#omn — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #omn, aggregated by home.social.
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Activists have done self-damage over the last 20 years by embracing the #dotcons as tools for media and organising.
You can see it in most campaigns. Yes, these platforms are useful and often necessary, but they offer very little protection against things going off the rails, especially when career #NGO agendas start shaping the work.
We need to learn from this, use the tools without letting the tools shape the politics.
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A radical joining an #openweb project like #Mastodon can be problematic if they join one of the big #mainstreaming instances.
The people controlling the biggest spaces aren't particularly radical, when push comes to shove - and it will - a genuinely radical community can find itself pushed out, just as happened with the #dotcons.
So if you're an activist, don't join the biggest server because it's convenient. Look harder for a sustainable activist instance, one where the community, values and governance actually fit the politics you want to build.
The #openweb is about more than escaping the #dotcons. It's about building spaces where radical communities can actually stay, organise and thrive. #Fediverse #FOSS #OMN #4opens #activism #OGB #indymediaback
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Apathy and bad behaviour are a bigger problem than disagreement. People saying “I don't understand” is not necessarily the problem. We can explain things better. The problem starts when people don't care enough to engage, dismiss ideas without trying to understand them, and turn a discussion into personal attacks.
Apathy creates the space for bad systems to continue. If we don't care, the #dotcons keep doing what they do. If we don't participate, other people make the decisions. If we don't challenge bad behaviour, it becomes normal.
So yes, we should make our language clearer. We should avoid unnecessary jargon and explain the ideas better. But there also has to be some willingness to engage.
You can't build an #openweb, healthy communities or meaningful governance from people who simply don't care - or who respond to disagreement with abuse.
The #openweb needs participation, curiosity, patience and accountability. The opposite of that isn't just ignorance, it's apathy + bad behaviour.
And that is something we need to talk about. #OMN #4opens #openweb #commons #governance #Fediverse #OGB
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The #4opens has many useful roles, but one needs highlighting now: grassroots tech projects are too often pushed aside by the #NGO and #fashernista ecosystem that grows around them.
In my experience, this has happened again and again over the last 20 years. An open process makes this #techshit visible - which means we can compost it at source instead of letting it become another layer of institutional power.
Use the #4opens in all your grassroots tech projects. Make the process open, accountable and visible from the start.
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“Practical” governance in #FOSS often starts with the Benevolent Dictator for Life - one person has the final say. Then you get the trusted favourites and inner circles expanding that ruling structure.
And that's about it for a lot of #FOSS projects. It’s practical, but politically it looks remarkably premodern: a kind of digital #feudalism.
The #4opens path needs to do better: not just open code, but open, accountable and genuinely participatory governance.
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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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A positive view, ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – this is a path https://hamishcampbell.com/ignore-the-ai-mess-build-the-omn-there-is-a-path/ Let’s rebuild the net with hands in the soil and eyes on the stars because the answer isn’t new, it’s what we’ve always done when things fall apart, we grow.
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It’s not easy, and it’s not as simple as clicking “sign up” and walking into a ready-made community https://hamishcampbell.com/its-not-easy-and-its-not-as-simple-as-clicking-sign-up-and-walking-into-a-ready-made-community/ I have been walking this path for 30 years as an #openweb organic intellectual, technologist, and part of the #OMN.
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#OMN as Web 1.5
So, how is #OMN different from Web 2.0? The short answer is, it isn't trying to rebuild Web 2.0. It is trying to recover what Web 1.0 got right, while keeping the useful UX lessons of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 took much of the openness of Web 1.0, wrapped it in better UX, and then turned it into the #dotcons - centralised, privatised platforms that captured and monetised the value of the #openweb. #OMN takes a different path - the basic idea flows rather than ownership. Instead of everything being […] -
The #dotcons are designed for greed and selfishness. Everything about them feeds this, and in turn feeds off it. It is coded deep into their closed networks.
They cannot be fixed. And we can't build alternatives by copying the same models in #FOSS, as we have largely done with the #Fediverse.
Rebooting the #openweb was the right first step, and it worked. But the next step is to move beyond simply copying the current #mainstreaming mess.
The next step needs to be native to the #4opens path we have started down.
Let's thank the people who copied. Give them statues and security! They did us all a service and deserve thanks, not hatred. They helped get us this far.
Now we need to look for the next path: a genuinely humanistic approach to social technology.
Who's coming on the adventure with #OMN?
