#indymediaback — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #indymediaback, aggregated by home.social.
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One of our mistakes is treating every #fashionista project as if it were native #openweb.
Too often, grassroots ideas are picked up, systematised, and reshaped into something acceptable to #mainstreaming institutions. The tools may remain "open", but the social process and governance shift.
The #Fediverse shows both sides of this. It has revived the #openweb, but it also carries the assumptions of the wider culture. Without care, we reproduce the same hierarchies, gatekeeping, and #geekproblem we were trying to escape.
The answer isn't rejection, it's composting, use the #4opens to ask simple questions:
Is the data open? Is the code open? Are the standards open? Most importantly, is the process open?
If not, we're probably looking at another layer of #mainstreaming rather than genuine commons. Let's balance the repeating inherited agendas and start building native grassroots alternatives please.
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One of our mistakes is treating every #fashionista project as if it were native #openweb.
Too often, grassroots ideas are picked up, systematised, and reshaped into something acceptable to #mainstreaming institutions. The tools may remain "open", but the social process and governance shift.
The #Fediverse shows both sides of this. It has revived the #openweb, but it also carries the assumptions of the wider culture. Without care, we reproduce the same hierarchies, gatekeeping, and #geekproblem we were trying to escape.
The answer isn't rejection, it's composting, use the #4opens to ask simple questions:
Is the data open? Is the code open? Are the standards open? Most importantly, is the process open?
If not, we're probably looking at another layer of #mainstreaming rather than genuine commons. Let's balance the repeating inherited agendas and start building native grassroots alternatives please.
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Four years ago I said:
"Hey #fashernistas and #chatteringclasses, stop obsessing over #Musk."
Since then, Musk has bought #Twitter, renamed it X, lurched through one controversy after another, to become a central path in the culture wars, and turned himself into the story. Millions have spent years reacting to him.
Meanwhile, the real issue hasn't changed. The problem was never one billionaire. In tech, it was always our dependence on centralised #dotcons and the #mainstreaming attention economy.
Don't let personalities distract you from building alternatives. #indymediaback #OMN and #OGB are all #KISS grassroots projects focused on growing the #openweb and the commons.
Get off your knees, step away from the #mainstreaming news cycle, and build a future instead.
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Four years ago I said:
"Hey #fashernistas and #chatteringclasses, stop obsessing over #Musk."
Since then, Musk has bought #Twitter, renamed it X, lurched through one controversy after another, to become a central path in the culture wars, and turned himself into the story. Millions have spent years reacting to him.
Meanwhile, the real issue hasn't changed. The problem was never one billionaire. In tech, it was always our dependence on centralised #dotcons and the #mainstreaming attention economy.
Don't let personalities distract you from building alternatives. #indymediaback #OMN and #OGB are all #KISS grassroots projects focused on growing the #openweb and the commons.
Get off your knees, step away from the #mainstreaming news cycle, and build a future instead.
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The early #openweb grew from a #DIY culture. People did not wait for permission. They built websites, shared code, created independent media, made tools, organised communities and experimented with new ways of communicating.
The power was not just in the technology. It was in the surrounding culture:
Do it yourself.
Share what you learn.
Build with others.The problem is that DIY can stop at the first step. A lot of radical spaces become focused on identity, aesthetics and scene-building - the #fashernista layer - while missing the second part - Organisation.
The challenge is creating structures that survive. The #OMN idea is about reconnecting these two things: DIY + organisation.
The creativity of the #openweb with the practical need to build networks, memory, trust and shared infrastructure.
A living commons, the future needs people who make things, maintain things and connect things. The internet was never just about tools. It was about people building together.
#OMN #openweb #4opens #commons #fediverse #DIY #indymediaback
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The early #openweb grew from a #DIY culture. People did not wait for permission. They built websites, shared code, created independent media, made tools, organised communities and experimented with new ways of communicating.
