Why did the thousands of open internet projects fail? Despite large amounts of state, foundation, #NGO funding. There were early successful activist tech projects, all proved to be pointless or withered with success. In all cases I would argue that the underlining fairer was one of ideology, almost all projects worked against the dominate ideology of the net and web itself. Just as the #dotcons burned and bust repeatedly, traditional media was hopeless in till a new generation came along who had an inclining of the underlining working of the new tech ideology.
The few open projects that worked with in the ideology of the web were swamped by the pushing of the funding of the #mainstreaming of the web/internet. I am arguing here that the majority of people making a living in the #openweb/internet world are core to the problem not the solution, I could name hundreds of projected with the word open/radical in um who actively destroyed “open”.
A tiny minority created a world expanding technology based on the ideology and practices of trust based Anarchism. This exploded into the existing tech/communication worlds, pushing aside, pushing over, all the “better” 20th century vertical (ideology) tech already in place. Open became dominant for a while and this open was “locked in” because of a strong ideological thread throughout the standards and structures of the internet/web, the very “chaos” of the #openweb protected it from the “vertical” (20th century) locking of corporates such as Microsoft etal.
Nothing last forever, a new generation came along who merged the “open” back into the “closed” can’t really blame them, they were children of Thatcher and Reagan. Am amazed to have lived though the time of the #openweb, the world really did feel very different for a time. Who are the heroes and who the villeins, this history is unwritten yet, better get to it.
This is my realistic/pessimistic view of where we are at LINK
My point of view is that both are right, the open internet was a historical “mistake” and with Winer that there are a few waves left, the storm is not over yet. There is a logic to the digitisation of everything and the web was a living example of this let loss, it was a tsunami that crashed over our cultures and this storm is not over yet.
Yes, the commons opened up by the early web was enclosed by #dotcons, but their sea defences are low and weak and the digitisation storm still rages.
We are free to make our lives have meaning in this stormy weather.
The are a lot of “insane” people in activism and counter-culture, its what makes it exciting, dynamic and affective. However with everything its a question of balance, lets look at how a movement stagnates, fails or growes and blossems.
A short off the top of head list
NGO’ists push limited bureaucratic thinking over everything, they get into bed with anything that can be shaped to their mind set and is fashionably fundable. They take up mind space and squander resources. The vast majority of “institutional” money goes into this.
Encryptionists – service the paranoid fuckists, they have a strong tendencies to reduce usability and create dangerous fantasises of security and anonymity. The are a lot of these as this has been a dominate way of thinking for the last 5-10 years.
Traditional media panderers have there uses for a companion, but soon start to misshape the movement to mainstream agenda’s – hard not to have this outcome.
Horizontal dotcom’sts try to use our movement to jump start their dotcom, fine if its built with the #4opens, if its not then distraction if failur and disaster if people use it – so bad outcome both ways.
Insecure and nasty lifestyles are endemic and are attracted like fly’s to any successful grassroots project and they are feed by the felandering of the Traditional media panderist – this can easily tip into being a movement death spiral.
Hidden careerist are good for movement building as tend to be the competent ones, but start to drift to NGO and media philanders to build their careerer rather than the grassroots movement.
Paranoid fuckwists are the bedroock of most grassroots campines and in small doses help hold things together, get to many of them in places of responsibility and you have out of control infighting.
Dogmatic liberals are lovely people, but a strong force for blocking sustainable alternatives, its imposable to meditate the breakdowns with a few of these at the core of any counter-culture.
Now for a corresponding “good” list of activist “insanity’s”
On this subject it helps to be a bit “mad” to stay in grassroot movement for any leaghnth of time
The hand’s off NGO’s the is a long (hidden) history of healthy NGO/atavism synergy
The user focused KISS per2per’ists are working on the uphill project of (re)booting the #openweb.
Traditional media outreach’sts are promoting grassroots media and technology by linking it into traditional media narratives to build the world rather than misshape it.
Horizontal dotcom’s are working on “open” federated sustainability rather than closed client server “solutions”
Lifestyles are though opening up in the campaigning lifestyle flow and learning to let go and build healthy connected lives.
