#techchurn — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #techchurn, aggregated by home.social.
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The Fediverse is fun and growing, but it seems to kinda be on autopilot at the moment
Q, The #Fediverse seams to kinda be on autopilot at the moment - I miss the days when the community was more focused....A. I'd say it's growing and changing. From my window, there's a LOT happening. Many people are excited by the new stuff that's landing, while others are afraid of how those changes may rock the boat they're on. My solution is to build a bigger boat, because everyone needs the opportunity to be here. But that's understandably scary for those who want a very small, exclusive […] -
Compost the #techshit. Don't throw everything away—salvage what works.
Reuse code, protocols and knowledge instead of chasing endless #techchurn.
Build commons infrastructure. Simple, federated tools that communities can actually run themselves.
This is where the #OMN works: open standards, transparent governance, human moderation and shared ownership.
Document what works. Projects like #MakingHistory matter because movements lose hard-won knowledge when people move on. Living archives help communities avoid starting from zero.
Value maintenance over novelty. Healthy ecosystems need gardeners more than inventors. Keeping useful things working is often more important than creating new things.
Practice cooperation. Small habits - sharing work, documenting decisions, mentoring, resolving conflict - are how trust grows. Technology can support that, but it can't replace it.
Accept the long timescale. If dominant assumptions are changing, it will likely be gradual. Cultural shifts often happen over decades rather than months.
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To escape the #geekproblem, we need to let go of the fantasy of perfect solutions. The path forward is to mediate problems into better, messier outcomes - then repeat. We don't know exactly where we'll end up, and giving up the need for control is the first step.
The second step is using the #4opens to compost #techchurn and redirect the energy of the #fashionistas toward projects that can actually challenge #mainstreaming.
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If you use #mainstreaming tools, you'll get #deathcult outcomes. That's not surprising, it's how systems reproduce themselves.
The same is true of process. Using the same "common sense" approaches to create change simply reinforces the status quo. I call this #blocking.
In tech, it becomes #techchurn. In culture, it's often amplified by the #fashionistas.
If we want different outcomes, we need different tools and different processes. That's the path of #OMN and the #4opens. #openweb #KISS
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Make the #4opens fashionable
The crisis of the #openweb isn't just coming from the #dotcons. It's also coming from us. Our #mainstreaming #fashionistas are dangerously consumptive, forever chasing the next platform, the next funding round, the next shiny self abstraction. Meanwhile, our alternative #fashionistas mirror exactly the same behaviour, endlessly reinventing tools that never escape their own echo chambers. Both paths produce the same result: more #TechShit, more #TechChurn, less social value. We don't need […] -
Add this to the last article: hy Stories Matter on the #OMN
Facts matter, technology matters, governance matters. But people rarely change because they read theory, a specification or a list of features. People change because of stories, this is why storytelling is central to the #OMN path. A story gives people somewhere to stand, it connects ideas to lived experience.
Instead of explaining the #4opens as an abstract framework, tell the story of a community escaping a #dotcons platform by building trust on the #openweb. Instead of arguing about governance, tell the story of how a group solved a conflict through #OpenProcess. Instead of listing technical features, tell the story of someone who regained control of their community tech after years of platform lock-in.
Stories carry values, the last forty years of #mainstreaming have been held together by stories about competition, consumption and individual success. These stories have normalised the #deathcult, making extraction and enclosure feel like "common sense." We now need better stories about cooperation instead of competition, commons balancing ownership, about trust instead of surveillance. Stories about building rather than consuming.
The #Fediverse itself is a story, an accidental reboot of the #openweb that proves another internet is possible. It isn't perfect, but it demonstrates that people can build social infrastructure without billionaires directing the conversation.
The challenge is that the academics or the #geekproblem tell stories only to other, academics or geeks, technical and academic paths are important, but they don't inspire people to act, so we need stories that people can understand:
A neighbourhood rebuilding local media.
Boaters organising to defend the waterways as a commons.
Communities escaping the #dotcons.
Volunteers composting #techchurn into useful tools.
Ordinary people discovering that they can build infrastructure together.