The power was not just in the technology. It was in the surrounding culture:
Do it yourself.
Share what you learn.
Build with others.The problem is that DIY can stop at the first step. A lot of radical spaces become focused on identity, aesthetics and scene-building - the #fashernista layer - while missing the second part - Organisation.
The challenge is creating structures that survive. The #OMN idea is about reconnecting these two things: DIY + organisation.
The creativity of the #openweb with the practical need to build networks, memory, trust and shared infrastructure.
A living commons, the future needs people who make things, maintain things and connect things. The internet was never just about tools. It was about people building together.
#OMN #openweb #4opens #commons #fediverse #DIY #indymediaback
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Grassroots #openweb activism has a history of rising, falling and adapting. The UK has seen waves of independent media, digital organising and networked activism - each learning from what came before.
The challenge is #rebooting an #openweb that stays native, open, decentralised, creative without becoming locked into the control systems it is trying to escape. We need pragmatic approaches that protect people while keeping spaces open for collective action.
Activism has challenges, groups can lose their original purpose when funding, institutions and professionalisation reshape their culture. Staying independent and connected to the communities that created the movement is hard - but necessary.
The last 40 years of political drift, from #neoliberalism to today’s hard rightward shift, shows the cost of failing to build strong alternatives.
The #OMN is part of this ongoing work of open media, decentralised networks and the connection between technology and social justice.
The future needs both the technical and the social - tools, culture, memory and movements.
#KISS build the commons. Keep the networks open.
#OMN #indymediaback #4opens #openweb #fediverse #commons #activism #opensource #socialjustice
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Grassroots #openweb activism has a history of rising, falling and adapting. The UK has seen waves of independent media, digital organising and networked activism - each learning from what came before.
The challenge is #rebooting an #openweb that stays native, open, decentralised, creative without becoming locked into the control systems it is trying to escape. We need pragmatic approaches that protect people while keeping spaces open for collective action.
Activism has challenges, groups can lose their original purpose when funding, institutions and professionalisation reshape their culture. Staying independent and connected to the communities that created the movement is hard - but necessary.
The last 40 years of political drift, from #neoliberalism to today’s hard rightward shift, shows the cost of failing to build strong alternatives.
The #OMN is part of this ongoing work of open media, decentralised networks and the connection between technology and social justice.
The future needs both the technical and the social - tools, culture, memory and movements.
#KISS build the commons. Keep the networks open.
#OMN #indymediaback #4opens #openweb #fediverse #commons #activism #opensource #socialjustice
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Social justice movements don’t start from the top. They grow from the ground, from people and communities affected by injustice who organise, experiment and build change.
To grow these movements wider, we need spaces that allow open and unexpected connections. The #openweb and #fediverse matter because they create room for communication, outside corporate and state control.
Projects like #OMN and #indymediaback are about rebuilding these grassroots networks as commons.
History matters too. Movements need memory. If we forget past struggles, working practices and victories, every generation has to start again. Projects like #makinghistory preserve the knowledge that lets future movements learn and grow.
There is also the constant challenge of co-option. Funding and institutions slowly reshape movements, changing their culture and priorities. Staying independent is difficult - but history shows it is possible.
We need both the spiky and the fluffy paths, change comes from growing alternatives while pushing back against the systems that create the problems.
#OMN #indymediaback #4opens #openweb #fediverse #commons #activism #socialjustice
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Social justice movements don’t start from the top. They grow from the ground, from people and communities affected by injustice who organise, experiment and build change.
To grow these movements wider, we need spaces that allow open and unexpected connections. The #openweb and #fediverse matter because they create room for communication, outside corporate and state control.
Projects like #OMN and #indymediaback are about rebuilding these grassroots networks as commons.
History matters too. Movements need memory. If we forget past struggles, working practices and victories, every generation has to start again. Projects like #makinghistory preserve the knowledge that lets future movements learn and grow.
