The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

In the tech world of social change and challenge, we’re living with a strange imbalance. Too often, the spaces we use and try and build are crowded with useless, self-destructive prats – people more interested in ego, control, and clout than in making anything grow from the roots. And when they do very rearly act, their “help” is often poison: it blocks, slows, and derails.

At the same time, the number of people doing truly useful, collective, grounded work feels small. You can see this in every grassroots project, tech or activism, whether it’s, coding radical #FOSS projects, building alternative media, running servers, or planting food forests. The people who actually show up and keep things moving are always fewer than we need.

Then into this gap steps the parasites of #mainstreaming. Yes, they look like they’re helping. They reach out, they polish up the image, they “outreach” grassroots tech projects to wider audiences. But under the surface, this isn’t really helping. What they are doing, shifts focus away from what makes grassroots powerful – trust, messy collectives, stubborn autonomy – and towards something glossy and hollow.

Real help doesn’t come from smoothing out the rough edges for palatability. Real help is messy, reciprocal, and based in care. It’s, shipping working code, turning up to maintain the server, to keep the firewood dry, to cook food for the meeting, to argue about governance without walking away. It’s staying rooted when everything pulls you towards the easy path of compromise.

The good news? The work that does happen, when it’s done by those few stubborn and lovely souls who commit to it, is real and lasting. Every #fediverse instance that survives another year, every scrappy #openweb tool that stays online, every cooperative that resists collapse – these are proof that grassroots power is alive.

So yes, most of what gets labelled as “help” from outside is damage. But the grassroots path is still there. If we keep it simple – #KISS – and keep choosing trust over polish, collectives over branding, we can tip the balance back to where it needs to be.

Let’s look at some examples:

#Indymedia worked because it was built on trust, open publishing, and direct participation. But once the dogmatic #eekproblem, the NGOs and professional activists came sniffing, the energy shifted. Gradely the rough edges, the wild openness, became a “problem to be managed” instead of a strength. And with that, the vitality drained.

Or look at the #Fediverse. It thrives when it stays scrappy, with collectives running their own servers and shaping their own cultures. But already we see #Bluesky, #Threads, and NGO-backed “Fediverse Foundations” pushing. They’ll say they’re amplifying the movement. In reality, they’re clipping its wings, taming it for the same #mainstreaming logic that gutted Indymedia.

The #OMN (Open Media Network) was always an attempt to resist this drift. Instead of begging for a seat at the mainstream table, it builds trust networks from the ground up. No gatekeeping, no branding games – just collectives #4opens sharing content, tools, and governance in open, federated ways. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t polish well for a TED talk. But it works, because it stays close to where publishing and power actually happen: at the grassroots.

I’ve seen this first-hand in my own work. On the boats at Rummelsburger Bucht, in affinity groups fighting #climatechaos, and in rebuilding #indymediaback, the same pattern repeats. The parasite #mainstreaming arrive smiling, but what matters is the stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust. Those are the people who keep the fire burning. The #KISS truth, it doesn’t take everyone. It just takes enough of us who refuse to give in.

While it’s easy (and justified) to call out the parasitic #mainstreaming types, it’s harder (and more important) to think about how to bridge to them without being captured or co-opted.

1. Meet them on fluffy values, not hard projects. Most #mainstreaming people say they care about openness, creativity, and inclusion. Use those as starting points. Instead of hitting them with #4opens or #OGB right away, talk in simple, human terms: trust, care, mutual aid, freedom. Then show how the OMN already embodies those values with examples like: When talking about #indymedia reboot, don’t begin with federation protocols; begin with “this is a people’s newswire where communities publish, and no single organisation can control it.” Then connect that to the tech.

2. Frame the commons as abundance, not scarcity. Mainstreaming comes with a scarcity mindset (“we need funding,” “we need gatekeepers”). We counter with an abundance story: the #openweb grows by sharing, remixing, and federating. Emphasise that our strength isn’t owning the pie but baking more pies together. An example might be: OMN flows content between blogs, small sites, and #fediverse projects. This isn’t competing with “platforms,” it’s weaving a bigger web where everyone benefits.

3. Offer them low-stakes ways to join. Not everyone is ready to dive headfirst into spiky, fluffy, grassroots culture. Make lightweight on-ramps: federated publishing plugins, easy “flows not silos” demos, or spaces where they can share without having to fully sign up.

4. Keep the tone sometimes fluffy, sometimes spiky. People new to grassroots tech often get scared off by the first bit of conflict. Fluffy spaces – campfires, storytelling, art – can bring them in. The spiky edges – calling out parasitism, blocking #NGO capture – should remain, but not be the only door in.