Open careerist, are bootstrapping the campaign while bootstrapping themselves, they take the open energy like a trosion horse into the belly of the traditional beast. Some one has to do this…
Secure organising crew is everyone job to keep it calrm and focus, and help out with the very real “offline” security and communication that activism needs.
Liberal liberals the calm and the balance of “common sense” that’s needed to keep things from going horribly wrong.
Activism is a dynamic and crazy place full of “insane” people doing fantastic things, its a balancing act to hold it all together, to much of the top and not anufe off the bottom and it quickly slides into something few people wont to be involved in – then disappears with little trace.
Organising on Facebook is suicide for the internet and the future of our society. We need to do different, and we need to do this now, luckily this isn’t actuality a very hard thing to do.
The most simple/basic thing to do is to have an organising website hosted on a independent/activist server – you can ask such people as OMN for a social office organising site or network23 for a basic blog. Then to reach into (but not be controlled by) the closed walls of Facebook you can post links to your content FROM YOUR SITE to Facebook. With this, you can kinda have the best of both worlds.
The second part is more ambitious and geek centred, read this link for some ideas on building tools LINK
It’s important not to get engrossed in the geek/activist paranoia about security – the is non-on the #openweb, it was designed that way, and It’s why it has been so successful at tacking over the world in the way it has. If you want to do anything secret or possibly illegal – do not do it on ANY activist or corporate website, that’s what physical meet-ups are for.
The is a potential small exception to this statement, will talk about Per-Per encrypted connections in another post – BUT this is not a thing to use for 99% of activist communication so not relevant here.
At a minimum, all future campaigns should be using the atavist hosting and post links to inside the walled corporate internet. I can help, leave a comment here on this activist hosted site. Or try this site out for organising
The Genoa G8 Summit protests, held from July 18 to 22, 2001, were a turning point in the global justice movement. More than 200,000 people converged on the medieval port city to block the summit and challenge the concentrated power of the world’s richest nations. A gathering of the priests of the #deathcult, grinding the planet into dust for profit.
For many of us, the G8 represented everything wrong with the world: an unelected body shaping economic and social policy for billions without legitimacy, accountability, or consent. We traveled to Genoa not as isolated activists but as a flowing living ecosystem of movements, anarchists, trade unionists, farmers, climate campaigners, media collectives, migrants’ rights groups, students, pacifists, the lot. We were there to resist and to build alternatives in the cracks protest pushes wider.
Arriving in a besieged city, Genoa a few days before the demonstrations to help set up the Media Center, for grassroots reporting. Genoa, though, felt nothing like a holiday town. Police were everywhere. Riot vans on street corners. Helicopters thudding overhead. The protest convergence center was being built on the beach; just 100 yards away from the stadium, where police forces were massing in their thousands. Walking around felt like moving inside a tightening fist.
We slept in the camper van that first night, tucked beside a half-built marquee. At dawn, we joined the organisers at the Diaz school, the building that housed both the Genoa Social Forum and the Media Centre.
We requisition two PCs from other rooms, installed video editing softwer, and turned them into the only two shared editing stations in the building. One was upgraded with a new hard drive and FireWire card for DV footage, not that it mattered, because it broke on day two and never recovered. The analogue capture system we had brought did most of the work that went online.
On one of our first reporting trips, filming outside the police barracks beside the convergence centre, we were detained by undercover cops. More arrived. Then more. Ten or twelve by the end. They demanded our tapes. I refused. They checked our documents, questioned us for hours, and released us without charge. I secretly filmed some of them; two would resurface later outside the IMC on the night of the raid.
Driving around the city to document the expanding “red zone” – the militarised area blocking off the summit – we were detained twice more. Civil rights meant nothing here. The police behaved like a sovereign power unto themselves. That Orwellian twinge – the sense that you are inside a lawless machine – grew stronger every day.
When the city turned red, one protester, Carlo Giuliani, was shot dead by police. Fear rippled across the city. The #IMC became a space threaded with arguments about what to do. People drifted away, hour by hour, some deciding the risks were too great. By midnight the centre had half emptied.