There is also the constant challenge of co-option. Funding and institutions slowly reshape movements, changing their culture and priorities. Staying independent is difficult - but history shows it is possible.
We need both the spiky and the fluffy paths, change comes from growing alternatives while pushing back against the systems that create the problems.
#OMN #indymediaback #4opens #openweb #fediverse #commons #activism #socialjustice
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The commons and the problem of power
"After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries… to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned." Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall The starting point is simple, Marx was right […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-commons-and-the-problem-of-power/
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The challenge now is diversity, not picking one winner. I’d argue #Mastodon is drifting in the wrong direction - not because what it is doing is wrong, but because balance matters.
Mastodon has become very good at outreach into the #mainstreaming world. That is useful, and it is a valid path. The problem is when one path becomes the whole #Fediverse.
The #openweb was never meant to be one codebase, one culture, one governance model. It grows through diversity of value.
The issue is that Mastodon is now carrying more #NGO thinking, more institutional habits, and more mainstream assumptions. That doesn’t make it bad - but it does mean it is less healthy as the only “native” path.
The answer is not attacking Mastodon. The answer is growing the wider ecosystem: more codebases, more diversity, more grassroots governance, more messy creativity.
A healthy Fediverse needs many roots, not one trunk.
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The challenge now is diversity, not picking one winner. I’d argue #Mastodon is drifting in the wrong direction - not because what it is doing is wrong, but because balance matters.
Mastodon has become very good at outreach into the #mainstreaming world. That is useful, and it is a valid path. The problem is when one path becomes the whole #Fediverse.
The #openweb was never meant to be one codebase, one culture, one governance model. It grows through diversity of value.
The issue is that Mastodon is now carrying more #NGO thinking, more institutional habits, and more mainstream assumptions. That doesn’t make it bad - but it does mean it is less healthy as the only “native” path.
The answer is not attacking Mastodon. The answer is growing the wider ecosystem: more codebases, more diversity, more grassroots governance, more messy creativity.
A healthy Fediverse needs many roots, not one trunk.
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#FOSS governance is digital #feudalism - coders as gatekeepers, projects organised around personal authority.
The lesson from history is simple, never trust a king, even a well-meaning one.
The #meta problem is that we keep repeating old power patterns inside new technology. The libertarian “just fork it” answer feels increasingly pointless in this stage of the mess. We need better collective governance, not just more individual exit routes.
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#FOSS governance is digital #feudalism - coders as gatekeepers, projects organised around personal authority.
The lesson from history is simple, never trust a king, even a well-meaning one.
The #meta problem is that we keep repeating old power patterns inside new technology. The libertarian “just fork it” answer feels increasingly pointless in this stage of the mess. We need better collective governance, not just more individual exit routes.
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Technology is never just a tool
Let's be clear on the background mess, before the personal attacks start, this is not about individuals. It is about patterns, systems and ideas. The danger is that criticism becomes an #adHominem argument - “you just dislike this because…” - instead of looking at the actual structures being discussed. The point I am making is that parts of dead #postmodern thinking have ended up embedded inside #neoliberal culture: fragmentation, individual identity, endless discourse and difficulty […] -
The tools we need to compost the #deathcult
The current mess and tragedy is that the tools we need most are often the first things that stressed, messy, #elitist systems defund, discredit, and dismantle. Why? Because these tools threaten the psychological certainty that people cling to when the world feels unstable. The ability to sit with uncertainty, to question assumptions, to admit complexity. These are not weaknesses, they are survival tools. Yes, this is a mess we need to compost, the #nothingnew path to work on this is about […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-tools-we-need-to-compost-the-deathcult/
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Rainbow Culture: The Dream, the Mess and the Commons