5. Make co-creation visible. Show them that grassroots projects don’t just “talk” about collaboration – we live it. When people see decision-making without bosses, publishing without gatekeepers, and coding without silos, they realise it’s possible. An example of this can be found in #OMN wiki pages on Unite Forge which are messy, open, and collective. That’s not a bug, it’s a living record of co-creation. Point to that messiness as proof of trust-based work that they can make more “tidy”, this is work as gift.

The #bridgeing isn’t about diluting grassroots culture into “NGO-speak.” It’s about keeping our paths, our politics sharp, while offering ways for curious people to join with less fear. Some will drop off (parasites always will), but others might step over the bridge and become part of the messy, hopeful commons.

#KISS

Who are the #nastyfew?

They are the people who always rise to the top when #mainstreaming takes hold. You see them on TV, in parliament, running #NGOs, managing #dotcons tech projects.

On the surface, they don’t always look bad – in fact, they often present as competent, articulate, even charming. But scratch that surface and the pattern is clear: their drive is not shared flourishing, it’s possession and control.

This minority #nastyfew, from a historical view, are today’s bourgeoisie. Marx outlined (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie), that the bourgeoisie historically gained their power through ownership of the means of production – factories, land, capital – while the working class had nothing but their labour to sell. The bourgeoisie used their control over wealth and coercion to keep society in balance, a balance where they stayed on top and everyone else stayed dependent.

The same dynamic runs through our present, the #nastyfew work to preserve a status quo that serves them. They exploit labour (waged or unwaged), capture resources, and use subtle or blunt coercion to suppress any change or challenge.

Those who hold power – social, technical, financial – remain the #nastyfew unless we actively work to compost them.

Then, in our cultural circles, we have our own “common sense” #blocking, the “parasites” who feed from progressive paths.

#fashernistas – chasing visibility, hashtags, and trends instead of substance. They drain energy by endlessly cycling the latest buzzwords while ignoring the compost underneath.

#Blinded dogmatic liberals – well-meaning perhaps, but so trapped in their own ideology that they block radical change without even seeing it.

The wannabe #nastyfew – those who orbit power, adopting the habits of control in hopes of rising up themselves.

Neo-liberals in disguise – the most dangerous, because they consciously wear the clothing of other paths: climate, diversity, openness… while quietly feeding the #deathcult of enclosure, growth, and control.

Some of these act blindly, reproducing harmful patterns without much thought. Others are deliberate: they know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it to consolidate control.

The unthinking #mainstreaming majority are shadows of the above. They’re not directly malicious, but they absorb the surface story: They repost the slogans. They nod along with “common sense” solutions pushed by the #dotcons and NGOs. They go with the flow, even when the flow is a sewer. Without working composting, they become the mulch for the #nastyfew to grow stronger.

The “nice liberals”. Not all liberals are destructive. Sometimes they play a healthy role: They keep projects afloat by doing practical work. They can mediate between radicals and the #mainstreaming. They often mean well, and can be allies if they’re not left holding the steering wheel all the time. They’re not the compost, they’re more like the worms: sometimes useful, sometimes wriggly, but part of the soil cycle.

And beyond, there are what has value, the progressive radical paths – both #fluffy (trust, care, openness) and #spiky (confrontation, defence, rupture). That’s another layer of the compost pile, and deserves its own focus. The key point: the #nastyfew and their parasites will always try to rise up in any fertile ground. The progressive trick is to compost them early – recycle their energy, block their possessiveness, and keep the soil rich for new seeds.

To recap, let’s look at some history. When the #openweb reboot began about a decade ago, it was rooted in grassroots values: #4opens, federation, collective governance, affinity trust networks. But as soon as the energy started to gather, the #mainstreamin pushed in:

#Dotcons pivoting into the space – Facebook rebranding as “Meta” and trying to swallow the Fediverse through the #Threads/ActivityPub move. This is enclosure dressed up as “openness”.

Standards capture – The #NGO actors increasingly gatekeeper the “neglected” #W3C processes, pushing, more corporate-driven priorities while blocking messy grassroots paths that did the shovelling to grow the reboot during the seedling years.

Control of resources – a few “elitist” individuals began hoarding power over infrastructure, domain names, and repos, reproducing the same top-down model we’re supposed to be escaping.

The result? We are seeing the #mainstreaming channeling energy away from collective growth into more controlled, branded silos. The Fediverse started as messy, small-scale, radical. But the same pattern repeated:

SocialHub degeneration – once the buzzing hub for ActivityPub, it decayed into a handful of blockers. The sometimes competent-and-charming surface masks a deeper instinct for control. Threads stagnate, dissent is suppressed, and the soil turns barren.

