Very excited for Protocols for Publishers at Newspeak House later tonight. Lots of publishers and protocol builders showing up to discuss how we might help each other and build an open, protocol-driven web that supports journalism, publishers, and an informed society.
Imagine every high school and tertiary institution in the world ran a conversation and media-sharing servers for its students. With sign-ups only available in person, and staff taking responsibility for admin and moderation, and training interested students to assist with those tasks.
They could use a modified version of fediverse that somehow federates only with other schools' servers. But it would be intriguing to see if they could manage it safely with open federation.
hamish campbell
boosted
#OMN is often critiqued as if it were a finished system, a moral framework, or an alternative economy. It is none of those things. We need to be clear about scope, sequence, and intent if discussion is going to move forward instead of circling the same ground.
#OMN is often critiqued as if it were a finished system, a moral framework, or an alternative economy. It is none of those things. We need to be clear about scope, sequence, and intent if discussion is going to move forward instead of circling the same ground.
@hamishcampbell This is a false opposition.
The critique begins from present material constraints such as housing, health, income, and legality.
The issue is that these constraints are treated as personal alignment problems when survivability is deferred.
This post restates the tension without engaging its consequences.
@warmsignull This could cercal for ever and nothing is likely to come from it. So #KISS Q. where do the resources come from to tick the boxes you keep pushing in front of the needed commons building of the #OMN?
Are we engaging with lived historical practice, or abstract risk models?
#OMN emerges from 30+ years of practical projects (Indymedia, squatting cultures, media activism, commons infrastructure). Critique that does not engage with this history risks becoming theoretical at best, academic at worst.
Are we evaluating #OMN as a replacement system, when it is a transitional one?
OMN is not claiming to “outcompete capitalism” today. It is creating the conditions where non-extractive paths can later exist.
Are we mistaking the absence of solutions for a refusal to address the problem?
Survivability pathways are currently absent because the tools do not yet exist. That absence is not a moral position; it is the reason the #OMN project exists.
Are we arguing about the end state, or about the first step?
To many critiques assume #OMN is presenting a finished survivability model. It is not. OMN is an affinity-group and tool-building phase, not the outcome of social change. These stages are being collapsed.
Are we confusing “how things must work to exist” with “how we wish things already worked”?
A recurring tension is between present material reality and desired future conditions. Early-stage projects like #OMN must start inside existing constraints, not pretend they’ve already escaped them.
hamish campbell
boosted
We need to be explicit that spiky and fluffy are complementary, not opposing paths. They serve different functions in the same path, both are necessary for anything healthy to grow.
The problem is not disagreement between spiky and fluffy. The problem is the large number of people who actively fight against this complementarity - who insist on one mode being legitimate, and work to exclude and delegitimise the other.
This is the majority of people we end up interacting with. So until we name this clearly, we keep misdiagnosing the conflict. It isn’t about tone, strategy, or culture. It’s about a refusal to accept plurality, balance, and context - that refusal blocks progress far more effectively than any external opposition.
* Spiky without fluffy becomes brittle and exclusionary.
* Fluffy without spiky becomes easily captured and ineffective.
Together, they create resilience.
For the #OMN and #openweb to survive, we have to stop treating this as a personality clash and start recognising it as a structural issue that needs active mediation, not denial and #blocking
We need to be explicit that spiky and fluffy are complementary, not opposing paths. They serve different functions in the same path, both are necessary for anything healthy to grow.
The problem is not disagreement between spiky and fluffy. The problem is the large number of people who actively fight against this complementarity - who insist on one mode being legitimate, and work to exclude and delegitimise the other.
This is the majority of people we end up interacting with. So until we name this clearly, we keep misdiagnosing the conflict. It isn’t about tone, strategy, or culture. It’s about a refusal to accept plurality, balance, and context - that refusal blocks progress far more effectively than any external opposition.
* Spiky without fluffy becomes brittle and exclusionary.
* Fluffy without spiky becomes easily captured and ineffective.
Together, they create resilience.
For the #OMN and #openweb to survive, we have to stop treating this as a personality clash and start recognising it as a structural issue that needs active mediation, not denial and #blocking
hamish campbell
boosted
I’ve opened a new #4opens issue proposing a bounded experiment, not a solution: a funding system where rules are fixed before deployment and no human makes allocation decisions afterward.
The goal is to explore whether some informal power failures can be reduced.