The first thing many people notice about a Rainbow Gathering is what is "missing". There are no ticket booths, no commercial stages, no vendors selling branded experiences, no cash registers. Thousands of people gather in a forest to create temporary villages and cities to share food, build kitchens, make music, care for each other and then disappear again. The absence of money can seem like a strange fantasy, but the deeper story is that it is not a just a rule, the refusal of commerce was […]https://hamishcampbell.com/rainbow-culture-the-dream-the-mess-and-the-commons/
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The Rainbow Lesson: Building Commons Beyond the Market
One of the things missing from conversations about rebuilding radical networks is that we defult to looking first at the technology. The #OMN question is different - What are the social systems that allow alternatives to survive? A useful example comes from the history of the Rainbow Gatherings. To an outsider, the strangest thing about a Rainbow Gathering is likely the hippies, the second is the absence of money. Thousands of people gather in forests, share food, organise care, create […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-rainbow-lesson-building-commons-beyond-the-market/
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The Rainbow Lesson: Building Commons Beyond the Market
One of the things missing from conversations about rebuilding radical networks is that we defult to looking first at the technology. The #OMN question is different - What are the social systems that allow alternatives to survive? A useful example comes from the history of the Rainbow Gatherings. To an outsider, the strangest thing about a Rainbow Gathering is likely the hippies, the second is the absence of money. Thousands of people gather in forests, share food, organise care, create […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-rainbow-lesson-building-commons-beyond-the-market/
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There is some talk about recreating radical media networks.
Before we reboot #indymedia or build new altmedia networks, we need some simple, clear understandings of why they failed before.
And I use “simple” and “understandings” deliberately - not “the answer” or one single explanation.
Because the different views of why #indymedia and altmedia failed are not a side issue. They are part of why they failed.
Different groups saw different problems:
Was it technology?
Was it governance?
Was it burnout?
Was it funding?
Was it culture?
Was it the wider shift to the #dotcons?A reboot cannot ignore tensions. It has to create a bridge between the different lessons, otherwise we rebuild the same problems.
The goal is not to recreate the past.
The goal is to take the useful seeds, compost the failures, and grow something that fits the next phase of the #openweb.
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There is some talk about recreating radical media networks.
Before we reboot #indymedia or build new altmedia networks, we need some simple, clear understandings of why they failed before.
And I use “simple” and “understandings” deliberately - not “the answer” or one single explanation.
Because the different views of why #indymedia and altmedia failed are not a side issue. They are part of why they failed.
Different groups saw different problems:
Was it technology?
Was it governance?
Was it burnout?
Was it funding?
Was it culture?
Was it the wider shift to the #dotcons?A reboot cannot ignore tensions. It has to create a bridge between the different lessons, otherwise we rebuild the same problems.
The goal is not to recreate the past.
The goal is to take the useful seeds, compost the failures, and grow something that fits the next phase of the #openweb.
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Q: No comments is the way to go, but the concern is that the same moderation fights will just move into the editorial work?
A: The answer is to distribute the editorial process and build the collective on trust.
If publishing power is spread out, there is less of a single gate to fight over.The mistake is the path of solve social problems by adding more rules, more controls, more moderation systems - creating more sticks for people to pick up and hit each other with.
A healthy #indymedia path needs shared responsibility, open processes and trust between contributors.
The aim is not to control the commons.
The aim is to grow one.
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Q: No comments is the way to go, but the concern is that the same moderation fights will just move into the editorial work?
A: The answer is to distribute the editorial process and build the collective on trust.
If publishing power is spread out, there is less of a single gate to fight over.The mistake is the path of solve social problems by adding more rules, more controls, more moderation systems - creating more sticks for people to pick up and hit each other with.
A healthy #indymedia path needs shared responsibility, open processes and trust between contributors.
The aim is not to control the commons.
The aim is to grow one.