Mastodon centralization – while #Mastodon has been vital, its dominance has also let a single dev-team shape the Fediverse “common sense”. That concentration of reputation and technical control looks very much like a wannabe mini-bourgeois class rising.

#NGO incursions – funded NGOs present themselves as allies, but bring managerialism, paywalls thinking, and “stakeholder” logic. Instead of composting conflict, they plaster over it with workshops and careerism. Then #block the people who complain.

This is the #Fediverse version of “workers remain workers, employers remain employers”: contributors remain contributors, gatekeepers remain gatekeepers. We face the issue of possession over collaboration – we see that collectives fracture when individuals cling to admin roles, mailing lists, funds, and leadership positions. Possession rots trust and then groups wither.

The people who hold (and hored) resources, contacts, and media attention become more deadened than path, even if they started with good intentions.

The composting lesson, is that over and over, the #nastyfew and their parasites repeat the bourgeois pattern at scale: They present as competent and charming. They consolidate possession and control. They preserve the status quo by suppressing dissent.

And over and over, the solution is the same: compost them. Turn the piles of #techshit and #NGO mess back into fertile ground. Protect the seeds of grassroots tech trust, keep the social soil messy and alive.

The #OMN is based on
human beings doing the right thing.

And they will not,
and it will fail.

Human beings doing the right thing,
and they will not,
and it will fail.

And they will not,
and it will fail.

And will fail.

This is the challenge
in the era of the #deathcult:
A culture that feeds on fear,
on greed,
on possession.

Seeds are planted,
but the soil is barren.
Trust is offered,
but hands close into fists.
A path is drawn,
but the walkers scatter into shadows.

The #OMN is fragile,
thin green shoots
in a field of ash.

It asks the simplest thing:
Do the right thing.
Not once,
but again,
and again,
and again.

And if we do not?
It will fail.

And if we do?
Perhaps,
seeds will take root,
and grow beyond the compost,
beyond the #deathcult,
into the messy, open,
living forest.

Compost the blocking, keep the seeds alive, and make space for growth

The Fediverse is opening, but there is a cost

With the #Fediverse gaining increasing #mainstreaming attention, we’re entering a familiar cycle, an influx of well-funded #NGO-branded projects trying to “fix” the #openweb by reshaping it in their own narrowing and to often blinded paths.

Take this year’s #chatteringclass event, #FediForum. Alongside breathless praise, last year, for #Threads joining the #opensocialweb space, we’re seeing the launch of shiny new tools: #BonfireSocial, #Channelorg, #Bounce. That promise innovation and ecosystem growth, but look closer, and you’ll see the #NGO pattern: branding over substance, silos in disguise, and a creeping return of the mini #dotcons under new, friendlier wrappers.

Let’s take Channel.org, On the surface, it looks like a #mainstreaming version of the #OMN project #indymediaback – community news channels, a grassroots publishing model, maybe even respectful federation. But scratch that surface and the cracks show quickly:

The default feeds are anaemic #NGO fodder
The orgs list reads like a who’s who of liberal foundations, with the usual hidden gatekeeping logic behind the scenes.
And it’s yet another “pay or pray” model: either be a professional #NGO or get nudged out.

In short, it’s likely just more #techshit to compost. A well-polished box built to contain, not empower. A place where “participation” is narrow and boring. This isn’t to say there’s zero value. There will be overlap with what we’re doing in the #OMN and #indymediaback spaces. But experience tells us, these projects rarely cooperate. They prefer to rebuild from scratch, with branding and compliance hardcoded. They see networks as products to manage, not native cultures to nurture. In the end they sell out, it happens.

And the result? A growing layer of parasites attaching themselves to the living Fediverse. That familiar smell of funding cycles, strategy decks, and locked-down roadmaps. We’ve seen this before. We know where it leads. The real question isn’t what’s new? It’s what’s native?

We don’t need a branded reboot of the same paths, what we do need is more funded and sustainable grounded, messy, radically open alternatives. Ones with deep roots in social movement history, not just nice UX. Ones that resist capture, and refuse in the end to turn community into product.

That’s the path we’re on, if the NGO track wants to build parallel paths, fine. Just don’t expect us to be polite about this mess making, we’ve already walked that road too many times. Live and let live, compost #techshit and build real alternatives #KISS

You know your getting big when parasites like this start to attach… salt and branding irons come to mind.

A guest post – The Mess of the Current #OpenWeb Path: A User’s Experience

Setting up a #Mastodon account to move away from supremacist platforms like #Twitter, #Threads, #Bluesky, and #LinkedIn felt like the right step. But almost immediately, I ran into one of the core failures of the so-called #openweb – drastic post length limits, artificial restrictions, and a general lack of usability. At first glance, Mastodon appears no different from the mainstream platforms it’s supposed to replace. With the post lengths, why are we still replicating big tech models?

