Part of the shitty mess we’re in comes from the failure of #DIY culture and the rise of #stupidindividualism as the common sense path. #stupidindividualism is completely unscalable in social terms. It fragments, isolates, and exhausts. That isn’t accidental, it’s a classic divide-and-control strategy of the #deathcult. And we need to consciously step away, and away, and far away from this. An example, over the last 20 years, I’ve answered the same questions individually, over and over. But the point of #DIY culture was never one-to-one hand-holding. You don’t need to stress personal connections just to begin. The hashtags are links – they exist to let you start the process yourself. You can do this by #KISS following the flow, not by demanding individual explanations. Click the #hashtag links. Read the background posts. Trace the project history. Use a search engine. Learn how the process works before pulling people into one-on-one clarification. This is basic #DIY practice, grounded in the #4opens. You need a second example, looking back, remember how many of our activist friends ran workshops on how to use #dotcons social media as a campaign tool? How to organise activism through corporate platforms? While this was happening, our own independent media was being ripped apart internally, ossified by process, and then abandoned by the same #fashionista activists. This mess is the devil child of #postmodernism and #neoliberalism, all surface, no grounding, all individual expression, no shared responsibility. We know the names and URLs of many of the people who did this. It’s the legacy we’re dealing with. Our projects like #indymediaback exists because of this history. If you’re serious about changing society, you have to think your way past this common sense #blocking. That means rebuilding collective pathways, shared knowledge, and common processes, not endlessly repeating the same individual conversations. The tools are here. The links are here. The work starts when we stop pretending this is a personal problem and recognise it as a social one. * * * ### Discover more from #OMN (Open Media Network) Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

We need real and sharp critique's of the current mess pushing of #mainstreaming in the #openweb and #NGO tech-for-good spaces. The challenge is of cutting down obviously pointless projects from 99% to 90% which is a both realistic and necessary. How can we achieve this needed shift, focusing on impactful subjects, better implementation, and strategic approaches in programming development.The developing of alternatives to corporate platforms is a first step we have taken in the #Fediverse, […]

The networks we use shape who we are – and the networks we are given by #dotcons are designed to make us spectators. Every interaction is reduced to a metric: a like, a share, a click. We are data points to be monetised, attention to be harvested, behaviour to be predicted and sold. In these systems, connection is shallow, fleeting, and ultimately extractive. The #4opens offer a different path. When your networks are open, knowable, and modifiable, you stop being a statistic and start being a person again. Not just a profile, not just a follower count – a participant in a living community. You can see who is contributing, who is caring, and who is struggling. You can understand the shape of your social environment and intervene meaningfully, rather than being nudged along invisible pipelines designed to maximise someone else’s profit. Open systems give us tools to know each other better. Not superficially, through algorithmic suggestions, but genuinely: by making relationships and contributions visible, traceable, and shareable in ways that respect the participants. Collaboration becomes possible without asking for permission. Knowledge, help, and support flow where they are needed. Trust can be rebuilt across distance and time, because the infrastructure encourages transparency, accountability, and mutual care. This isn’t only about technology, it’s about escaping the isolation of the #dotcons. Social media was sold to us as connection, but it atomised communities into consumable fragments. It told us we belonged to brands, not to people. The #4opens remind us that belonging is not transactional, and connection is not a product. In open communities, relationships matter more than metrics. Reciprocity replaces algorithms. Long levity replaces virality. Care replaces performance. People organize not for attention, but for mutual survival, growth, and flourishing. You can get a glimpse of the change and challenge in bodied in such projects as the #Fediverse. It can be radical: networks of care that scale, knowledge that accumulates instead of being enclosed, resilience that emerges from participation rather than extraction. Belonging becomes real again, and communities can function as spaces of power and support rather than channels for profit. The choice is ours: continue to live as data points in someone else’s spectacle, or reclaim the digital commons as a terrain for genuine human connection. With the #4opens, the infrastructure is ready. The question is whether we will use it to rebuild what has been lost. * * * ### Discover more from #OMN (Open Media Network) Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

A simple app that sits on top of existing child lock / screen time APIs. No dark magic, spyware, behavioural profiling. Instead, simple:Just process, consent, and friction.

See how hamish campbell used Mastodon this year!