right will be nutters, so not aiming at them with the tags at all.
This applys to everything. So the digital economy are all #dotcons and #failbook with its ownership of whatsapp and Instagram etc. Is the digital leader of the the #deathcult with google and Apple not far behind.
Pushing the dialog is probably the most powerful nonviolent direct action you can do from a armchair or public meeting
Q. The tags my friend are meaningless distracting drivel alas. That allude to something grand. When I click on them sometimes all I see is a list of Hamish posts. They have some utility if they bind peoples posts by theme, which is how they came to be popular on twitter I guess. They are useless when forging ahead one ones own with one’s own invented idiosyncratic tags that just litter ones text with # chars and jargon.
You have great things to say and if you shared them in common English you would reach many more people with them, I assure you.
A. look at the problem I am trying to solve agen. You actually do describe it in your reply but that is as far as your understanding goes in this reply. Note if you would have added a common #hashtag your post WOULD have been added to that hashtag view and the would have been more than my voice. Now keep adding new (common) hashtag users and you get a meaningful conversation and organic spread. When you don’t do this all you have is your #failbook echo chambers. I call this problem #stupidindividualism and it is both #mainstreammedia bad and sad
Note hashtags are comparable across #silos and more importantly on the #openweb get a #hashtag conversation going then do a web search on it to reach outside the #dotcons its very basic stuff.
You can use a 