But that’s only partially true. Some Mastodon instances do allow longer posts, and the broader #Fediverse is full of different options, many of which are free from the limits imposed by inherited #mainstreaming culture. The issue isn’t Mastodon itself, but how fragmented and confusing the experience still is. The #Geekproblem strikes again, a quick dive into the openweb landscape reveals the same story:

Messy, inconsistent user experiences
Endless debate over technical details while real users struggle
A lack of funding or structured support for meaningful improvements
This fragmentation preventing mass adoption

All the noise about “fixing” this is just noise. Yes, the #openweb path exists and works, but it’s underfunded, unsupported, and often overshadowed by corporate-backed alternatives. A familiar failure that is both frustrating and predictable, this is a view of these struggles from an outside perspective. We still have a chaotic landscape where even well-intentioned users find themselves frustrated and giving up. The open web won’t succeed just by existing, it needs to work. Right now, for too many people, it doesn’t.

The #4opens vs. liberal tokenism in #openweb tech

Replacing market signalling with #opendata signalling

The dominance of the free market, for the last 40 years personified by the #deathcult worship, has instilled in us a deep-rooted belief in the power of market-driven signals as a determinant of value and action. This belief system prioritizes capital and greed as the primary forces that drive progress and social development. However, as our world becomes increasingly digitized, it’s past time to rethink and replace these signals with something more sustainable and aligned with collective welfare: #opendata signalling based on the #4opens.

Market signalling, a core tenet of capitalism, operates on the assumption that prices, supply, and demand efficiently communicate the state of the economy. These signals guide decisions across industries, influencing everything from resource allocation to investment trends. While this system has propelled economic growth, it comes at a significant cost: environmental degradation, social inequality, and systemic exploitation. In resent years, our worship of this “free market” led to an economy built on misery—a #miseryeconomy where people and communities pay to escape the hardships imposed by the very system they are part of.

The open vs. closed data dichotomy is currently largely invisible, so good to bring focus on this path. When considering alternatives to market signalling, we need to explore the difference between open and closed data paths. The original #openweb was built on the #4opens principles – open source, open data, open standards, and open processes. These fostered transparency, collaboration, and equitable growth. However, the rise of the #dotcons over the past two decades introduced #closeddata silos that have stifled and blocked this native path. Closed data systems prioritize proprietary algorithms, user data and metadata hoarding, and opaque decision-making processes. This has been used to reinforcing capital-driven signals as the only path.

In the emerging #openweb ecosystem, there is a new model – one rooted in opendata signalling. Unlike market signals driven by profit, opendata signalling operates on transparent and shared data inputs that inform decision-making across communities. This shift prioritizes communal benefits, sustainability, and builds trust. This path can only be glimpsed in the messy #fashionista driven #openweb reboot we are a part of. Consider the surge in decentralized networks such as #Mastodon, the broader #Fediverse, #BlueSky, and #Nostr. Over the past years, these have grown from a few hundred thousand users to tens of millions, highlighting an appetite for more community-driven paths. Open-source platforms like WordPress are integrating ActivityPub to support decentralization, extending open data practices to a quarter of the web. Even #dotcons corporations like #Facebook (with its #Threads initiative) are adapting to this movement, albeit with a corporate agenda.

What opendata signalling looks like? In a practical sense, #opendata signalling means that any institution or person running a Mastodon instance, for example, can access a significant portion of the Fediverse’s content as plain text in their database. This access allows communities to collaboratively analyse and act on data without the current corporate intermediaries distorting and monetizing it for control.

Imagine policymaking informed by real-time public discourse, free from the profit-driven filters of major platforms. Local governments could tap into decentralized data to plan infrastructure, health initiatives, or educational reforms that reflect actual community needs. Environmental policies could be shaped by transparent data on ecological impact, rather than suppressed by industry lobbyists protecting capital interests.

Challenges and Considerations? Transitioning to opendata signalling isn’t without challenges. Regulation and policy will need to adapt to safeguard open data’s integrity and prevent exploitation. The fear of spam and manipulation, which critics often raise, must be addressed with intelligent design and community moderation. Yet, these challenges are surmountable compared to the unsustainable trajectory of a market that fails to act collectively for basic survivability.

Moving beyond worship, with our reverence for the “free market” as an ultimate arbiter has reached its limit. By embracing opendata signalling and shifting away from closed, profit-driven paths, we create a foundation where collaboration, sustainability, and shared progress are at the forefront. This is not only a technological shift but a cultural one, As we continue this transition, let’s recognize that our digital choices will dictate whether we uphold the values of the #openweb or fall back into the restrictive practices of #closeddata. Let’s try to have a real conversation about this, please.

