#indymediaback — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #indymediaback, aggregated by home.social.
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So the mess we've made doesn't have to define us. We can learn from it, reuse it and turn it into fertile ground for something better.
A world where communities are connected and empowered, where the web is open, where technology serves people rather than extracting from them.
The mess is real, so is our capacity to compost it. Let's get the shovels out.
#OMN #openweb #4opens #MakingHistory #FOSS #Fediverse #commons #socialtechnology #decentralisation #OGB #indymediaback
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This is the Web 1.5
This is the web 1.5 idea, with the #OMN people ask whether this is just rebuilding Web 2.0, the answer should be no. We are trying to undo some of the damage Web 2.0 did to Web 1.0 while keeping the useful things we learned from it. Web 1.0 openness.Web 2.0 UX.Fediverse federation.#4opens process.Community trust.News and archives first.Governance further down the road. That is the rough shape of Web 1.5, it isn't about making another giant platform, it is building infrastructure where media […] -
The Politics of Ignorance
One of the important ideas in the sociology of science is also one of the easiest to misunderstand: knowledge is socially produced. This does not mean that scientists simply make things up, it means something much more practical. Science is a human activity, it requires people, institutions, money, equipment, archives, universities, laboratories, communities and time. What we choose to investigate - and what we choose not to investigate - is therefore shaped by society. That means there is […] -
The language around #climatechaos is changing
For years, climate breakdown was treated as distant, a problem for activists, scientists, future generations or places somewhere else. That blinded view is now harder to sustain. Heat, fires, floods, crop failures, infrastructure disruption, rising insurance costs and the growing difficulty of simply keeping homes and communities safe are making climate disruption part of our everyday life. As we are talking about tech on this site - the important question for the #OMN is therefore not only […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-language-around-climatechaos-is-changing/
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Religion, mystery and the #openweb
I am not religious, but that does not mean religion is something that can only be dismissed as irrational, stupid or obsolete. There is a useful distinction between believing in a religion and understanding the social, cultural and philosophical work that religion has historically done. This matters for the #OMN because we are interested in how human beings make meaning, build communities and organise themselves when they don't have complete knowledge of the world. We don't know everything - […]https://hamishcampbell.com/religion-mystery-and-the-openweb/
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OMN: Activity, culture and why Soviet experiments matter
One of the interesting things about the history of the #Fediverse is how many of its ideas come from places that, at first glance, seem completely unrelated to social media or network technology. #ActivityPub is a good example - the word activity carries a much older intellectual history, including the work of Soviet psychologist Alexei Leontiev, who developed what became known as activity theory. His work grew out of the cultural-historical psychology of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria, and […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-activity-culture-and-why-soviet-experiments-matter/
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The individual, is not, the starting point for the #OMN
One of the most useful ways to understand the mess we are in today is to ask a deceptively simple question - what comes first - the individual or the network? #Mainstreaming economics startes with the individual, were sociology, anthropology and related traditions start somewhere else - with relationships, institutions, communities and the social structures into which individuals are born. This difference matters enormously, when we start thinking about technology, politics, economics and […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-individual-is-not-the-starting-point-for-the-omn/
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The #openweb needs diversity, not monoculture
The problems we face in the #openweb are often presented as technology problems. Which protocol, platform, licence, federation path, software? Which standard? These questions matter, but they are not the foundations of the problem. A lot of what we are seeing is really a cultural clash. Different parts of the alternative tech world have different ideas about what technology is for, who it should serve, how much control is acceptable, how open something needs to be, and how much compromise is […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-openweb-needs-diversity-not-monoculture/
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This summer #climatechaos
This summer, heat, fires, the soon to come winter floods and insurance withdrawals will make #climatechaos harder to treat as something happening somewhere else. For years, climate breakdown was framed as an activist issue, something discussed by environmental groups while mainstream politics carried on with business as usual. That is changing, people are experiencing the consequences: extreme heat, flooding, damaged homes, rising insurance costs, failing infrastructure and growing […]https://hamishcampbell.com/this-summer-climatechaos-is-mainstream/
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Grassroots #openweb infrastructure is need for a different future
For 50 years we have worshipped the #deathcult - endless growth, extraction, competition and individualism - and now we are living with the damage that this has done to our society and the living world. The current hard shift to the right won't fix any of this, it simply empowers the #nastyfew to surf the apocalypse while more and more of us are left fighting over the scraps. Blind hatred and political ignorance are not solutions. Neither is pretending that the past 50 years of "common […]https://hamishcampbell.com/grassroots-openweb-infrastructure-is-need-for-a-different-future/
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20 years of #dotcons selling libertarian individualism has pushed aside the collective politics that once made the #openweb revolutionary.