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When Technologists Forget the Warning
The thing about #techbro culture is that some of the most #elitists people grew up loving stories that warned us about the #techshit they are building. They read the dystopias, watched the films, they understood the dangers of unchecked capital, concentrated power, surveillance, artificial intelligence, inequality, and corporate control. Then many of them decided “Great idea. Let’s build it.” as the #geekproblem made them think they knew better. This is what our #fashionista class call […]https://hamishcampbell.com/when-technology-forgets-the-warning/
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When Technologists Forget the Warning
The thing about #techbro culture is that some of the most #elitists people grew up loving stories that warned us about the #techshit they are building. They read the dystopias, watched the films, they understood the dangers of unchecked capital, concentrated power, surveillance, artificial intelligence, inequality, and corporate control. Then many of them decided “Great idea. Let’s build it.” as the #geekproblem made them think they knew better. This is what our #fashionista class call […]https://hamishcampbell.com/when-technology-forgets-the-warning/
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Rethinking Grassroots Tech Funding
Building beyond the #deathcult - Our current model of #tech funding and developer agendas is not neutral. The way we fund technology shapes the kind of technology we build. For the last 20 years, the dominant tech culture has followed the same path: venture capital growth platform monopolies extraction of attention and data endless scaling short-term metrics private ownership of public infrastructure This has produced #techshit - technology built because it can make money, not because […]https://hamishcampbell.com/rethinking-grassroots-tech-funding/
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In the era of #climatechaos, people #blocking social change in tech are not just slowing things down - they are helping maintain systems that are driving social and ecological breakdown.
The question is - what do we build instead?
Different paths already exist. #4opens #openweb #OGB #indymediaback #OMN are examples of social tech trying to move away from the failures of #mainstreaming and towards more open, collective ways of organising.
The challenge is mediation: separating signal from noise, building alternatives, and creating space for change.
Take a moment. Think. Then act.
Don’t become part of the blockage. Thanks.
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In the era of #climatechaos, people #blocking social change in tech are not just slowing things down - they are helping maintain systems that are driving social and ecological breakdown.
The question is - what do we build instead?
Different paths already exist. #4opens #openweb #OGB #indymediaback #OMN are examples of social tech trying to move away from the failures of #mainstreaming and towards more open, collective ways of organising.
The challenge is mediation: separating signal from noise, building alternatives, and creating space for change.
Take a moment. Think. Then act.
Don’t become part of the blockage. Thanks.
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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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#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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Based on the #OMN hashtag story: #indymediaback is a call to revive and rebuild the radical, grassroots, community-controlled media networks that flourished in the#Indymedia era - open, decentralised, and owned by the people publishing them - as a direct alternative to both the corporate #dotcons and the hollowed-out #NGO media landscape that replaced them.
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Based on the #OMN hashtag story: #indymediaback is a call to revive and rebuild the radical, grassroots, community-controlled media networks that flourished in the#Indymedia era - open, decentralised, and owned by the people publishing them - as a direct alternative to both the corporate #dotcons and the hollowed-out #NGO media landscape that replaced them.
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Keep group doing real things. (#praxis #indymediaback #buildstuff). Endless talk spaces breed toxicity. Shared work diffuses it. When people are:
publishing
fixing
organising
buildingThere’s less energy for backbiting, and more grounding in reality. Practice cuts through a lot of bullshit.
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Keep group doing real things. (#praxis #indymediaback #buildstuff). Endless talk spaces breed toxicity. Shared work diffuses it. When people are:
publishing
fixing
organising
buildingThere’s less energy for backbiting, and more grounding in reality. Practice cuts through a lot of bullshit.
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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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Why you should help
The internet's public square is privatised, algorithmically controlled for "engagement" over any idea of truth, and placed under the control of a handful of American corporations with no accountability to European citizens or values. The #Fediverse is the most credible existing alternative - but it lacks the shared infrastructure to function as a native commons for news and media. #OMN builds that infrastructure: trust-based, community-controlled, transparent, reversible, and owned by nobody. […] -
Why you should help
The internet's public square is privatised, algorithmically controlled for "engagement" over any idea of truth, and placed under the control of a handful of American corporations with no accountability to European citizens or values. The #Fediverse is the most credible existing alternative - but it lacks the shared infrastructure to function as a native commons for news and media. #OMN builds that infrastructure: trust-based, community-controlled, transparent, reversible, and owned by nobody. […] -
Interesting history I only half new https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2019/11/on-the-battle-of-seattle-s-20th-anniversary--let-s-remember-the- but it's missing the bike delivered live-streaming media centre that was set up for J18 in by undercurrents and other UK alt media groups for the huge protests here in London.
