#geekproblem — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #geekproblem, aggregated by home.social.
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Composting the mess of digital security in activism – We need to talk about this, offline
The online tools we "common sense" rely on for organising and campaigning are genuinely dangerous, and I find that paralysing. This isn't paranoia, it's a practical reality that urgently needs addressing. Until we do, offline working groups are one of the few reliable ways to unblock the mess. Where we actually are now... Disappearing, encrypted chat outside the #dotcons is one of the few spaces that feels even marginally safe. But even then, safety depends entirely on who's in the room, […] -
The #encryptionist detour
Let’s look back to before the #Fediverse, to be honest about the last two decades of #openweb failure, for a long time we got pulled off the path. Not only by enemies, but by a mix of fear, fashion, and half-understood technical “solutions” that felt right to fearful people at the time. The rise of the dogmatic, blinded #encryptionist mindset came out of real conditions of mass surveillance revelations (Snowden era), common sense #neoliberal distrust of states and corporations and the […] -
Actually solving things, and why this matters for #OMN
Activism has a reputation problem, in default #mainstreaming storytelling it’s painted as chaos, absence, or naive idealism. But if you look at what activists at best actually do, a different picture emerges: a long tradition of people working out, in practice, how to solve real problems together without relying on distant authority. And that’s the bit most people quietly skip. In most social/political movements, the hard questions - how we organise, decide, share resources, resolve […]https://hamishcampbell.com/actually-solving-things-and-why-this-matters-for-omn/
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Actually solving things, and why this matters for #OMN
Activism has a reputation problem, in default #mainstreaming storytelling it’s painted as chaos, absence, or naive idealism. But if you look at what activists at best actually do, a different picture emerges: a long tradition of people working out, in practice, how to solve real problems together without relying on distant authority. And that’s the bit most people quietly skip. In most social/political movements, the hard questions - how we organise, decide, share resources, resolve […]https://hamishcampbell.com/actually-solving-things-and-why-this-matters-for-omn/
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Actually solving things, and why this matters for #OMN
Activism has a reputation problem, in default #mainstreaming storytelling it’s painted as chaos, absence, or naive idealism. But if you look at what activists at best actually do, a different picture emerges: a long tradition of people working out, in practice, how to solve real problems together without relying on distant authority. And that’s the bit most people quietly skip. In most social/political movements, the hard questions - how we organise, decide, share resources, resolve […]https://hamishcampbell.com/actually-solving-things-and-why-this-matters-for-omn/
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Actually solving things, and why this matters for #OMN
Activism has a reputation problem, in default #mainstreaming storytelling it’s painted as chaos, absence, or naive idealism. But if you look at what activists at best actually do, a different picture emerges: a long tradition of people working out, in practice, how to solve real problems together without relying on distant authority. And that’s the bit most blinded people quietly skip. In most social/political movements, the hard questions - how we organise, decide, share resources, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/actually-solving-things-and-why-this-matters-for-omn/
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Actually solving things, and why this matters for #OMN
Activism has a reputation problem, in default #mainstreaming storytelling it’s painted as chaos, absence, or naive idealism. But if you look at what activists at best actually do, a different picture emerges: a long tradition of people working out, in practice, how to solve real problems together without relying on distant authority. And that’s the bit most people quietly skip. In most social/political movements, the hard questions - how we organise, decide, share resources, resolve […]https://hamishcampbell.com/actually-solving-things-and-why-this-matters-for-omn/
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#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)
#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 The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-grounding-the-roots-as-a-story/
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#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)
#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 The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-grounding-the-roots-as-a-story/
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#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)
#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 The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-grounding-the-roots-as-a-story/
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In the #OMN hashtag story, #UX (User Experience) isn't about making interfaces prettier or more intuitive - it's a political question about who technology is actually built for, where bad #UX is a symptom of the #geekproblem and the #dotcons optimising for engagement and control rather than real human need.