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

If you currently can’t see beyond #mainstreaming then jump anywhere from the #dotcons, a little step is better than non, if you are a bit radical then please think where you are stepping to.

As the world flees from X (formerly #Twitter) to look for viable social media alternatives, platforms like #BlueSky and #Threads come into view pushed by #mainstreaming agendas. But please lift the lid to see that while these platforms appear promising, scrutiny reveals issues with ownership, funding, and community values that show they are on the same #dotcons path that people are fleeing. This compromises long-term independence and user-centricity. In contrast, the #fedivers exemplifies the #4opens principles, a truer, more sustainable #openweb alternative for social networking, it’s here and it works.

BlueSky’s #VC funded roots, there is a difference between what people say and what they do, this one presented itself as a beacon for decentralized social networking, advocating user control and a light-touch moderation. The project’s founding under Jack Dorsey promised a platform engineered to transcend limitations in social media governance. However, its venture-funded path tells a more conventional story. With investments from entities like Blockchain Capital LLC, co-founded by crypto magnate Brock Pierce, the concerns about centralization are unavoidable. Historically, VC backing brings pressured for profitability and pushes investor interests, at odds with maintaining decentralized, user-first ideals the project keeps talking about. This is a mess soon down the road, it’s a dead-end for people to jump to. For a tech view of this and the VC and culture side. A good tech/social write-up https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
Threads is native to the #dotcons and corporate agenda’s. Threads, developed by #Meta (#Facebook), promises much, but it is firmly on the Meta’s path, rooted in data monetization, algorithmic control driving ad revenue. While Threads appears more user-friendly, its development trajectory inevitably follows Meta’s historical focus: ad-heavy strategies and extensive moderation policies that prioritize corporate interests over user freedom they talk about now. And a long writeup How decentralized is Bluesky really? A post on the #dotcons out reach to the #openweb mess. Why is Meta adding fediverse interoperability to Threads?
https://fediversereport.com/why-is-meta-adding-fediverse-interoperability-to-threads/ What is the stress? What is the game?
The #Fediverse and #Mastodon are the #openweb’s champions, built for people, not profit. This path is in stark contrast, firmly, on the path of the openweb. From its decentralized structure to its #4opens open-source foundation. Managed by non-profit people and communerties, funded through voluntary donations and support from like-minded organisations, not venture capital or private investment. This independence ensures that people networking is never beholden to shareholders and subjected to the profit motives that drive centralized platforms. This embodies the principle that social media should amplify what people value, not what maximizes revenue.

Choosing platforms and paths that align with #openweb values is more than just a preference; it’s a stand for a future where digital spaces are driven by #4opens transparency, user empowerment, and shared stewardship. #BlueSky’s reliance on venture funding and Threads’ adherence to Meta’s corporate motives demonstrate the limitations of profit-oriented social media. We need a path where we prioritize community, collective action and autonomy over corporate growth.

In the pursuit of genuine alternatives, platforms like the Fediverse do more than fill the void left by #X; they embody the promise of a decentralized, people first internet—the very essence of the #openweb.

#Openweb: This refers to the original, decentralized ethos of the internet, built on openness, freedom, and people’s autonomy. Linking enhances knowledge sharing, amplifies lesser-known voices, and enables people to explore varied content freely.

#Closedweb: This describes platforms dominated by algorithms, corporate interests, and paywalls. On dotcons, linking is often spam and is penalized or buried, precisely because it can disrupt the curated control these platforms wield over what people see.

Don’t feed the trolls, keeps coming to mind, when looking at the #X influx, this is like waves washing on the shore, be the shore not the waves.

The #deathcult: 40 Years of neoliberal poisoning the #openweb path

For forty years, we’ve been steeped in a dominant, and largely invisible ideology I call here the #deathcult, which is a metaphor for the relentless spread of #neoliberalism that has reshaped our social, economic, and technological systems in very destructive ways. Alongside this, the rise of #dotcons (corporate, centralized tech platforms) over the past twenty years has distorted the path of the internet and #openweb, steering it away from #4opens collaboration and into monopolized, extractive business models. We’re have been living the fallout now for the last ten years: a fractured digital landscape built on artificial scarcity and closed systems of control. This article explores the roots of this ideological mess and touches on the return to community-oriented solutions, rooted in collective ideals, through projects like the #fediverse and a renewed #openweb.

