What matters and what is dangerous

https://hamishcampbell.com/what-matters-and-what-is-dangerous/

Composting the Mess to Make Room to Plant

https://hamishcampbell.com/composting-the-mess-to-make-room-to-plant/

Ideological traps

https://hamishcampbell.com/ideological-traps/

To balance the continuing support for mess we need a real shift to things that matter in #openweb tech dev

https://hamishcampbell.com/we-need-balance-in-the-continuing-support-for-mess-and-a-real-shift-to-things-that-matter-in-openweb-tech/

We have spent billions of dollars on libertarian #encryptionists fantasies over the last 10 years. What's next?

The story often revolves around the #geekproblem and deeper ideological and structural issues in the tech world. There are internal conflicts in open movements. An example i like to talk about is the UK Indymedia project as a case study of ideological and technical battles between groups with different visions for open media. #Encryptionists: Advocated for security and privacy at the expense of openness, blocking aggregation efforts like RSS. #Fashernistas, sought control over media flows through proprietary yet “better” alternatives to open standards, undermining compatibility. #Openweb advocates promoted aggregation and widely adopted standards like RSS but were sidelined by other factions. The result was a self-destructive cycle that caused the UK Indymedia project to become irrelevant, exemplifying a broader failure to embrace shared, open solutions.

The broader #geekproblem, refers to the cultural and ideological blind spots of the tech community. A fetishization of privacy, encryption, and individualism, which serve market-driven ideologies rather than societal good. A failure to address systemic social and environmental issues (e.g., #climatechaos, #deathcult worship) in favour of isolated, tech-first solutions. The division between “open” (sharing power) and “closed” (hoarding power) reflects fundamental tensions between altruistic and exploitative visions of technology.

Society and technology, the story draws parallels between historical ideologies (e.g., capitalism’s greed vs. socialism’s altruism) and the current state of tech. Examples: Closed systems reinforce inequality, greed, and control. Open systems, guided by #4opens principles, prioritize cooperation, connection, and societal benefit. The problem of dogmatism on both sides of progressive tech (spiky vs. fluffy) hinders collaboration and slows progress.

Working grassroots projects need to return to basics, embrace openness, foster flow rather than blocking, and reject the destructive patterns embedded in neoliberal tech culture. The #4opens framework is a shovel to compost the ideological and technical mess, enabling meaningful technological change. Social movements and tech must integrate this change and challenge to prevent centralization and co-option.

It’s good to critique the ideological blindness of the tech world and suggests that only by fostering trust and openness can we build a sustainable future #KISS

https://hamishcampbell.com/critique-the-ideological-blindness-of-the-tech-world/

The #Indymedia network was a groundbreaking independent, grassroots journalism project, born from the #DIY ethos and the global anti-globalization movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was a network where anyone anywhere could publish stories, videos, and photos, challenging mainstream narratives. However, it eventually fragmented and became less relevant, then died as a functional network. let’s look at why this happened:

Internal factors, where conflict among the crew and contributors, let’s highlight the #encryptionists and #processgeeks, with disputes over priorities (e.g., security and processes) causing friction. Some pushed for hard encryption that complicated usability, while others emphasized bureaucratic formal consensus governance, stifling decision-making​. Consensus breakdown, the decentralized decision-making path, made it hard to resolve disagreements, especially as the network grew and diversified in ideology​ with the influx of more #mainstreaming people. Dogmatism and fragmentation, groups became rigid in their views, leading to infighting and a lack of unity. The inability to balance diverse perspectives led to splintering.​ Burnout and loss of purpose, as activists struggled to maintain momentum as the network ossified.

External pressures with the rise of commercial platforms. The explosion of the #dotcons, corporate platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube drew users away from the failing Indymedia project. These platforms offered easier interfaces and massive audiences, undermining the narrowing, dogmatic grassroots appeal​. Challenges with moderation, was a growing issue, dealing with fake news, spam, and inflammatory content became overwhelming. The “open publishing” model, once a strength, became a liability as it required extensive moderation​. State Pushback with governments targeting Indymedia for its critical reporting, using surveillance, raids, and legal pressures to disrupt operations. This systematic marginalization contributed to its decline​

Lessons for new #openweb projects. Balance simplicity and security, by avoiding overcomplicating platforms with technical measures that alienate non-technical people and communities. Strengthen trust-based governance, by adopting trust-driven models like those proposed by the Open Media Network (#OMN) to foster inclusive, mess and functional decision-making​. Integrate feedback loops, by insure constant input from diverse people to adapt to evolving needs and combat dogmatism. Compete on accessibility, by design platforms that are intuitive and engaging to counter the allure of #dotcons social media.

Indymedia’s legacy offers critical insights into building resilient, people-centric, and trust-based media networks that can withstand internal and external challenges. We need these historical paths to reboot the #openweb with the #Fediverse.

https://hamishcampbell.com/we-need-these-historical-paths-to-reboot-the-openweb-with-the-fediverse/

The old #openweb was torn apart by many forces.

#Encryptionists, pushing security theatre, broken #UX and trustless relationships. The #Geekproblem narrowed this into an irrelevant subculture. The #Fashernistas embraced the worst of both of these for self-interest, greed, and fame. The #Dotcons privatized data and metadata for profit and social control.

All the above groups played their roles in this destruction.

Rebooting with the Fediverse is a first step, we need to move beyond copying to "native" paths with #OMN and #4opens

The #geekproblem pushing over #openweb agen

https://www.wired.com/story/how-blockchain-can-wrest-the-internet-from-corporations The #encryptionists are trying to pushing there flagging project over the healthy #openweb reboot.