Then the screams came: “THE POLICE ARE COMING!”
Looking out the window, I saw nothing at first. Panic surged anyway, people barricading doors, grabbing bags, racing up staircases. Marion moved the archive tapes to the hiding place I’d scouted earlier: the water tower on the roof.
From the rooftop I filmed carabinieri smashing into the building next door, the Diaz Pertini school, with vans and sledgehammers. Chairs were used to break windows. Tables became battering rams. It was happening fast, shockingly fast. Then I saw them entering our stairwell.
The Diaz Raid: Running for our lives. I headed downstairs to check if the Media Center itself was being stormed. Turning the stairwell corner, I came face-to-face with a fully armoured carabiniere charging upward, truncheon raised, panting with adrenaline. I spun and bolted. Two flights up, shouting, “They’re in the building!” I sprinted to the roof and slipped into the tower.
Inside the darkness, I whispered for Marion. No answer. I crept through the corridor of water tanks, lit only by the IR beam from my camera. Finally, a small, terrified voice: “Turn the light off.” She had hidden behind the last tank, clutching tapes and equipment.
For hours, three, maybe four, we lay silent as the helicopter’s spotlight swept the windows. Police boots thudded across the roof. Below us, the city echoed with screams, crashes, and the chanted word “ASSASSINI.”
When the helicopter finally left, we emerged. The rooftop was scattered with stunned survivors. Downstairs, the destruction was total. Computers smashed. Hard drives ripped out. Doors hanging loose. The walls of the Diaz school across the street were painted with blood. Skin and hair stuck to corners. Piles of clothing soaked red. People moving like ghosts.
The Carabinieri had left their calling card.
What happened inside that school, was not policing. It was torture, humiliation, and fascist ritual. Ninety-three sleeping demonstrators were beaten so badly that the floors resembled a slaughterhouse. People hiding under tables or sleeping in bags were clubbed unconscious. A 65-year-old woman’s arm was broken. One student needed surgery for brain bleeding. Others had their teeth kicked out. One officer cut clumps of hair from victims as trophies.
Those who survived were taken to Bolzaneto detention centre, where the abuse continued: beatings, stress positions, pepper spray, threats of rape, and forced chants of “Viva il Duce!” and “Viva Pinochet!” A systematic, organised brutality. This wasn’t loss of control, it was ideology.
Aftermath: Truth in the Ruins. The Italian state tried to bury it all. But survivors, lawyers, journalists, and prosecutors fought for years. The European Court of Human Rights eventually ruled that Italy had committed grave human rights violations. But almost none of the officers served jail time. Politicians escaped entirely.
The police weren’t out of control. They were following a logic, the logic of protecting elitists power against democratic dissent. The logic of the #deathcult. The logic that treats people as obstacles, not citizens. Genoa showed the world what happens when movements gain too much momentum: the mask drops.
And still, in that chaos, seeds were planted – #indymedia, #OMN, the global justice movement, the early #openweb – messy, hopeful, compost for future uprisings.
This is still well worth a read, it’s too late to save the common web from Scoble and an answer from Dave Winer
This is something I have been facing for the last few years, and its why i have been working on the visionOntv open web project. Phwww…. but as you may have realised this has been an uphill battle which has become bogged down in the trenches and the mud.
If you care about the #openweb, pass some ammunition… and a flask of hot choclet and rum.
Blacksky: This project, created by the crypto crew for the #NGO liberal types, is firmly rooted in the #dotcons sphere. While it claims to align with #openweb values, its foundation leans towards control and capital rather than grassroots paths. Yes it adds diversity to the ecosystem but will likely become another messy experiment that feeds into the compost pile. Support it if you feel inclined, but be prepared with a shovel to deal with the outcomes.
Bonfire Networks: A project from the #NGO world trying to push into grassroots territory. However, history is littered with similar efforts that fail repeatedly due to their inability to adapt to the #openweb’s native ethos. While it contributes to diversity, its trajectory reflects a pattern of missteps.
Darius Kazemi: A #mainstreaming grassroots figure who has a notable presence but seems more focused on occupying space rather than producing actionable outcomes. While there might be potential utility here, none has been apparent thus far.
db0: This one remains a mystery for now; no further insight is available.
