#omn — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #omn, aggregated by home.social.
-
The blocking happens when criticism becomes 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/
-
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.
-
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/
-
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
-
#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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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/
-
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/
-
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/
-
Most people are #mainstreaming the #deathcult - it has become the default way of thinking, living and organising for many people.
But that default cannot continue. The damage is becoming harder to ignore. We need to challenge the assumptions, build alternatives and make change normal.
The mainstream is not neutral. Change is needed. #OMN #openweb #4opens
-
The #OMN cannot be based on the assumption that humans will simply “do the right thing”.
They won’t. And if the system depends on that, it will fail.
The challenge in the era of the #deathcult is building systems that expect mistakes, conflict and bad behaviour, while making it easier for communities to see, challenge and repair them.
-
Please remember, before you keep posting liberal “common sense”, look around.
Much of what surrounds us - and many things we think we value - are shaped by the #deathcult: a path that puts markets, competition and private greed ahead of collective life.
That doesn’t mean everything is bad. It means we need to look at the structures underneath the things we take for granted.
Question the defaults. Find the commons. Build something better. #OMN #4opens
-
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/
-
A long post you need to read if you are interested in the #OMN project. The individual, is not, the starting point https://hamishcampbell.com/the-individual-is-not-the-starting-point-for-the-omn/
-
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/
-
In tech, the unit of measure is important https://hamishcampbell.com/in-tech-it-is-really-important-to-see-the-unit-of-measure/ The #OMN is there to provide scaffolding for the path away from this current mess.
-
The #KISS #OMN path is about building practical, commons-based media tools now, not waiting for the perfect future.
Much of the mess - and endless #blocking - comes from ownership and control. We can sidestep some of this by putting media infrastructure firmly in the commons under the #4opens.
It won't fix #mainstreaming overnight, but it gives us space to build alternatives before the old systems catch up.
If you have resources, fund development. If you're technical, code. If you know UX, design. If you make media, tell the story.
This isn't theory. It's practical work for better social outcomes. Keep it simple. Keep it open. Build and use it.
-
Public conversation about public problems
Our current working models of “governance” in #opensource are mostly: Monarchy - the dictator for life.Aristocracy - the devs.Oligarchy - NGOs/funders.And way out on the edge: Democracy - the users. We need better governance native to the #openweb. Let's look at this at a more personal level before the normal wider social view. Yes, in #FOSS development the devs doing the work deserve respect, and #OMN isn't arguing that users should simply demand things from volunteers. The point […]https://hamishcampbell.com/public-conversation-about-public-problems/
-
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/
-
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/
-
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/
-
Thanks Hamish. I’ve read it.
I think “leaving matters, but leaving is not enough” is exactly where this conversation has taken me.
The replies have made me much more aware of how deeply Facebook has become infrastructure for councils, businesses, community groups, families and local information.
That makes the open web problem much bigger and much more interesting than simply telling people to delete Facebook.