Q. need a new hashtag? lovers of blockchain (bloccatenaphile?) are a breed unto themselves, and not likely to be as sensible as some those who are in to encryption.

how broad is your definition of #encryptionist?

A. #encryptionists my “fuckyou” thoughts started with the #indymedia network. The #geekproblem installed a self signed certificate on the domain to increase “privacy” alongside not logging ip addresses on the local server.

The “good affect” only securaty theater, the bad affect, every user received a browser pop up saying “do not trust this site” and the IP addresses could just be collected “upriver” at the ISP/switch level by the state actors who were monitoring the project

#openweb

The affect of not logging IP address locally was a rising deluge of spam and moderator burn out.

The was not democratic process on these changes, and no way to role them back or even address the issue. The project of over 100 globle news sites, with thousands of media creators and millions of users. Ossified and then died, the #dotcons soon replaced it.

#fashernistas moved on, the #openweb started to die.

The #geekproblem pushing #encryptionists agenders OVER #openweb projects.

The is a role for #encryptionists /closed but it’s on balance a smaller one than “open” is my core experience over the last 20 years.

All tech is “ideology” as code, we need to talk about this #4opens

The world walks right past us looking the other way and takes the big bundle of bills from capitalism.

OK, had to close then open new accounts on #visionontv #peertube because of #spam, the spam is starting agen – there is an update that allows you to put new accounts on ask/moderation, we need to upgrade at some point to get this.

Interesting this is exactly the way our ten-year-old #OMN project handles flows as is the “new” moderation in #bluesky… if we don’t manage to go to the world, the world come to us… well more like the world walks right past us looking the other way and takes the big bundle of bills from capitalism.

This is normal, we are still doing needed work, but better would be good to

#bluesky #Nostr #activertypub

They all share #4opens #openweb tech, so this is a win.

Where they differ is in the “culture” they come from and push.

#bluesky comes from surveillance capitalism, it’s from the #dotcons and has meany of the same assumptions, just “better”.

#Nostr comes from the #encryptionists and #bitcoin bro crew and suffers from being from this mess.

#activertypub is #openweb native and comes from the #4opens traditions the whole software world is actually built on.

#KISS

The #KISS path is to simply bridge them all and let them cooperate, as they are all a part of the #openweb family.

The more complex and messy path is that some of them might not want to do this… OK now we get to the part where piss is likely signal rather than noise. Let’s draw a line, (a date is good) if they don’t bridge, we let loose the pee, liquid trickling in will short out their servers.

Ending thought:

For a lot of our #fashernistas in our spaces, things only matter if they come from #mainstreaming this is obviously crap blinded behaver – but it’s hard to communicate why, likely they can’t see me

PS. I liked that joke.

A look at the internal mess of the uk indymedia project

The project I like to point to as an example. The indymedia project, an early alt-media network that spread the use of open source software and #4opens organizing around the world at the turn of the century. In the UK the was a #geekproblem vs #openweb fight that became nasty over what we would now understand as “activertypub” the fedivers vs more centralized silo approach. In the UK you can see this stress point fought as a proxy war over #RSS​

The #openweb aggregation side were sold a dud by the #fashernistas being swayed by the #geekproblem It was obvious that the project had to change and move away from central servers to a more aggregation model. BUT the movement was torpedoed by an obviously pointless open-source project instead of implementing an existing standards based RSS they created their BETTER, BRIGHTER flavour which was of course incomparable with everyone else.

This is an example of a “better” but obviously pointless open source project and also destructive behaver. The #indymedia project in the UK was ripped apart internally from this same divide in the end. A bad “open source” outcome. You can find similar behaver today in the Fediverse if you look.

It's a interesting thing to look at. Actually you can see 3 active sides in the internal uk #indymedia mess and important to see the outcome that they ALL LOST in the end.

1) #encryptionists (being pushed by the #geekproblem)

2) #fashernistas (being influenced by the #geekproblem)

3) #openweb being sidelined by the rest

1) The first resisted and blocked aggregation and #RSS from privacy and “security” issues.

2) The second is an obviously failed compromise by keeping control of “their” own better, non-comparable RSS format.

3) The last, the one the whole project was based on, were ignored and sidelined.

The #IMC project became irrelevant and died.

For the social change we need

For the social change we need to survive as a society and flourish as a species we need to take some time to go back to basics

All economic syteams are based in an unspoken idea of what it is to be human. To be clear, if you do not have an understanding of this you have little understanding of anything that matters in the era of #XR

Let's look back to early cristanerty to highlight this idea.

* The Old Testament is based on a negative view of humanity, greed, selfishness and gluttony are the motivations, that god is controlling by forcing us to bow down to his authority.

* The New Testament is based on love and common humane society.

* Capitalism is based on greed and the worst parts of human nature

* Socialism is based on altruism and the best parts of human nature

As you can see, the divide between these different ideology’s goes back a long way and likely to the dawn of human history.

These simple groupings live within supposedly sister ideology’s think for example of the horizontal’ists and the vertical’ists in progressive movements represent the different views.

When we start to understand this, you can use this clear difference to make judgments on what has value and what is destructive in our current society.

#deathcult

#geekproblem

#encryptionists

#stupididiviulisam

#openweb

#OMN

The only question that matters is the balance between trust and fear is a useful way of looking at this.

Lets talk about the protocol wars

Where they differ is in the “culture” they come from and push.

#bluesky comes from surveillance capitalism, it’s from the #dotcons and has meany of the same assumptions, just “better”.

#Nostr comes from the #encryptionists and #bitcoin bro crew and suffers from being from this mess.

#activertypub is #openweb native and comes from the #4opens traditions the whole software world is actually built on.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/lets-talk-about-the-protocol-wars/3177