Emelia Smith (@ThisIsMissEm): I’ve had conversations with Emelia, but their contributions seemed incoherent and mostly negative. They might align with the #fashernista tendency—style over substance. Time will tell if they add value or continue in this vein.
Erin Kissane: A figure from the NGO and academic world who shows an appreciation for grassroots efforts but is not inherently part of that ecosystem. There may be some utility here, but needs meaningful contributions.
Fediseer: An intriguing but unclear initiative. It’s worth keeping an eye on to understand its objectives and implications for the #openweb.
Independent Federated Trust and Safety (IFTAS): This group has ambitions to play a core role in trust and safety, but has yet to approach this responsibility with the respect or engagement needed for genuine collaboration. As with similar #NGO projects, it’s wise to have a shovel ready to compost any emerging mess.
Lemmy: Originally a Reddit clone, this project has taken an interesting turn by decentralizing its focus towards forums and wikis. It’s an intriguing experiment that deserves continued observation as it evolves.
Mastodon: A truly native grassroots project that has been instrumental in expanding the fediverse and the adoption of ActivityPub. However, as the project grew, it gravitated towards an #NGO-like structure and began engaging in #mainstreaming. This shift is a natural but challenging path for projects as they scale.
Newsmast Foundation: An #NGO initiative centred around liberal #mainstreaming of news flows. While it adds diversity to the ecosystem, there remains an urgent need for native grassroots media projects to balance this narrow perspective.
Pixelfed: A companion project to Mastodon with a similar ethos. While it’s a positive addition to the ecosystem, its path leans towards #mainstreaming. It’s sometimes positioned as a token example of diversity by the Mastodon team, which could become problematic if this narrative goes unchallenged.
Social Web Foundation: An #NGO-backed initiative with some grassroots influence from its current leadership. However, in vertical structures like this, leadership tends to shift with changes in funding, which will alter its trajectory.
Spritely Institute: A strong technical project focused on a more peer-to-peer (#p2p) approach. While the technology is promising, its messaging and outreach need significant improvement to achieve broader understanding and any adoption.
This list reflects the diversity and challenges within the #openweb space. It underscores the need to balance different approaches, highlight the very real lack of native grassroots efforts, and the need to remain vigilant against co-option by #dotcons and #NGO mainstreaming paths.
Blacksky is a #dotcons being built by the crypto crew for the #NGO liberal types, it is native to the #openweb so part of diversity, but, in the end likely more mess to compost, support it if you like but have a shovel handy.
Bonfire Networks comes from the #NGO world pushing into the grassroots, not native and like all projects with this motivation there is a long history they fail, and fail, and fail. It’s a problem flow in the #openweb so a part of diversity.
Darius Kazemi a #mainstreaming grassroots person, who talks and takes up space, might have some use but not as far as I know.
Emelia Smith (@ThisIsMissEm) I talked to this one, but they did not make sense and were largely negative, #fashernista maybe. Who knows, let’s see.
Erin Kissane NGO and academic guy who likes grassroots, but is not. Might have some use, but not so far as far as I know
Fediseer This is a strange one, what is this about?
Independent Federated Trust and Safety (IFTAS) An in-group pushing into a core role, not respectfully so far, but let’s see where they go. Have a shovel at hand to compost the mess.
Lemmy Has an interesting history, a clone of Reddit, then pushing the core coding out to forums and wikis, it’s interesting and worth watching.
Mastodon a native grassroots project that pushed the fediverse and activitypub wider. With this move, as the project grew, they shifted to the #NGO path and engaged in #mainstreaming as people do.
Pixelfed is a companion to mastodon, a good project, if soft and #mainstreaming in its path. Is kinda used as meto project by the mastodon crew to say the is diversity, this could be a problem if unchallenged.
Social Web Foundation is a #NGO backed project, it has a bit of grassroots to it from its current leadership, but leadership changes in vertical structures when funding flows changes.
Spritely Institute a good tech project, a more p2p path, but hard to understand, needs actual outreach.