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The #dotcons, #mainstreaming, and Build to Walk Away
Three years ago I was trying to explain something simple in language liberals might actually hear. They talk about “platform capitalism.” Fine. But I’ve been calling it the #dotcons for 20 years - because that’s what it is - a con. The last 30 years of tech hasn’t just drifted into this mess. It’s been shaped, step by step, enclosure by enclosure, into systems designed to extract value from us. What we now call the internet is, in large part, a machine built to manipulate, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-dotcons-mainstreaming-and-build-and-walk-away/
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Talking about the #geekproblem in #openweb funding https://hamishcampbell.com/talking-about-the-geekproblem-in-openweb-funding/ None of this is new, I like meany people been banging this drum since the #indymedia days and writing about it for decades.
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Do you remember when technology felt like a way forward?
Do you remember when tech felt like a way forward? That moment’s gone on the mainstream #closedweb path. What we’ve got now is something else entirely. Tools like Palantir and Project Maven aren’t about truth or insight. They’re excuse generators. Power does what it wants, then points to “the data” as cover. That’s the product. And the people building this? Still cosplaying as the good guys, well-paid servants of the #nastyfew, wrapped in the fading myth of being “freedom […]https://hamishcampbell.com/do-you-remember-when-technology-felt-like-a-way-forward/
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Do you remember when technology felt like a way forward?
Do you remember when tech felt like a way forward? That moment’s gone on the mainstream #closedweb path. What we’ve got now is something else entirely. Tools like Palantir and Project Maven aren’t about truth or insight. They’re excuse generators. Power does what it wants, then points to “the data” as cover. That’s the product. And the people building this? Still cosplaying as the good guys, well-paid servants of the #nastyfew, wrapped in the fading myth of being “freedom […]https://hamishcampbell.com/do-you-remember-when-technology-felt-like-a-way-forward/
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Do you remember when technology felt like a way forward?
Do you remember when tech felt like a way forward? That moment’s gone on the mainstream #closedweb path. What we’ve got now is something else entirely. Tools like Palantir and Project Maven aren’t about truth or insight. They’re excuse generators. Power does what it wants, then points to “the data” as cover. That’s the product. And the people building this? Still cosplaying as the good guys, well-paid servants of the #nastyfew, wrapped in the fading myth of being “freedom […]https://hamishcampbell.com/do-you-remember-when-technology-felt-like-a-way-forward/
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Do you remember when technology felt like a way forward?
Do you remember when tech felt like a way forward? That moment’s gone on the mainstream #closedweb path. What we’ve got now is something else entirely. Tools like Palantir and Project Maven aren’t about truth or insight. They’re excuse generators. Power does what it wants, then points to “the data” as cover. That’s the product. And the people building this? Still cosplaying as the good guys, well-paid servants of the #nastyfew, wrapped in the fading myth of being “freedom […]https://hamishcampbell.com/do-you-remember-when-technology-felt-like-a-way-forward/
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Do you remember when technology felt like a way forward?