Neoliberalism, is the driver of our current crisis, is anti-social at its core, cutting shared resources and social spaces in favour of so-called “efficiency” and profit, leading to what I call in the hashtag stories the #deathcult – a mindset where profit pushes over life, social well-being, and environmental health. This ideological control permeates our sense of “common sense,” bending it to fit a world where exploitation is not just tolerated but expected. With our head down worship, we’ve been pushed to accept social and environmental sacrifices as the price of “progress”, instead of recognizing them as a sign of systemic failure.

The #dotcons and digital enclosure of our commons, has changes the path of the internet, which was originally built to be an open and decentralized platform. Yet, the past two decades of “#dotcom” culture transformed it into a centralized, corporate-controlled ecosystem that discourages innovation and subverts people’s and community autonomy. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon thrive by enclosing the commons, creating walled gardens where data and attention are commodities for sale and control. This shift, which we all played a role in, has stifled alternative voices and projects, pushing out grassroots initiatives in favour of profit-driven silos.

The dotcons path exploits not just users’ data but the very concept of community, turning every interaction into controlling people for private profit. At long last, we’re now seeing a response in the form of projects like the #fediverse and #activertypub, which decentralize and reclaim digital space from these corporate giants. However, without collective action and a shared vision, this new path remains under threat of co-option from these corporate interests, with #dotcons and #VC funded #threads and #bluesky both being pushed into this “commons” we have spent years opening.

On a parallel path of the last 20 years, we have been suffering from a #geekproblem: a cultural fixation within the tech community on solving social issues through purely technical means, in ways that exclude non-technical people. Encryption, for instance, is a valuable tool for privacy but isn’t a universal solution to all social or technological issues. The “more encryption” mindset neglects the importance of building trust and understanding in online communities, focusing instead on individual security in isolation.

For example, with projects like #nostr when encryption becomes the end-all solution, we’re left with technology that is impenetrable to regular people, creating more barriers than it removes. The challenge isn’t just technical, it’s social. We need to mediate the geek-centric approach with practical, accessible solutions that empower people, not only a few tech-savvy minorities.

A basic #KISS and #nothingnew path, can help to mediate these issues, they are concepts that encourage us to revisit old, tried-and-true solutions rather than reinventing the wheel in ways that add complexity. Complexity and “innovation for innovation’s sake” leads to, too much, #techshit, overly complicated tech that serves no one but its creators. The KISS path reminds us that simplicity growes inclusivity. If we want more people to engage with the #openweb, we need to create tools that prioritize accessibility and usability over complex features. The #nothingnew philosophy supports this by encouraging us to look to the past for inspiration, reviving old ideas that worked instead of constantly chasing the latest #fashernista trends.

Hashtags are a useful tool for #DIY community organization, but in this era of #stupidindividualism, hashtags get dismissed as tools for self-expression or “fashion statements” (#fashernista). Yet, hashtags can serve a deeper purpose in organizing and connecting people around shared ideas and goals. Instead of using hashtags to show off, we can use them to build flows of mutual support and collaboration. The DIY ethos is central to this: organizing from the bottom up, using digital tools to strengthen offline communities and collective action.

Embracing collective paths, one of the main issues that fractured early movements, like #indymedia, was the inability to work collectively. The culture of individualism championed by neoliberalism crept into activist spaces, weakening them from within. Reclaiming the openweb means reclaiming collective processes, where shared resources and collaborative decision-making are balanced with individual control. We need native digital spaces where communities work together, rather than being siloed into “users” isolated by individualistic platforms.

Moving forward is now about composting the #techshit, a path to compost the tech detritus of the past two decades, the techshit accumulated through#NGO funding of misguided projects and closed systems. Just as composting turns organic waste into fertile soil, we can take the lessons of past failures to create a thriving, resilient commons reboot. By fundamentally abandoning the pursuit of artificial scarcity and focusing on shared abundance, we foster this better, more humane path.

For this to work, we need to address the #geekproblem by placeing as much value on social solutions as we do on technical ones, to create tech that supports community needs rather than hindering them. This path values process over product, relationships over transactions, and social well-being over profit.

Ultimately, the choice is clear: continue worshipping at the altar of the #deathcult, or support the “native” path with the openweb. The former is the path we are on now, of escalating, isolation, environmental destruction, and social disintegration, while the latter offers a chance at connection, collaboration, and resilience. This path won’t be easy, but it’s worth the effort to avoid being subsumed by the dominant, #deathcult story we repeat to oftern to ourselves.

As we work to reboot old systems and build better ones, let’s ask ourselves: What are we helping to reboot today? By choosing collective action over individualism, KISS over complexity, and cooperation over control, we can step away from the current mess and plant the seeds for hope and survival.