For 20 years the #geekproblem helped turn "left tech" into the #closedweb. That's a disaster we can't keep repeating.
No prat fights, we need alternatives: #IndymediaBack, #OMN, #OGB, #MakingHistory. To rebuild collective power.
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#IndymediaBack is a reboot of the original #Indymedia: decentralized, grassroots media built around open publishing and activist participation.
The point isn't nostalgia, it's learning from the old #fashernistas/#geekproblem split and avoiding another round of tribalism and control politics.
The reboot is about rebuilding the path toward decentralized structures and an #OMN that supports direct democracy, open publishing and anti-authoritarian organising.
This time we also have hashtags, metadata and the semantic #openweb to connect the media commons.
The challenge is simple: don't repeat the old mistakes. Build trust, keep it open, and don't let control become the culture.
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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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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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#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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#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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We fucked up… and that matters because we still have agency
Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions - the geeks, developers, architects, and maintainers who shaped how this stuff actually worked in practice. That matters, because it means we still have direct power over what happens next. […]https://hamishcampbell.com/we-fucked-up-and-that-matters-because-we-still-have-agency/
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Progressive Mainstreaming
Most progressive #mainstreaming isn’t about ending the #deathcult - it’s about making its worship feel more fair, more inclusive, more polite. There is some real everyday value in this. Fewer people get crushed immediately, some suffering is reduced, that matters. But let’s be honest about what it does not do, it does not get people off their knees to challenge the altar to stop the sacrifice. It rearranges the seating in the temple, feeding the deeper problem, obedience. Progressive […] -
Building, what comes next?
#mainstreaming people are wilfully blind and alt people tend to be pessimistic, it's a problem. Historically, real social change doesn’t arrive by waiting for collapse. It arrives because people are active, they build alternatives in advance, strong enough to bridge the mess when existing systems fail and lose legitimacy. This isn’t theory. It’s how change has always happened. If you are interested in a better outcome, we need to remember, build first, collapse later is the lesson that […] -
Dig, Plant, Grow. Compost the #Techshit, Repeat
Let’s be honest, much of the so-called “alternative” tech scene is still stuck. We fled the #dotcons for something better, but ended up with copies of the same broken models. The Fediverse, with all its potential, is still dominated by “mainstreaming meta” chat (“Twitter refugees incoming!”) or conspiracy-laden, #fashionista rabbit holes. It’s little wonder that even the nerdy privacy crowd struggles to find meaningful content or community. And no, shouting “fuck the system!” […]
https://hamishcampbell.com/dig-plant-grow-compost-the-techshit-repeat-2/
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Theory and Practice in Activism
There’s a common confusion, often pushed by well-meaning #fashernistas, about how change actually happens. They love theory. They love to talk about change. But when it comes to doing, things go sideways. Why? Because good horizontalists know: theory must emerge from practice, not the other way around.
At the root of radical practice is #DIY culture. We don’t wait for perfect theory or academic approval. We get our hands dirty. We try things, we fail, we try again. Through this, we […]
https://hamishcampbell.com/theory-and-practice-in-activism-2/
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Composting the EU Tech Mess: From #NLnet to #Eurostack
There’s an old rot in the heart of European tech policy - and it’s not just from the corporate lobbies. It’s also sprouting from the well-funded, #NGO-flavoured corners of what should have been grassroots. A contradiction that tells us everything we need to know about how broken the current #EU #mainstreaming crew and paths are. Take #Eurostack for example, on paper, it looks decent: a collaborative push toward European digital sovereignty, resilience, and open-source infrastructure. […]https://hamishcampbell.com/composting-the-eu-tech-mess-from-nlnet-to-eurostack/
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Compost lies using #4opens horizontal networks
Pull conflict into shared space (#openprocess #4opens #trustflows). Poison thrives in private channels, so you gently but consistently move things: from DMs → into group threadsfrom whispers → into meetingsfrom vague → into specific This doesn’t eliminate conflict, it grounds it. Sunlight doesn’t solve everything, but it stops the worst rot. From “how do we stop bad behaviour?” To “how do we stop bad behaviour from breaking the commons?”. The #4opens makes many people […] -
The OMN path, building the activist openweb infrastructure
The #OpenMediaNetwork (#OMN) offers a clear, practical path to (re)building the #openweb, grounded in #4opens. It does this by leveraging common open protocols like #ActivityPub (#AP) and #RSS, alongside existing #FOSS software, to create a distributed network of media platforms where people and groups can join, participate, and contribute. This, like the #Fediverse, is a challenge to the centralised, corporate-dominated structures which define so much of the current internet landscape.How to […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-omn-path-is-building-the-openweb-infrastructure/