These stories become shared memory, shared memory becomes culture, culture shapes "common sense." and changing common sense is how lasting social change happens. So don't just build software or academic theory, tell stories that help people imagine themselves as part of a healthier #openweb.
#OMN #FOSS #openweb #4opens #ActivityPub #Fediverse #commons #DIY #makinghistory
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Why #FOSS matters socially
The internet didn't become broken overnight, it drifted from being a network of communities into a marketplace dominated by platforms whose purpose is extracting value. This is the logic of #dotcons most of us invested our lives and community into. How did we get into this mess? The problem isn't only bad companies, it's that our digital lives depend entirely on proprietary #dotcons paths and software, commercial interests end up controlling our reality. This is why #FOSS (Free and Open […] -
From a grassroots #DIY tech perspective, most of our #openweb #fashionistas are part of the problem, not because they have much real-world impact - they don't - but because they dominate the conversation and soak up the space needed for practical paths and projects.
We need less #techshit and #techchurn, and more tools that communities use. The #4opens is a simple way to compost the noise and focus on what matters: building trust-based, working infrastructure.
Who's up for making this happen?
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Our failure to mediate the mess
The current #AI boom is built on a huge contradiction, you can see this in #mainstreaming terms. That AI companies are not paying the real costs of what they consume. They haven't paid for the copyrighted material they trained on. They haven't paid the environmental costs of the water and electricity they use. They haven't paid for the pressure they place on public infrastructure, or for the social costs of flooding the web with synthetic content. Yet AI services are sold below their true […] -
On the #geekproblem, here's one way to think about it:
This century, code is power. Coders play a role a bit like economists did in the last century - they shape the systems we live in.
But user-facing code only has power if people can and want to use it. Without good #UX, it's just #techchurn waiting to be composted.
Too many of our grassroots geeks still #BLOCK this reality, while #dotcons geeks turn good UX into a tool for serving the #deathcult.
As grassroots #DIY #openweb activists, one of our biggest jobs is to #unblock our geeks.
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We're living inside a full-blown #blinded ideology: 40 years of #neoliberalism layered onto the liberal consensus. That's a powerful #BLOCK on imagining different futures.
One way to push back is to name today's "common sense" for what it is: worship of the #deathcult.
On the grassroots tech path keep it simple: #openweb vs #closedweb. Use the #4opens to judge and compost #techcrap instead of feeding the #techchurn.
Shared #hashtags are simple organising tools.
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Thatcher, Reagan were the wrecking crew: How we keep pushing mess
This story is about the ideology that won. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two politicians on either side of the Atlantic didn’t only win elections, they reshaped what people came to accept as “common sense.” Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States did not invent capitalism’s worst tendencies, but they gave them state power, institutional infrastructure, and ideological legitimacy. What they built was not simply a set of policies, it was a social […]https://hamishcampbell.com/thatcher-reagan-were-the-wrecking-crew-how-we-pushed-the-current-mess/
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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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#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 - burning community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy in the process while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures completely untouched.
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There is such a thing as society -and the #openweb depends on it
There is such a thing as society. The entire #openweb is built on that assumption 🙂Deny it, and everything collapses into noise, power grabs, and enclosure. That denial, dressed up today as “post-truth” - is killing us. Our current media ecology is broken. So called #AI and Google are no longer a useful way to find information about most things that actually matter. This isn’t accidental; it’s a structural #dotcons problem. Extraction, advertising, and algorithmic manipulation […]https://hamishcampbell.com/there-is-such-a-thing-as-society-and-the-openweb-depends-on-it/
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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 […] -
What Did We Learn from Web3, Crypto?