Lift your head, dirty your hands we have a world to plant

Talking #openweb or #Fediverse, I have to talk about #Mastodon

Let’s look at this “#branding” issue. The tech world is changing as there is a #reboot of the #openweb happening, yes a lot of people don’t see this, so worth talking about a bit. If you are interested in this subject, every day you likely hear another big player joining the #fediverse. What does that mean? It is not complex, there is a chance you are already on this path, if you are on #dotcons sites like #meta #Threads or #WordPress etc.

It’s actually something we already know about, a network of websites that interact with each other through a shared protocol, just like #email has worked for the last 50 years. The term #Fediverse is a mash-up of two words: federate and universe. To federate means to form an alliance, so the Fediverse is an alliance of websites or apps that federate content with each other. It’s a federated universe, a part of the #openweb we all grew up on if we are over our teenage years.

This network is decentralized, meaning no #dotcons controls it, people and communities have control over their information, news and data flows. While most are run by communities and individuals, a few are run by corporations. Some may have thousands of users, while others have just a few.

Each of these websites has their own myths and traditions to shape their local feeds, but people on one site can easily interact with people on another site because they’re using the same protocol, an open-source tool that connects websites into a “native” #openweb global network. How Does It Work? The protocol is called #ActivityPub, which you might’ve heard of because it powers apps like Mastodon. But it also powers #Peertube, #Pixelfed, #Lemmy, and our own #OMN etc, and even the #dotcons are sharing this space, with #meta’s #Threads. It’s extremely popular. When you publish a post on your website, it gets federated to all the people who follow you on other websites that are based on this protocol. They can like, share, or comment on your posts. That’s the path of federation and what the #4opens #openweb is about https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/

The #4opens process that governs the culture of this path is simple in abstract, If the website admins notice a ton of spam coming from another website, they can either block that individual user or they can block that whole website. If that server is sending too much spam, it’s a problematic server. You can defederate from that server so you’re no longer hit with spam until they clean up their act. This is a horizontal path of how moderation works on this path, it works as an individual and as a community.

Like email, when the first thing you do is pick a username that’s available on that website. To do this, find a site that fits your interest, pick a username that’s available on that server. Your Fediverse handle is going to look like an email address: It’s going to be username@server, for example info@hamishcampbell.com for this blog’s #ActivityPub feed.

When I talk to people about the #openweb or mention the #Fediverse, I have to talk about #Mastodon for them to get an understanding on the subject, this is a non-native issue, thus the need for this blog post to try and fix this blindness. While Mastodon is a decentralized microblogging platform similar to Twitter. If you’re looking for a Twitter alternative, this is probably the one you’ve heard of. It’s one of the largest applications on the Fediverse. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse https://fediverse.observer/map look wider there are meany interesting projects.

Branding the #4opens: Collective Identity and Values in the Fediverse

Branding in the #Fediverse is a tricky topic, on one hand, it helps communicate shared values and guide new users. On the other, it risks undermining the very diversity and decentralization the Fediverse was built on. So, how do we talk about branding without falling into the traps of centralization, monoculture, and control?

What’s the purpose of branding on the #4opens web? And yes, it plays different roles depending on who’s using it.

For projects and platforms, it can signal authority and attract attention.

For users and communities, it can help with visibility, onboarding, and shared identity.

But if we’re not careful, it easily slips from communication into control. With instance branding vs project branding. What can we do about this? Instead of strong top-down project branding (like we see in #Mastodon or #Threads), we need to support instance-level branding. That means letting each community shape how they present themselves. This path of local control supports:

Customization

Diversity of expression

A truly decentralized ecosystem

Think of it like a neighborhood, each one has its own vibe, but they all exist on the same street plan. If we take this path we avoid the problem with strong branding, when developer teams and platforms dominate the branding, they can start to overshadow the rest of the network.

Smaller instances get lost

Contributions from the edges get ignored

Diversity is flattened

This weakens collaboration and limits imagination, yes, scale matters, and branding needs to happen at different levels:

Individual users

Community-run instances

Federation-wide projects and tools

On tis postaive path branding can help at each level, but we have to watch out when one scale starts overpowering the others, that’s when centralization creeps in. It’s a balance between accessibility and freedom. What matters is that people can find their way into the Fediverse easily, visual identity plays a big part in this. But if we go too far in creating a single “official” look, we risk:

Homogenizing the network

Undermining community self-expression

Balance is good design, which then empower new users and protect the freedom of existing communities. To do this, we need strong community-driven identity, emerging organically from within the network. That’s why the current logos and names (like the elephant for Mastodon or the general term “Fediverse”) are tolerated, they hint at identity without enforcing it.

We should aim for the same with any new branding: Lightweight, community-tested, aligned with the #4opens. On this path, it’s good to remember what we’re building, it’s native to the #openweb. It doesn’t need corporate-style branding to grow, what it needs is trust, cooperation, and care in how we present and share what we’ve built.