Do you remember when tech felt like a way forward? That moment’s gone on the mainstream #closedweb path. What we’ve got now is something else entirely. Tools like Palantir and Project Maven aren’t about truth or insight. They’re excuse generators. Power does what it wants, then points to “the data” as cover. That’s the product. And the people building this? Still cosplaying as the good guys, well-paid servants of the #nastyfew, wrapped in the fading myth of being “freedom […]https://hamishcampbell.com/do-you-remember-when-technology-felt-like-a-way-forward/
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A Note on “Security” for the #FOSS Crew
We need to have a clearer, more grounded conversation about “security” and what it actually means in the context of the #openweb. There is a long history of thinking in #FOSS spaces that security is something we can solve purely technically: better encryption, better protocols, better architectures. But in everyday life and practice, people need to work from a much simpler starting point - We do not trust client–server security. We only meaningfully trust what can be verified through […]https://hamishcampbell.com/a-note-on-security-to-the-foss-crew/
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OMN: Broken Institutions, and the Need to Rebuild the Commons
For progressive and radical people, one of the central political questions of our time is simple to ask but hard to answer - Why is it so difficult to rebuild the institutions that were destroyed in our #deathcult worship of the 1980s and 1990s? And more importantly why does the impossibility of rebuilding them make it so hard to change the needed balance of power in society? These question matters for working on the future of the society and most importantly the grassroots part of this: […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-broken-institutions-and-the-need-to-rebuild-the-commons/
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OMN: Broken Institutions, and the Need to Rebuild the Commons
For progressive and radical people, one of the central political questions of our time is simple to ask but hard to answer - Why is it so difficult to rebuild the institutions that were destroyed in our #deathcult worship of the 1980s and 1990s? And more importantly why does the impossibility of rebuilding them make it so hard to change the needed balance of power in society? These question matters for working on the future of the society and most importantly the grassroots part of this: […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-broken-institutions-and-the-need-to-rebuild-the-commons/
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Most people sense that something is off
Meany people see the world degrading, enclosure accelerating. They see climate, politics, media all bending toward extraction. And even when they can see the trajectory, they feel powerless, so they cope by optimise their careers. They scroll. They argue. They consume. They retreat into irony. From birth, we’re trained into one core assumption: There Is No Alternative (#TINA). Not because it’s true, but because every dominant institution reinforces it: Schools train compliance. Media […]https://hamishcampbell.com/most-people-sense-that-something-is-off/
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This message is a shovel
Ten years ago - and honestly long before that - there were endless conversations on #failbook about how useful it was for campaigning. The dominant view back then was simple: it’s just cat memes, it's just tooling, it isn’t political so we can use it harmlessly. Before Snowden, this wasn’t a fringe view - it was probably a 90% consensus, especially among activists, and #fashionista tech communities. I’m not pointing fingers here, as this was normal. Many of us - including friends and […] -
This message is a shovel
Ten years ago - and honestly long before that - there were endless conversations on #failbook about how useful it was for campaigning. The dominant view back then was simple: it’s just cat memes, it's just tooling, it isn’t political so we can use it harmlessly. Before Snowden, this wasn’t a fringe view - it was probably a 90% consensus, especially among activists, and #fashionista tech communities. I’m not pointing fingers here, as this was normal. Many of us - including friends and […] -
Yes, its messy stepping out of the churn
Everywhere we look - what we see, touch, and use - we are living inside systems shaped by decades of economic and technological assumptions. This isn’t only something happening “out there”. It has been normalised and internalised over the last forty years. The dominance of #stupidindividualism, combined with rigid economic dogma, influenced how we design technology, how we organise communities, and how we imagine progress itself. The outcomes are now starkly visible: #climatechaos, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/yes-its-messy-stepping-out-of-the-churn/
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We need to stop worshipping a #deathcult
A path to do this is to step away from the #mainstreming mess. In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. The prize recognised their work on how institutions shape prosperity, most famously through their book Why Nations Fail. The timing matters, it matters a lot. This award lands at exactly the moment we should be asking why Institutional Economics - the respectable face of #mainstreaming - has spent the last fifteen years […]https://hamishcampbell.com/we-need-to-stop-worshipping-a-deathcult/