Looking back from the mid-2020s, the arc of #web03, #NFTs, and blockchain culture is very clear. What once promised (lied about) decentralisation, liberation, and a break from corporate capture now looks like the same, mess, #techcurn pattern repeating itself, yes it had new language, new branding, but it was easy to see it had the same underlying mess making dynamics. As these #geekproblem projects hollowed out, the signs became hard to ignore. The technical optimism faded, the user bases […]https://hamishcampbell.com/what-did-we-learn-a-history-of-web3-crypto/
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It’s pointless to build on complexity in a post-truth world powered by #techchurn and driven by #fashionista incentives. How fear blocks change https://hamishcampbell.com/the-fashionista-problem-how-fear-blocks-change/
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The #Fashionista problem: How fear blocks change
This story is about compost, not control: Our world is smeared in social shit. We live in a vast, stinking pile of it. The left has its post-modern shit - where truth dissolves into vibes and dreams. The right has its fascist shit - where truth is something you enforce with obedience and violence. We spend our lives drinking the seeping effluent from this dung heap. Our work, our shops, our politics, our tech... all of it is smeared in the same rot. The planet itself is decomposing under the […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-fashionista-problem-how-fear-blocks-change/
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Talking About the #geekproblem in Funding
Funding the #openweb is a political act, yet most funding decisions today are framed in technical terms only, dominated by what we call the #geekproblem – a worldview where infrastructure is king, user needs are secondary, and social context is largely ignored.
Let’s unpack this with real-world examples and look at how we keep falling into this trap, and what we could do to climb out. The call-out for funding is phrased in social language, to build privacy-preserving tools, improve the […]
https://hamishcampbell.com/talking-about-the-geekproblem-in-funding-2/
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Why most #geekproblem software fails: Trust vs. control
Almost all of our #geekproblem software fails because it’s built with a mindset of control.
Control over users.Control over systems.Control over outcomes.
But all good societies, and all durable communities, are based on trust. When we ignore this, we don’t just write bad code, we produce #techshit that nobody uses, that burns out developers, and that confuses users. Then we start over… and call it “innovation.” That’s #techchurn.Control-driven projects: Examples of […]
https://hamishcampbell.com/why-most-geekproblem-software-fails-trust-vs-control/
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By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that currently wastes time, focus and resources. The pushing of doomed projects hamishcampbell.com/the-pushing-...
The pushing of doomed projects... -
By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that currently wastes time, focus and resources. The pushing of doomed projects https://hamishcampbell.com/the-pushing-of-doomed-projects/
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By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that currently wastes time, focus and resources. The pushing of doomed projects hamishcampbell.com/the-pushing-...
The pushing of doomed projects... -
By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that currently wastes time, focus and resources. The pushing of doomed projects https://hamishcampbell.com/the-pushing-of-doomed-projects/
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We compost now. That means naming the problems clearly — with #4opens, with #nothingnew, with #techchurn — and using simple, shared language to build trust again. Not trust in apps or brands, but in each other. The #Fediverse gives us a foundation. The hashtags give us a narrative. The compost gives us soil. It’s time to stop pretending we’re building something while we’re really just stacking junk. Stop chasing bling. Start seeding roots. Speak simply, act clearly, hashtag with intention. We've wasted a decade. Let’s not lose another.
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Bad language feeds back into messy culture
Most people understand that culturally, and socially, we are in a growing nasty mess. The #blocking of action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with our use of language. And the deeper issue is how this bad language feeds back into culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, erodes trust, and paralyses collective action. The last 40 years of postmodernism and neoliberalism made this worse. […]https://hamishcampbell.com/messy-language-feeds-back-into-our-culture/
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By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that waste time, focus and resources. The pushing of doomed projects hamishcampbell.com/the-pushing-...
The pushing of doomed projects... -
By focusing, we can make a tangible difference in the #openweb space and reduce the noise of pointless #techchurn that waste time, focus and resources. The pushing of doomed projects https://hamishcampbell.com/the-pushing-of-doomed-projects/
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This view is not arrogance, I should know, having worked at the heart of this mess for 30 years
With the growing influx of #EU funding into the #openweb we will see an increase in #techchurn due to the #geekproblem being feed by #mainstreaming #stupidindividualism of most of the #fashernista who can jump through the bureaucracy gatekeeper hoops.
Hoping for a balance of good vs damage, though the shear blinded arrogance of the vertical crew push us to the damage side. #NGI do not want to see this problem, we as a community need to push back on this for a better outcome
Some examples […]