The Fediverse is social tech built by people03/08/2025hamish campbell Turning the lifeboat electric – Solar Power for down-river cruising25/09/2026hamish campbell The answer to the #dotcons isn't everyone becoming a sysadmin27/09/2026hamish campbell

Yes, the #web02 revolution was a con, it always was. The problem is now most people have spent years pretending that the dominant technology companies were somehow neutral actors – clever companies making useful tools, occasionally getting a little too powerful, occasionally needing a bit of regulation. But now this comforting chattering class story is harder to maintain, as the long “invisible” problem has finally reached the #mainstream, the act of stepping over the smoke and mirrors can now be seen in books such as Gil Durán – that the Silicon Valley billionaire class has developed an explicitly anti-democratic political worldview, and it has accumulated enough money, technology and institutional influence to start acting on it. The book Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy describes a political culture that did not suddenly appear with Trump. It has roots going back decades: hostility to government, hostility to taxation, extreme individualism, the fantasy of “exit”, private jurisdictions, network states, crypto-utopianism and the idea that technological elitists should be able to operate outside democratic constraints. This view of #geekpoblem history matters because if we treat what is happening now as simply another Trump-era political crisis, we shovel the wrong shit onto the compost heap. This mess we need to compost is the blinded politics of our technology classes. The con was always bigger than the platform, #dotcons were never simply websites, there “value” comes from when they became infrastructure for social life. #Failbook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, X and the rest were built to control people, they “business modal” inserted themselves between people and their ability to communicate, organise, publish, buy, work and increasingly understand the world. The con, the clever trick was that they appeared to be giving us something, free publishing, free communication, free social networks, search, storage and entertainment. But the real business model was the capture of the flows, our relationships became data, our attention a commodity, communities became markets, conversations became #LLM training material. Now that our social lives are increasingly controlled as behavioural prediction systems, and the more dependent we became, the more control and thus power accumulated on the other side of the interface. This is why calling the #dotcons simply “social media companies” is too small a description. They became private governance systems, to make rules, decide visibility and control infrastructure. They moderate speech, shape markets, influence elections. They lobby governments to corrupt political control. And now some of the #nastfew openly talk about replacing democratic institutions with technological and corporate control. The con was never about advertising, it was about power. Seeing the path underneath the technology is of the useful things, connecting today’s behaviour with 20th century ideas. The Silicon Valley ideology did not begin with artificial intelligence, it developed through decades of worshipping the #deathcult of libertarian and anti-government thinking. Books such as The Sovereign Individual became influential within the elitist chatting classes. Figures such as Peter Thiel pushed ideas, and funding at technology, sovereignty, crypto, private jurisdictions and “exit”. The basic #nastyfew fantasy is consistent – when the government gets in the way, leave, if democracy is inefficient, replace it. When taxation is inconvenient, move somewhere else. If regulation applies to everyone, build somewhere it doesn’t. If nation states are obsolete, create new digital or corporate forms of sovereignty. It sounds futuristic, but underneath the science-fiction language is something ancient. A #nastyfew group of extremely wealthy people deciding that ordinary democratic accountability should no longer apply to them. This is simply oligarchy updated with #postmodern branding, and then came the #AI boom, that accelerates and intensified the #techshit class mess. We should not need to talk about how the technology itself is not the enemy, the current #openweb reboot clearly shows it is not. So what is, a very normal story, the worship of the #deathcult, our political and economic structure around the #dotcons, and the #geekproblem that breeds this is the problem. With #climatechaos visible all around us, we are still being told that all this #techshit is necessary because someone in Silicon Valley has decided that the future requires it. This now easy to see mess is why resistance to data centres, surveillance systems, crypto schemes and companies such as Palantir can become broader than narrow traditional left politics. People are now starting to experience #nastyfew billionaire power physically in the growing social mess. The abstract becomes concrete, the cloud a building, the algorithm becomes distracting fluff, the #dotcons platforms are revealed as workplaces when the billionaire becomes the person deciding what happens in your town. The #OMN more profound question is increasingly about who gets to control infrastructure and who gets to participate in deciding how it is used. That is a democratic question, and it should also be a #openweb question. This is where the current reboot comes in to balance the mess. The #NGO, civil society answer cannot simply be to keep regulating the #dotcons harder while continuing to depend on them for everything. Yes, regulation matters, taxation matters, breaking up monopolies matters and basic democratic accountability matters. But we also need alternatives; otherwise we remain trapped inside #nastfew controlled infrastructure. This balancing is why we can’t keep fucking up our #openweb reboot. We need to #KISS take the useful lessons from the early web – openness, decentralisation, interoperability, user control and federation – and combine them with the better UX lessons we learned from Web 2.0. We need to build this alt path on the current #Fediverse, based on exiting reboot #4opens paths like #ActivityPub and #RSS. What we don’t need is more of what current takes the vast majority of #openweb funding and coding focus. Not another collection of #VC startups, any more “ethical” billionaire-funded platforms – not another centralised service waiting to become the next #dotcons. We need something structurally different, we need practical shovels to composting the #dotcons. This is where I use the word compost deliberately, we cannot simply pretend the last 30 years didn’t happen, there is an enormous pile of #techshit. Some of it is bad technology, much is bad governance. Some is exploitative economics, surveillance, addiction. In our heads we need to compost venture-capital paths, empty innovation language and the stink of #NGO and institutional capture. Some of the simple #geekproblem is just plain bad social thinking dressed up as technical expertise. But there is likely useful material in the pile too, the #web02 #dotcons did teach us things – They showed us that people want easy-to-use communication tools – the importance of good #UX, we need to take what is useful and use this to expose what is toxic. To understand how it happened, learn from the failures. Then we need to translate this understanding into action to break the concentrations of power, to open space to grow something different. The #geekproblem is part of this, another uncomfortable layer. The alternative technology world has not always been good at avoiding the same mistakes, the #geekproblem is real. Too often we build technology according to what technically clever people think is interesting rather than what communities actually need. We confuse technical complexity with progress, confuse innovation with usefulness, technical decentralisation with democracy. And often we recreate the same power structures inside #FOSS that we were supposedly trying to escape. The resulting technically elegant social mess, is a strange imitation of the #dotcons: technically open underneath, but socially closed around the people who understand the machinery. This mess is then feed into the funding problem, where the #fashernistas enter the pile. With the current #openweb reboot, alternative technology is increasingly surrounded by funding ecosystems that reward fashionable language, impressive demos, grant-friendly projects and institutional credibility. The grassroots people actually doing the work can become secondary, the people who understand the community get pushed aside by people who understand the funding application. The messy project gets replaced by the polished project, the difficult social question becomes a technical deliverable, and the result is another layer of #techshit. This is not inevitable, but we need an open process capable of exposing it, that is the reason the #4opens matters – Open data – Open source – Open standards – Open process. The fourth one is particularly important, if the process is visible, we can see who is making decisions, how money is moving, whose ideas are being prioritised and where the projects are about grafting. We can challenge it before the pile gets too big, we need to compost the #techshit at source. To grow anything in the current mess, we need infrastructure that ordinary communities can understand, use, modify, share and govern. We need technology that supports participation rather than extracting it, systems where disagreement, correction, rollback and learning are normal. We need tools that help communities build memory rather than constantly throwing yesterday into the algorithmic landfill. So we know what we need, we know what we need to compost. The chattering classes are finally waking up, we have the interesting thing, that some of the people who have spent years talking about “innovation” and “the future” are finally starting to notice what has been happening. The warning signs are no longer hidden, #nastyfew political power is visible as is the social and ecological damage. The question is no longer whether there is a problem, it is becoming what we do about it. And this is where I worry about the next stage because every time the mainstream finally notices a grassroots problem, the #fashernistas arrive. They package it, brand it, secure the funding to create the conference to build their careers. This simply “common sense” behaver stinks and is going to kill and displace billions of people. And somehow, after all that activity, the people who were actually doing the work are still standing outside the room, we have seen this cycle for decades, we cannot afford to repeat it here. So shovel harder, the #openweb reboot has a job to do, we don’t have the time to create another fashionable technological sector. We don’t need another class of sellout experts to compete to become another set of gatekeepers. And definitely not to reproduce the #dotcons with a nicer logo and some open-source code. We need to shovel hard, turn over the #dotcons, expose the blinded ideology, compost the bad economics, the #geekproblem and the corrupt grant culture. We need to compost our own #fashernista performance. To balance this we have to keep the useful technology, the useful knowledge, the communities and most importantly keep the history. Then use all of that compost to grow something genuinely different. The old web was open enough to give us a glimpse of what was possible, #web02 captured that openness and turned it into private infrastructure. Now we have a chance to take the useful parts back, not by going backwards, but by putting people and communities back into the centre of the flow. The #deathcult worshippers have spent decades building an escape route from simple democratic accountability. Our path is not to follow them on this fantasy, it is rather to build a better path in the other direction. The #dotcons are a huge pile of compost, the question is whether we are willing to pick up the shovels. * * * ### Discover more from #OMN (Open Media Network) Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