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Interesting history I only half new https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2019/11/on-the-battle-of-seattle-s-20th-anniversary--let-s-remember-the- but it's missing the bike delivered live-streaming media centre that was set up for J18 in by undercurrents and other UK alt media groups for the huge protests here in London.
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Gates vs Bridges: the obscure politics of the #geekproblem
In the #geekproblem mindset, crossing a protocol flow is a gateway were in #openweb terms, it’s a bridge. That difference is not technical - it’s social - the difference between CONTROL and TRUST. A gate is something you lock, permission, authentication, enforcement were a bridge is something you cross, connection, flow, relationship. In the physical world, we don’t put gates on bridges as a default, but in software, we keep rebuilding them, and then wondering why things fragment. RSS […]https://hamishcampbell.com/gates-vs-bridges-the-obscure-politics-of-the-geekproblem/
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Gates vs Bridges: the obscure politics of the #geekproblem
In the #geekproblem mindset, crossing a protocol flow is a gateway were in #openweb terms, it’s a bridge. That difference is not technical - it’s social - the difference between CONTROL and TRUST. A gate is something you lock, permission, authentication, enforcement were a bridge is something you cross, connection, flow, relationship. In the physical world, we don’t put gates on bridges as a default, but in software, we keep rebuilding them, and then wondering why things fragment. RSS […]https://hamishcampbell.com/gates-vs-bridges-the-obscure-politics-of-the-geekproblem/
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Let’s try and simplify the #OMN
The #OMN Framework: The Five Functions (#5F) The #OMN is simple flows, not platforms, it’s a way of thinking about media as flows of objects moving through a network. People shape the flow, you can find a more technical view to read after here. A human-scale, federated media infrastructure built on #FOSS practices and the #4opens: open data open source open process open standards It doesn’t start with features, apps, or ideology, it starts with flows. Imagine the network as: pipes […] -
Let’s try and simplify the #OMN
The #OMN Framework: The Five Functions (#5F) The #OMN is simple flows, not platforms, it’s a way of thinking about media as flows of objects moving through a network. People shape the flow, you can find a more technical view to read after here. A human-scale, federated media infrastructure built on #FOSS practices and the #4opens: open data open source open process open standards It doesn’t start with features, apps, or ideology, it starts with flows. Imagine the network as: pipes […] -
A bit of #OMN history and where the current paths come from
For a long time the focus has been on solving two linked problems - both of which are actually #nothingnew. The first is grassroots publishing and organising. The second is network coordination between communities. Neither of these problems started with the internet, and they certainly didn’t start with Silicon Valley. Projects like #Indymedia and community organising networks solved these problems culturally long before modern platforms existed. They worked through shared practice, trust […]https://hamishcampbell.com/a-bit-of-omn-history-and-where-the-current-paths-come-from/
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EU tech strategy, composting the mess
As #climatechaos accelerates, European politics will not stay where it is now. History suggests that periods of instability push politics to the right, because right-wing politics tends to be driven by fear and control. If that trajectory holds, then the digital infrastructure we build today needs to be resilient in a more hostile political environment tomorrow. This matters for the EU’s current technology strategy. Most policy thinking still focuses on industrial competitiveness - AI […]https://hamishcampbell.com/eu-tech-strategy-composting-the-mess/
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@shoq there are a few people working on this #OMN #indymediaback :)
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@shoq there are a few people working on this #OMN #indymediaback :)
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Why good faith is a technical requirement for #FOSS
If you’ve spent years in #FOSS, you’ve likely developed a strong allergy to vague political language. You care about licenses, reproducibility, governance models, and whether something actually runs. Good. That discipline is why free software exists at all. But here’s the uncomfortable question, what if the biggest blocker to the #openweb right now isn’t technical debt - but social debt? And what if “good faith” is not a moral nicety, but a core infrastructure requirement? The […]https://hamishcampbell.com/why-good-faith-is-a-technical-requirement-for-foss/
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@warmsignull Currently, this morning's project is juggling a seed group of student journalist in Oxford to reboot https://oxford.indymedia.org.uk/ to motivate the scattered unfunded tech crew to work on the #indymediaback codebase they will need, very real chicken-and-egg problem :)
I could list another handful of projects, but you can find articles on the site your self, also meany past projects. We do need to compost this as I am losing the will to work chatting to people online ;)
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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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@cwebber then why not make something real and useful like an #indymediaback codebase from the #spritly work you are doing.