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A mainstream example of (stupid) individualism
Have you noticed how, over the last few decades, many sentences are repeated so often they start to become "common sense"? “You need to love yourself” is one of these, it sounds harmless, kind, even progressive. But this sentence didn’t only reshape how we feel about ourselves - it reshapes how the economy works. This is a story about how "self-esteem" become an engine of #stupidindividualism, that helped produce the explosion of inequality and mess we now live inside. Today, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/a-mainstream-example-of-stupid-individualism/
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Why the #OMN works with #ActivityPub – And why we need a bridge to #p2p
Let's look at this. #ActivityPub is not a product. It’s not even really a “protocol” in the narrow, rigid sense that vertical tech likes to imagine. ActivityPub is a shared vocabulary, a public language for moving meaning and connection across the #openweb. It gives you nouns and verbs, and the community defines the grammar through lived use. This is why the #OMN works with ActivityPub, a metadata and meaning layer, not a platform, flows, not silos. ActivityPub is the widely deployed […]https://hamishcampbell.com/why-the-omn-works-with-activitypub-and-why-we-need-a-bridge-to-p2p/
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The #OMN Path: Openness as Revolution
Let's think outside the normal paths. This is about revolution as regeneration, not only destruction. In an era built on tech dependency, revolution isn’t only about smashing the machines, it’s about liberating them. Turning tools back into commons, not commodities. It’s composting the toxic monoculture of the #dotcons into fertile ground for the #openweb to grow again. Revolution means reclaiming agency, not blindly rejecting technology, but re-rooting it into light, human-scale, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-omn-path-openness-as-revolution/
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It’s how humans have always lived – together
For 200 years, capitalism, for the last 40 years #neoliberalism, taught us that we’re isolated individuals who compete to survive. But any real view of our actual history - and our biology - say the opposite: we’re interdependent, social, and ecological beings. For almost all species time before the current mess, we thrived through commons-based systems, shared forests, grazing lands, rivers, and community knowledge. Villages maintained open wells, fishermen shared tidal calendars, and […]https://hamishcampbell.com/its-how-humans-have-always-lived-together/
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A forum thread on socialhub brought up a powerful parallel between the radical demands of the Black Panther Party (#BPP) and the underlying values of the #fediverse and #activitypub communities, especially in their attempts to build outside the corporate-controlled paths. The metaphor is striking because both seek liberation, self-determination, and the creation of alternatives to oppressive systems.
- Freedom and self-determination, the #BPP’s call for freedom to determine their community’s paths, has a native overlap to the motivations behind the fediverse, which is a path to free people from #dotcons corporate control. This empowering of people to manage their communities, and engage in social media on their own terms, much like the BPP sought to control their community’s political and social future. But there is a problem, this self-determination is undermined by the “narrow and intolerant” behaviour, in the fediverse communities which are still shaped by power dynamics, gatekeeping, and elitism. Much like the BPP’s fight against internal and external forces, we need to challenge invisible embedded paths in tech spaces.
- Ending exploitation and economic Injustice, the BPP’s demand to end capitalist robbery mirrors the desire within the fediverse to reject the exploitative model of #dotcons, profiting off users’ data, labour, and attention. Projects like #Mastodon and the wider #openweb reboot offer an alternative that resists the centralization, monetization and control of user information. Yet, despite this anti-capitalist ethos, there’s still a tendency for devs and leaders in these communities to pursue funding, recognition and status that mimics the capitalist incentives of the #dotcons. The challenge is to remain vigilant about how easily a “safe” or “open” community can be co-opted by external economic pressures, just as the Panthers struggled to protect their movement from state infiltration and capitalist influence.
- Housing, education, and technology as commons, the BPP’s demands for housing and education highlight their belief in basic human rights, which could be translated into the tech metaphor as the right to access technology and information as commons. The #4opens represent this principle, ensuring that tools, processes, and knowledge remain transparent and accessible. It’s about creating “decent housing” for digital life and an “education” that uncovers the true nature of our technological paths. The struggle, many open communities drift toward becoming insular, where the tools and education are not readily accessible to newcomers. It requires more effort to lower the barriers and broaden participation beyond the #geekproblem to genuinely serve as commons, much like the Panthers sought to broaden political education beyond academic elites.