Discussion welcome:
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/issues/18
hamish campbell
boosted
A bunch of native #openweb people spent time, energy and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse:
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507
That webinar mattered. It showed that EU institutions were open to #ActivityPub as a way to reduce dependency on centralized corporate platforms.
This is exactly the kind of work we need more of, not less. So what went wrong?
Instead of building on this momentum, the grassroots fell to mess and attention drifted back to the familiar #dotcons. Which, in the end, is just more #techshit to compost later.
SocialHub itself documents this blocking story, but there’s little aggregation or narrative continuity
The missing piece: our own history. This story still hasn’t been properly told:
We are very bad at telling our own history. And that failure has consequences.
When people don’t know: that #EU– #Fediverse outreach already happened, that viable alternatives already exist, that these paths were actively neglected,
So that they fall — again and again — for the #dotcons mess, believing it’s the only “realistic” option.
This is exactly why #OMN, #indymediaback, #makinghistory, and #OGB matter.
Before we argue about funding, platforms, or scale, we need: Media to tell the story properly. History to remember what already worked. Governance to keep power visible and contestable
Only then can Europe regain any path to grassroots digital agency without reproducing the same capture dynamics under a different flag.
If we don’t tell our story, someone else will, and it won’t be told in our interests.
A bunch of native #openweb people spent time, energy and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse:
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507
That webinar mattered. It showed that EU institutions were open to #ActivityPub as a way to reduce dependency on centralized corporate platforms.
This is exactly the kind of work we need more of, not less. So what went wrong?
Instead of building on this momentum, the grassroots fell to mess and attention drifted back to the familiar #dotcons. Which, in the end, is just more #techshit to compost later.
SocialHub itself documents this blocking story, but there’s little aggregation or narrative continuity
The missing piece: our own history. This story still hasn’t been properly told:
We are very bad at telling our own history. And that failure has consequences.
When people don’t know: that #EU– #Fediverse outreach already happened, that viable alternatives already exist, that these paths were actively neglected,
So that they fall — again and again — for the #dotcons mess, believing it’s the only “realistic” option.
This is exactly why #OMN, #indymediaback, #makinghistory, and #OGB matter.
Before we argue about funding, platforms, or scale, we need: Media to tell the story properly. History to remember what already worked. Governance to keep power visible and contestable
Only then can Europe regain any path to grassroots digital agency without reproducing the same capture dynamics under a different flag.
If we don’t tell our story, someone else will, and it won’t be told in our interests.
I’ve opened a new #4opens issue proposing a bounded experiment, not a solution: a funding system where rules are fixed before deployment and no human makes allocation decisions afterward.
The goal is to explore whether some informal power failures can be reduced.
Discussion welcome:
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/issues/18
hamish campbell
boosted
The #OMN (Open Media Network) project is about growing these cultures back into spaces where they can once again influence the mainstream, without being captured or hollowed out by it. The #Fediverse is a living example of this process already underway, messy, imperfect, but real.
Yes, there are serious problems and contradictions. #NGO capture, the #geekproblem, and the constant pull toward centralisation are real threats. I’ve written extensively about these issues here:
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=NGO+geekproblem
But none of this negates the core task.
Our job is not to finish the work.
Our job is to plant the seeds.
If we do this well enough — with care, openness, and trust — it becomes possible for younger generations to tend them, adapt them, and grow them into forms we cannot predict.
That, realistically, is our only hope.
The #OMN (Open Media Network) project is about growing these cultures back into spaces where they can once again influence the mainstream, without being captured or hollowed out by it. The #Fediverse is a living example of this process already underway, messy, imperfect, but real.
Yes, there are serious problems and contradictions. #NGO capture, the #geekproblem, and the constant pull toward centralisation are real threats. I’ve written extensively about these issues here:
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=NGO+geekproblem
But none of this negates the core task.
Our job is not to finish the work.
Our job is to plant the seeds.
If we do this well enough — with care, openness, and trust — it becomes possible for younger generations to tend them, adapt them, and grow them into forms we cannot predict.
That, realistically, is our only hope.
hamish campbell
boosted
Practical tech philosophy https://hamishcampbell.com/practical-tech-philosophy/ #OMN is not a finished answer. It is an attempt to walk this last path seriously, in practice, not just in theory.
Practical tech philosophy https://hamishcampbell.com/practical-tech-philosophy/ #OMN is not a finished answer. It is an attempt to walk this last path seriously, in practice, not just in theory.