So, before jumping on the hype train for branding-as-growth, let’s remember: Don’t be a prat. Don’t centralize what should be shared. Don’t package what should remain open. The #4opens – open code, open data, open process, and open culture – are our foundation. Branding should reflect these values, not erode them.

The development of ActivityPub was a collaborative effort

One thing that is missing from much of the unthinking #mainstreaming outreach and expansion is that the history of #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse is a grassroots collaboration, and an ongoing struggle between open and closed paths. To understand this history, we need to explore the origins of ActivityPub and its evolution within the broader #openweb movement.

ActivityPub emerged as a response to the limitations of early social media protocols like #OStatus, which powered platforms such as #StatusNet (later GNU-social). While OStatus enabled some level of federation, it lacked robust privacy features and limited conversation dynamics. This pushed developers to seek alternatives that could better support native social interactions.

The early drafts of ActivityPub, initially called #ActivityPump, were an ambitious attempt to build a flexible protocol supporting rich, decentralized communication. In tech OStatus, used XML, ActivityPump adopted JSON, a more modern, lightweight, and developer-friendly format. This shift made it easier for platforms to adopt and extend the protocol.

The transition to ActivityPub, the move from ActivityStreams 1.0 to ActivityStreams 2.0, and ultimately to ActivityPub, reflected the need for a more comprehensive standard. ActivityPub introduced server-to-server communication, enabling platforms to share activities, like posts and follows, across different instances. This innovation laid the foundation for true federation, where separate platforms could interact seamlessly.

Key projects helped shape this evolution. Pump.io, created by #EvanProdromou (the developer behind StatusNet), was an early experiment with ActivityStreams, though it never achieved widespread adoption. But these experiments were stepping stones that informed the development.

Next is the role of #Mastodon and the rise of the #Fediverse, Eugen Rochko’s decision to implement ActivityPub as Mastodon’s primary protocol catalyzed the growth of the Fediverse. Mastodon offered a #openweb “native” but familiar Twitter-like experience with federation baked in, its rise attracted a wave of people disillusioned by #dotcons social media.

As Mastodon grew, other platforms joined the ecosystem, #PeerTube for video, #Pixelfed for images, #WriteFreely for blogging, and meany more. Each new platform enriched the Fediverse and reinforced the strength of the decentralized path.

There are challenges to openness, despite its successes, this journey of rebooting the #openweb with ActivityPub and the Fediverse hasn’t been without friction:

Commercial Capture: As the Fediverse gained traction, larger players began exploring it. #Threads’ integration with ActivityPub, for instance, raises concerns about whether the #dotcons might dilute the Fediverse’s grassroots ethos.
Technical Complexity: Implementing ActivityPub isn’t straightforward. the pushing of features like HTTP signatures for verifying interactions introduce technical hurdles that can create compatibility issues between platforms.
Centralization Drift: Even within the Fediverse, centralizing tendencies continue. Mastodon’s continuing dominance has concentrated influence, raising questions about how to prevent decentralized paths from replicating the “common sense” patterns of the #dotcons.

There is a constant need for guarding this open future, in which we need to balance the outreaching to the #mainstreaming with caring and supporting the native grassroots that created the value in the first place.

Looking forward, the future of ActivityPub and the Fediverse hinges on collective action. We need to resist the “common sense” commercial co-option from both friends and enemies to expand into building tools that make decentralized tech more accessible #OMN

The promise of the #Fediverse isn’t simply technological, it’s cultural and political. It’s about reclaiming the internet as public commons, where communities thrive on their own terms. On this path, by staying rooted in collaboration and community care, we ensure the Fediverse remains a beacon of hope in increasingly enclosed digital paths.

Cambridge Analytica, 5 years on

I think we face the usual problem of working on and implementing policy for yesterday’s issues.

* We are coming out of ten years of Blockchain mess

* Now we are into #AI mess, the is no intelligence in the current round, only artificial writing.

Let’s look at what actually matters

The original openweb had #4opens in this context #opendata is the issue we are talking about.

We then had 20 years of the #dotcons with #closeddata. Which you have talked about.

Coming out of this, we have an active openweb reboot happing with federation and opendata.

For example with #Mastodon, the #Fediverse, #bluesky and #Nosta which have grown from half a million to 10 to 15 million users over the last year. #WordPress building #ActivityPub support for a quarter of the internet and #Failbook‘s #threads.

You are seeing a different world back to #opendata, if you run a mastodon instance you will have a large part of the content of the Fediverse sitting in your database in plan text….

Take this into account with policy and regulation please

#Oxford