- Community defense and police brutality, the Panthers’ emphasis on ending police brutality and defending their community aligns with the need for safe spaces in the digital world, spaces free from corporate surveillance, trolling, and abuse. In the fediverse, moderation and safety tools resemble a kind of “community defense” against harmful actors, trying to keep the space healthy and productive. This policing of communities within the fediverse can take a rigid, intolerant form, which creates an exclusionary culture where non #mainstreaming voices are marginalized. Just as the Panthers sought accountability and fairness in how their communities were policed, Fediverse communities need more humane and community-led governance models, like #OGB, to avoid replicating the authoritarian systems they’re fighting against.
- Radical ideals vs. narrow paths, both the BPP and the fediverse, in their own ways, strive for radical change, whether it’s systemic racial justice or the liberation of the internet from corporate interests. But both face the dilemma of narrow paths, in the BPP’s case, the movement’s radical vision was met with state repression, which forced them into narrower, defensive stances. In the fediverse, the movement for open, decentralized media is constrained by internal divisions, ideological rigidity, and an intolerance of diverse views. The key here is not to narrow the vision to protect it, but to expand it, making space for more people and voices. This means mediating conflicts through trust and transparency, rather than exclusion and elitism, a struggle shared by both the BPP and the #openweb movement.
- The path forward, to “compost the mess” in the fediverse, we need to apply some of the same principles the BPP fought for, building movements that are rooted in collective empowerment, community defence, and transparent, accountable governance. This means, challenging the internal hierarchies that mirror the social structures we’re resisting. Expanding participation and avoiding the elitism and exclusionary paths that choke out growth. Emphasizing practical tools (like #OGB and #4opens) to manage conflicts, maintain openness, and ensure the tech commons remains genuinely for the people.
By looking at the #BPP’s history, we see both a radical vision and the internal/external challenges that can derail a movement. The fediverse can learn from this, the real threat to its growth isn’t just external corporate forces, but the narrow, rigid paths it sometimes enforces within. To stay true to the “native” path of liberation, it must embrace messiness, diversity, and openness. The Panthers’ slogan “Power to the People” resonates deeply here, digital power should truly belong to the people, not gatekeepers.
https://hamishcampbell.com/the-panthers-slogan-power-to-the-people-resonates-on-the-openweb/
#4opens #activitypub #BPP #dotcons #fediverse #geekproblem #mainstreaming #Mastodon #OGB #openweb
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UPDATES this post: Thoughts on the mess we made on #socialhub and the wider #openweb reboot https://hamishcampbell.com/thoughts-on-the-mess-we-made-on-socialhub-and-the-wider-openweb-reboot/ This is exactly what #socialhub was "broader discussions focusing on social issues" for the first 3 years or so, we had the path we now need in place as native grassroots.
A tiny number of people used the #geekproblem to narrow this open space down to focus EXCLUSIVELY on the #FAP. Why and how this happens is the question.
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" I just don't see SocialHub as likely to evolve into the kind of place for the broader discussions focusing on social issues."
The problem we are talking about.
This is exactly what #socialhub was "broader discussions focusing on social issues" for the first 3 years or so, we had the path we now need in place as native grassroots.
A tiny number of people used the #geekproblem to narrow this open space down to focus EXCLUSIVELY on the #FAP
Why and how this happens is where the value is, so we don't keep adding to this mess, in the future.
PS, this mastodon mess of jumping from public to semi private all the time is a mess.
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We came to this concusern https://theconversation.com/online-anonymity-study-found-stable-pseudonyms-created-a-more-civil-environment-than-real-user-names-171374 more than 10 years ago for the #OMN project.
#pseudonyms is healthy balance in social tech.
It avoids the #geekproblem of "trustless" computing and gives humane freedom that are so important to social thinking/life.
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We came to this concusern https://theconversation.com/online-anonymity-study-found-stable-pseudonyms-created-a-more-civil-environment-than-real-user-names-171374 more than 10 years ago for the #OMN project.
#pseudonyms is healthy balance in social tech.
It avoids the #geekproblem of "trustless" computing and gives humane freedom that are so important to social thinking/life.