Like meany people, it looks interesting but have no idea if it does anything.
Rebel need tools.
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Europe, the Fediverse, and the story we failed to tell
A bunch of native #openweb people spent real time, energy, and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse. This wasn’t theoretical, it wasn’t speculative, it wasn’t a #NGO whitepaper or a #VC funding pitch. It was practical outreach, grounded in working technology and lived experience, aimed at reducing Europe’s dependency on centralized corporate platforms. One concrete moment of this work was the webinar organised between the European Commission and the ActivityPub community: […]https://hamishcampbell.com/europe-the-fediverse-and-the-story-we-failed-to-tell/
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A bunch of native #openweb people spent time, energy and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse:
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507
That webinar mattered. It showed that EU institutions were open to #ActivityPub as a way to reduce dependency on centralized corporate platforms.
This is exactly the kind of work we need more of, not less. So what went wrong?
Instead of building on this momentum, the grassroots fell to mess and attention drifted back to the familiar #dotcons. Which, in the end, is just more #techshit to compost later.
SocialHub itself documents this blocking story, but there’s little aggregation or narrative continuity
The missing piece: our own history. This story still hasn’t been properly told:
We are very bad at telling our own history. And that failure has consequences.
When people don’t know: that #EU–#Fediverse outreach already happened, that viable alternatives already exist, that these paths were actively neglected,
So that they fall — again and again — for the #dotcons mess, believing it’s the only “realistic” option.
This is exactly why #OMN, #indymediaback, #makinghistory, and #OGB matter.
Before we argue about funding, platforms, or scale, we need: Media to tell the story properly. History to remember what already worked. Governance to keep power visible and contestable
Only then can Europe regain any path to grassroots digital agency without reproducing the same capture dynamics under a different flag.
If we don’t tell our story, someone else will, and it won’t be told in our interests.
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Title: Stalls and Code
A DRAFT story about markets, misfits, and taking back the commons (Tagline: “They came for the avocados. They left with revolution.”) by Hamish CampbellOutlineTHE MARKET STIRS Chatsworth Rhythms Setting the scene: It’s a Saturday in East London. The smell of jerk chicken, sourdough, and incense wafts over Chatsworth Road. A young stallholder, Luna (17), sells upcycled clothes and zines with radical poetry. Her best mate Jaz (18) roasts coffee in a converted horse trailer. The street […] -
The #openweb is a space for both progressives and reactionary groups
One uncomfortable thing we need to address, calmly and constructively, is this: for the last decade, the right has been better at cooperating around #openweb media than the left. This isn’t because the right has better politics. It’s because they’ve been more pragmatic about infrastructure. While much of the left argued endlessly about identity, fashion, theory, tone, and purity, right-wing and reactionary groups quietly built linking ecosystems: shared blogs, cross-posting networks, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-openweb-is-a-space-for-both-progressives-and-reactionary-groups/