The #WSocial mess is about more than one failed platform, it exposes a deeper problem with the EU’s approach to digital sovereignty. If Europe is serious about sovereignty, it needs to stop confusing **European ownership** with **digital freedom**. A platform hosted in Europe built as a proprietary, venture-capital project recreates the same #dotcons model under a European flag. Changing the server location doesn’t change the underlying power relationships. This matters because the European Commission has spent years promoting open standards, interoperability, user choice and open source through its own policy. Yet when it came to practice, it publicly embraced a platform moving in the opposite direction: closed development, identity verification, restricted participation and a business model built around enclosure rather than the commons. This contradiction should not simply be criticised on social media. It needs to be challenged within the EU’s own institutions. The issue isn’t whether #WSocial succeeds or fails. The issue is whether public institutions are reinforcing closed corporate platforms while claiming to champion openness. That contradiction deserves formal scrutiny and, where appropriate, legal challenge. The broader problem is cultural as much as legal. Too much European digital policy remains trapped in #mainstreaming thinking: * Replace American monopolies with European monopolies. * Replace Silicon Valley venture capital with European venture capital. * Replace one gatekeeper with another. That isn’t digital sovereignty. Real sovereignty (what every that means) comes from building digital commons that nobody owns and everybody can use. That’s why the #4opens matter: open data, open source, open standards and open process. These aren’t ideological preferences; they’re practical safeguards against the next generation of vendor lock-in. The #Fediverse already demonstrates the path we need to be on. It’s messy, imperfect and decentralised, and those are strengths, not weaknesses. The challenge is to improve these commons rather than abandon it for the latest corporate platform wrapped in European branding. Europe needs courage to defend the digital commons it already has. And perhaps the hardest truth is, successful European alternatives are unlikely to come from institutions alone. They will come from communities, public-interest developers, grassroots organisations and #FOSS projects building native #openweb infrastructure from the ground up. Institutions should support that commons. #OMN #Fediverse #OpenWeb #4opens #DigitalSovereignty #FOSS #EU #WSocial #TechPolicy * * * ### Discover more from #OMN (Open Media Network) Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

4opens activertypub activitypub AI blocking climatechaos closedweb deathcult diy dotcons encryptionists EU failbook fashernista fashernistas fashionista fashionistas fediverse fluffy FOSS geekproblem indymedia indymediaback KISS mainstreaming makeinghistory Makinghistory Mastodon nastyfew neoliberal neoliberalism NGO NGOs nothingnew OGB OMN openweb Oxford p2p PGA postmodernism spiky stupidindividualism techshit XR **#techchurn** is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies – not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress. It burns community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy, while leaving the underlying **#nastyfew** power structures untouched. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn * * * lly manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective well-being – a behaviour normalised by forty years of **#neoliberalism** , where people work against their own community and ecological survival while believing they are exercising “freedom”. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=stupidindividualism * * * In the **#OMN** hashtag story, **#spiky** is the confrontational, direct, and uncompromising tendency within radical movements – the willingness to push back against power, name uncomfortable truths, and refuse to sand down political edges for mainstream comfort. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=spiky * * * **#RSS** is the unglamorous but democratic backbone of the **#openweb** – a simple, open standard that allows content to flow without the gatekeeping, algorithmic manipulation, and the data hoarding of the **#dotcons**. * * * **#reboot** is the necessary reset of the **#openweb** – stepping away from the dead ends of **#techshit** and **#dotcons** to rebuild human-centred, trust infrastructure using tools like **#activitypub** and the **#fediverse** , guided by the **#4opens**. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=reboot * * * **#postmodernism** is the cultural current that dissolved shared truth into competing narratives, undermines the foundations needed for collective action – leaving people fragmented, cynical, and unable to build solidarity. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=postmodern * * * In the **#OMN** hashtag story, **#Oxford** is a grounded example of real-world contradiction – where elitist power (**#mainstreaming** , **#NGO** , **#deathcult**) coexists with genuine grassroots community, making it a test bed for grassroots **#openweb** organising and the **#4opens** path. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=Oxford * * * In the **#OMN** hashtag story, **#PGA** (Peoples’ Global Action) represents horizontal, grassroots, anti-capitalist organising – a prefiguration of the **#openweb** , built on direct action and solidarity rather than **#NGO** bureaucracy or **#mainstreaming** compromise. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=PGA * * * In the **#OMN** path, **#p2p** means people-to-people before peer-to-peer – real human relationships and trust as the foundation that decentralised tech should serve, not replace. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=p2p * * * In the **#OMN** view, **#opensource** is not just a licence – it’s a political commitment to transparency, shared ownership, and community control over code, data, and process. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=opensource * * * The **#openweb** is internet infrastructure built on open standards, open-source code, and community control – where users share power – as opposed to the **#dotcons** , with the #closedweb which enclose and monetise the commons. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=openweb * * * **#openprocess** means decisions and governance happen visibly and participatorily – not behind closed doors, so people can see, challenge, and shape outcomes. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=openprocess * * * **#opendata** means data that is freely accessible and shareable – controlled by communities rather than locked inside corporate silos. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=opendata * * * In the **#OMN** path, **#open** means building on the **#4opens** – open code, data, standards, and process as a foundation for technology that serves people, not profit. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=open * * * **#OMN (Open Media Network)** is a grassroots project to build human-centred, trust-based digital infrastructure on the **#openweb** , grounded in the **#4opens** and focused on community control over technology. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=OMN * * * The **#OGB (Open Governance Body)** is a framework for transparent, inclusive decision-making – replacing hidden power structures with accountable, federated, messy collective governance. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=OGB * * * In the **#OMN** story, **#nothingnew** reminds us that cycles of co-option and failure have all happened before – and ignoring this history is how we repeat mistakes. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=nothingnew * * * In the **#OMN** story, **#NGO** refers to professionalised activism that defuses radical politics – replacing grassroots power with managed, funder-friendly “dissent”. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=NGO * * * In the **#OMN** path, **#neoliberalism** is the dominant ideology of markets over people – normalising greed and eroding solidarity into the logic of the **#deathcult**. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=neoliberalism * * * **#makinghistory** is the practice of communities reclaiming storytelling – building open, living archives rather than leaving history to those in power. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=makeinghistory * * * In **#OMN** usage, **#mainstreaming** is how radical ideas get absorbed and neutralised – keeping the language while stripping out real challenge. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=mainstreaming * * * In the **#OMN** path, **#KISS** (“Keep It Simple, Stupid”) is a political stance against the **#geekproblem** – rejecting unnecessary complexity as a form of control. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=KISS * * * **#indymediaback** is a call to rebuild grassroots, community-controlled media as an alternative to both **#dotcons** and hollow **#NGO** media structures. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=indymediaback * * * In the **#OMN** path, a hashtag is not just a label – it’s a node in a shared political vocabulary, building a map of meaning and direction. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=hashtag * * * **#grassroots** means bottom-up organising rooted in real communities – accountable to collective need, not institutions. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=grassroots * * * The **#geekproblem** is the tendency to replace human trust with technical control – embedding narrow values into systems that shape everyone’s lives. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=geekproblem * * * In **#OMN** , **#FOSS** is a political commitment to collective ownership of technology – not just a licensing model. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=FOSS * * * In **#OMN** language, **#fluffy** describes feel-good politics that avoid conflict – prioritising comfort over any real change. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fluffy * * * **#feudalism** describes the emerging digital structure where platform owners extract value like lords from dependent users. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=feudalism * * * **#fascism** is what happens when the **#deathcult** drops its mask – authoritarian control to defend failing systems. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fascism * * * On the **#OMN** path, the **#fediverse** is practical **#openweb** infrastructure – decentralised, federated, and not owned by corporations. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fediverse * * * **#encryptionist** describes the tendency to prioritise technical security over social trust – a core expression of the **#geekproblem**. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=Encryptionist * * * **#dotcons** are corporate platforms built on data extraction and control, presenting themselves as neutral while enclosing the commons. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=dotcon * * * In the **#OMN** story, **#DIY** means reclaiming the ability to build and organise outside institutional control – grounding politics in practice. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=DIY * * * The **#deathcult** is the self-destructive logic of **#neoliberalism** – sacrificing social and ecological survival for short-term fear drivern greed. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=deathcult * * * In the **#OMN** story, **#compost** means breaking down failure and mess into fuel for new growth. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=compost * * * In **#OMN** , **#closedweb** is controlled, extractive digital infrastructure where users have no power. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=closed * * * **#climatechaos** describes the accelerating breakdown driven by the **#deathcult** , beyond manageable “climate change.” https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=climate * * * **#classwar** is the ongoing conflict between the **#nastyfew** and the communities they exploit – often hidden by **#mainstreaming** narratives. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=classwar * * * **#capitalism** is the dominant system turning everything – relationships, nature, culture – into “profit”. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=capitalism * * * In **#OMN** , **#block** is the reflex to shut down challenge – preventing the messy work needed for real change. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=block * * * **#blinded** is being unable or unwilling to see beyond **#mainstreaming** and **#dotcons** logic. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=blinded * * * **#fashernista** describes performative activism that prioritises appearance over substance. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fashionistas * * * **#dotcons** are the corporate platforms – Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube and their kin – whose business model is built on harvesting user data, manufacturing engagement, and converting human attention and community into profit, while presenting themselves as neutral public spaces. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=dotcon * * * In the **#OMN** hashtag story, **#DIY** means reclaiming the practical capacity to build, organise, and maintain tools and communities outside of corporate and state control – not as a lifestyle choice, but as a political act of grounding radical change in real skills, real trust, and real human relationships rather than outsourcing power to institutions that don’t serve you. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=DIY * * * The **#deathcult** is the **#OMN** metaphor for the self-destructive logic of forty years of **#neoliberalism** – an ideology so committed to short-term profit, individualism, and economic growth that it knowingly sacrifices the ecological and social foundations that human life depends on. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=deathcult * * * In the **#OMN** hashtag story, **#compost** means taking the failures, mistakes, and accumulated mess of past movements and tech projects – rather than discarding or ignoring them – and breaking them down into something that can feed new growth, treating dysfunction and **#blocking** dead ends as raw material for building better rather than as waste to be hidden. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=compost * * * In **#OMN** language, **#closedweb** refers to the controlled digital infrastructure – platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter – built on proprietary code, extractive business models, and centralised power, where people have no meaningful control over their data, their communities, or the rules that govern them. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=closed * * * The **#deathcult** of **#neoliberalism** has driven us past the point where “climate change” – with its implication of manageable, orderly shifts – remains any honest description of what we face now. What we actually have is **#climatechaos** : cascading, systemic breakdown of the ecosystems, weather patterns, and social structures that human civilisation depends on, accelerating faster than institutions built on forty years of market logic are capable of, or willing to, address. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=climate * * * **#classwar** is the ongoing and unacknowledged conflict between those who benefit from and actively reproduce the **#deathcult** of **#neoliberalism** – the **#nastyfew** , managing, and credentialed classes – and the communities, workers, and ecosystems they exploit. A conflict that **#mainstreaming** culture works to render invisible, reframing systemic dispossession as individual failure. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=classwar * * * **#capitalism** is the current common sense – the water we swim in – the economic system that systematically converts collective goods, human relationships, and the natural world into private profit, enforcing this logic through every institution and platform we touch, while presenting itself as the only possible reality. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=capitalism * * * In the **#OMN** hashtag story, **#block** refers to the reflexive, unconscious tendency of individuals and communities to shut down unfamiliar and challenging ideas, people, and processes – a defensive gesture rooted in **#stupidindividualism** and **#postmodernism** that prevents the trust-building and messy collective work needed for real **#openweb** organising. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=block * * * **#blinded** refers to being so captured by **#mainstreaming** tech orthodoxy and ideological “common sense” – particularly **#neoliberalism** and **#dotcons** culture – that you no longer see, or refuse to see, the harms those systems cause or any alternative paths that exist outside them. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=blinded * * * **#fashernista** describes a person in progressive or radical spaces who prioritises the appearance and aesthetic of activism – the right look, language, and social positioning – over the unglamorous, difficult work of actually building lasting structural change. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fashionistas * * * If you want, the next step is to cluster these into a clean “chapter flow” (roots → mess → behaviours → solutions) so this stops being just a glossary and becomes a narrative tool. These are the foundation tags – the ones everything else grows out of – the overall project: grassroots, trust-based, human-centred media infrastructure #**openweb** – the political/technical terrain we’re trying to reclam #**4opens** – the non-negotiable baseline (open code, data, standards, process)\openprocess – visible, participatory decision-making as default #**grassroots** – bottom-up power, not institutional mediation This cluster is about legitimacy, if it’s not grounded in these, it drifts into #NGO capture or #dotcons logic quickly. This is the “native soil” everything else either grows from or gets rejected by. The Problem Space (what we’re composting), these tags describe the mess we’re in – the stuff we don’t ignore, but break down. #**deathcult** (neoliberalism as destructive common sense) #**neoliberalism** – 40 years of market logic shaping behaviour #**dotcons** – corporate capture of digital space #**closedweb** – controlled, extractive infrastructure #**mainstreaming** – dilution and co-option of radical ideas #**NGO** – managed dissent and professionalised politics #**classwar** – underlying structural conflict This is the compost heap, you don’t fix this directly, you don’t “win” against it head-on. You break it down, reuse what’s useful, and grow alternatives around and through it. The #**geekproblem** Layer (tech distortions) is where things go wrong in implementation. #**geekproblem** – replacing social trust with technical control #**techchurn** – endless pointless rebuilding #**encryptionists** – over-prioritising technical purity over social reality #**KISS** – counterbalance: keep things simple and usable. This cluster is why good ideas fail, not because the ideas are wrong, but because the tools and culture get shaped by people who don’t understand social process. This is where most #openweb projects die. Cultural/Behavioural Patterns (how people act). The human layer – messy, unavoidable, and central. #**stupidindividualism** – learned self-interest over collective good #**postmodernism** – fragmentation of shared meaning #**fluffy** – avoidance of conflict, feel-good paralysis #**spiky** – necessary confrontation and edge #**block** – reflex rejection of challenge #**blinded** – inability to see outside dominant narratives #**fashernista** – prioritising appearance over substance This is the real battlefield, not tech, not policy – behaviour. If you don’t mediate this layer, everything collapses back into dysfunction, no matter how good your structure is. The Alternative Infrastructure (what we build), are the actual tools and practices that make change possible. #**fediverse** – decentralised network as a base layer #**activitypub** – the protocol glue #**RSS** – simple, open distribution backbone #**p2p** – people-to-people first, tech second #**FOSS** / #**opensource** – shared ownership of tools #**opendata** – accessible, non-extractive information These only work if rooted in the first cluster, otherwise they get captured and turned into another layer of the #**closedweb**. Governance & Process (how we hold it together). Where most projects fail – or succeed. #**OGB** – structured, open governance #**openprocess** – again, because it’s that important #**DIY** – practical ownership and responsibility Without this, informal power takes over. You end up with hidden hierarchies, gatekeeping, and eventual burnout. With it, you get messy but functional collective control. Practice & Direction (how we move). #**reboot** – reset and rebuild from working patterns #**indymediaback** – learning from past grassroots media #**makinghistory** – documenting and owning our narratives #**nothingnew** – grounding in historical cycles This cluster stops you repeating mistakes, without it, every new wave thinks it’s inventing something new and walks straight into the same traps. Grounding Example Layer #**Oxford** – real-world test bed of contradictions #**PGA** – historical example of horizontal organising Without grounding, this all drifts into theory, these are example tags anchoring it in lived practice, where things break, and where they can actually work. The Meta Layer (how to use this) #**compost** – break down failure into growth This is the key to the whole thing – Don’t try to “fix” the mess. Don’t try to “win” cleanly, you compost: bad behaviour → learning failed projects → patterns conflict → structure Final point (this matters) is the mistake people make is trying to tidy this into a neat theory, reduce it to messaging, turn it into a fixed ideology. That kills it, this clustering is not about control – it’s about navigation. The mess stays messy, but now people can walk through it without getting lost.If you don’t cluster this stuff, it turns into a wall of noise. The mess is useful. Process is what gives legitimacy08/12/2025hamish campbell The End of the “Peace Dividend” and the Return of History28/04/2026hamish campbell The Crew – Paths to Growth?29/04/2026hamish campbell

Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.Three Broken Paths Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the #dotcons. Google, Meta, TikTok—they […]

The #4Opens The #dotcons can not be fixed. The #fashionistas who keep flocking to new “ethical-ish” ones are a problem, not a solution. The #4opens are a simple way to judge the value of an “alt/grassroots” tech project.