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Rethinking commons
We currently have deeply embedded idea that objects have to be owned by an individual, as we are taught to think in terms of possession, this is mine, that is yours. We measure security through what we own, status through what we accumulate, and value through what we can control. This feels like common sense because it is invisibly embedded in modern Western culture. But it isn't the only way to understand value, in the #openweb paths what if we thought less about ownership and more about […] -
The expertise problem
Technical expertise matters, the problem begins when technical expertise is treated as the only legitimate way of understanding a social problem. This is the trap of technocracy: taking a useful tool for understanding parts of the world and turning it into a complete worldview. The expertise problem "We need more technical expertise in government." But that is half the answer. The mistake is to jump from "politicians need technical expertise" to "technical experts should make decisions." That […] -
Trust and the trustless mess
One of the useful arguments in the debate around decentralisation, blockchain and the #openweb is also one of the simplest - We do not actually live in a trustless world, we live in a world built on different kinds of trust. This is why the Fediverse worked because it was #4opens with a good #UI. The problem it had to overcome and still does is that much of #geekproblem pushing technology is obsessed with trying to eliminate trust rather than understanding how trust works. The idea of the […] -
The blocking happens when criticism can become a substitute for action
There is an important argument within environmentalism that often gets lost between the lifestyle politics of the light greens and the anti-industrial politics of the dark greens. It is humanistic green environmentalism - the idea that ecological sustainability does not require us to abandon technology or progressive modern life. Instead, we need to radically redesign the systems that produce them. Humanistic green thinking is about bringing humanity's ecological footprint within the limits […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-blocking-happens-when-criticism-becomes-a-substitute-for-action/
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Just put a # in front of words
Let's look at stepping away from the #dotcons as an example of hashtag affinity group organising. A hashtag can help name a problem, but it cannot by itself create a movement. It only becomes a tool for social change when shared language connects people to shared relationships, practical projects and action. The “spade and compost” metaphor is useful for this, the hashtag helps identify the mess, but the point is to pick up the spade and compost with them. A useful progression is: Name […] -
How do we talk to people on the #dotcons without feeding their #StupidIndividualism
Sarcasm and comedy can be useful ways of exposing the absurdity of the platforms controlling our communication and communities. But there is a problem: every click, argument and outrage still feeds the #dotcons with attention and data.The challenge is to help people understand that we can build healthier social relationships on the #openweb, where communities grow their communication, data and infrastructure. So the answer isn't to spend all our time mocking the cage. The path is to step away from the cage - and take your community with you.
Don't just ridicule the #dotcons, please build the alternatives.
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The Programmer’s Fulcrum 21 August, 2026
This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum. It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism. IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno […]https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-programmers-fulcrum-21-august-2026/
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You rarely get anywhere simply by renaming things. All you do is lose the historical thread, then recreate the same mess under a new name.
This is one of the sins of liberalism and the “post-politics” crew: #stupidindividualism, where everyone reinvents the wheel instead of building on shared history and community.
The #deathcult is simply a metaphor for the invisible power of #neoliberalism. These metaphors and hashtags are ways of making mainstream thinking visible and making it dirty.
But they only work if a community or affinity group uses them together, consistently and collectively.
Otherwise, we just fall back into the same old #stupidindividualism we are trying to change and challenge.
#OMN #OpenWeb #Commons #4opens #Mainstreaming #Neoliberalism
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#StupidIndividualism is excessive individualism disconnected from community - and it sits at the root of many social problems.
This is a part of the mess of liberalism and capitalism, where the balance between individual rights and community responsibilities has been lost.
The #KISS composting is simple: we need to move beyond extreme individualism and rebuild a balance between individual freedom, community and collective action.
We are social beings. Strong communities don't take freedom away - they give people the relationships and support needed to actually use it.
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Making #mainstreaming thinking dirty is part of the work. Metaphors like #deathcult and #stupidindividualism make the failures of mainstream thinking visible, and, hopefully, less attractive.
But the metaphors only work if people use them together. We need affinity groups that turn shared language into shared action, building alternatives rather than just complaining about the mess.
Culture changes when people organise, repeat the ideas, and build something different. Make the old thinking unattractive.
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There’s a strong need to stop complaining about the situation and start building alternatives.
Metaphors and critiques should be rallying cries for action, not just more content. We need to move beyond criticism and do the hard, messy work of creating something better.
That’s what #OMN is turning critique into constructive, community-based action.
Stop complaining. Start building.
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Build affinity groups, communities that share critical views and are committed to building alternatives. #Hashtags help rally and connect people, but the real work is the relationships and actions we build together.
The #OMN needs tangible projects — constructive, community-based alternatives that move beyond the failures of the past.
Use shared metaphors and hashtags to galvanise people, but don't stop at posting. Turn critique into compost: something that can nourish new growth.
The goal is simple: build real community, build alternatives, and grow something better together.
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Ideology can become invisible. #Neoliberalism doesn't usually present itself as an ideology; it presents itself as “common sense”, “human nature”, “the economy”, or simply “the way things are”.
That makes it difficult to challenge because people are arguing from inside the framework without seeing the framework itself. You can point to inequality, climate destruction, exploitation or social fragmentation, but the assumptions producing those things remain largely unquestioned.
#eoliberalism's superpower is pretending it doesn't exist. And #mainstreaming reinforces that invisibility by constantly narrowing what is considered reasonable or realistic.
So perhaps the first step is making the invisible visible: learning to recognise the assumptions shaping our thinking, naming them, and creating spaces where we can think outside them.
That is part of what #OMN and the #4opens are trying to do - build practical social structures where different ways of organising, communicating and making decisions can actually be experienced rather than merely argued about.
We are not completely fucked. But we do need to start seeing the cage before we can find the way out.
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The #OMN and #4opens are alternatives to the closed, exploitative path we live inside. #4opens gives us openness, transparency and collaboration. While #OMN gives us a path to build them into working social infrastructure. We also need our own #mythos and traditions: shared stories, values and practices that help new social groups grow.
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Mythos and traditions are not only old stories, they are ways groups organise meaning, values and collective action. So if we want to build better social systems, we should consciously grow our own #mythos, stories, values and rituals. Shared culture gives people a sense of purpose and helps bind a movement together. #OMN #commons #openweb
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The #OMN is a call to action to rethink our economic and social systems, embracing open, collaborative, and sustainable practices. It’s about recognizing the ideological forces at play and consciously choosing to build new systems based on different values. The path involves both rejecting harmful patterns and creating new ones that better serve the common good.
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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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The Programmer’s Fulcrum 14 August, 2026
This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum. It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism. IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno […]https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-programmers-fulcrum-14-august-2026/
