From a #mainstreaming point of view, what people call “piracy” is not a simple moral failure, it’s rather a signal of systemic #dotcons failure. Again and again, across decades, people have shown a simple truth: When access is fair, affordable, and humane, people pay. When systems become extractive, people route around them.

This is not new, not edgy, it’s basic social behaviour. Before the Internet: we had Informal commons, cassette copying, vinyl bootlegs, tape trading networks, […]

A path to do this is to step away from the #mainstreming mess. In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. The prize recognised their work on how institutions shape prosperity, most famously through their book Why Nations Fail. The timing matters, it matters a lot.

This award lands at exactly the moment we should be asking why Institutional Economics - the respectable face of #mainstreaming - has spent the last fifteen years […]

In our worship of the #deathcult, if you strip away the robes, chants, and charismatic leaders, what remains is behaviour, not belief. A destructive cult is not defined by how strange it sounds, but by what it does to bodies, lives, and futures. This matters because it breaks a common illusion: cults are judged by outcomes, not vibes.

So the real question for our #mainstreaming culture is simple: does this system produce harm through deliberate collective action? If the answer is yes, then […]

Good to look at this without attacking individuals, we need to mediate the safety-absolutism that is quietly killing change and challenge. When fear becomes #blocking, safety becomes dangerous. This is hard to say plainly, but it needs to be said. Fear is now one of the primary blocking forces in our movements. And the way we currently talk about “safety” is actively preventing change and challenge.

This isn’t about mocking trauma, denying harm, or dismissing the very real violence […]

We are living in deeply befuddling times, and neither the agendas of the #dotcons nor the noise of the #conspiracynutters is helping. In fact, they make everything worse. That’s why it’s best not to spread the chemical crap. It isn’t fertiliser. It poisons the ground. Keep media organic. #openweb.

In the Western world, almost all the wars that actually matter are now fought in the media. Yes, the disadvantaged are the immediate casualties, and much of the so-called third world will be […]

Let’s be honest about something we usually skate around. Many of our #fluffy activist friends are not fighting for change. They are fighting for equality of access to the existing system. That system is the #deathcult - growth, extraction, hierarchy, control - and most progressive mainstream activism is about making that worship fairer, nicer, more inclusive. More seats in the temple, better language on the altar, safer rituals for those already kneeling. This is not transformation, it is […]

The #OMN is not trying to invent the future, it’s trying to restart a social path people forgot they had. That path was never clean, it never asked permission, it never felt safe. But it was real, and that’s the only soil movements have ever grown in.

Why this has to happen now? Because the ground we’re standing on is collapsing. The #dotcons are rotting - hollowed out into surveillance, manipulation, and rent extraction. Journalism has collapsed into PR cycles, outrage farming, and […]

The #OMN Framework: the Five Functions (#5f)

To build an #OMN site, we don’t start with platforms, features, or ideology. We start with flows.

Think of the network as a system of pipes and holding tanks, with different connectors at each end. Nothing magical, nothing proprietary. The goal is that every part, in the abstract, is understandable by a reasonably normal human being - not just developers, not just managers, not just “power users”.

This is important: if people can’t […]

From a #mainstreaming point of view, what people call “piracy” is not a simple moral failure, it’s rather a signal of systemic #dotcons failure. Again and again, across decades, people have shown a simple truth: When access is fair, affordable, and humane, people pay. When systems become extractive, people route around them.

This is not new, not edgy, it’s basic social behaviour. Before the Internet: we had Informal commons, cassette copying, vinyl bootlegs, tape trading networks, […]

A path to do this is to step away from the #mainstreming mess. In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. The prize recognised their work on how institutions shape prosperity, most famously through their book Why Nations Fail. The timing matters, it matters a lot.

This award lands at exactly the moment we should be asking why Institutional Economics - the respectable face of #mainstreaming - has spent the last fifteen years […]

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions - the geeks, developers, architects, and maintainers who shaped how this stuff actually worked in practice.

That matters, because it means we still have direct power over what happens next. […]

In our worship of the #deathcult, if you strip away the robes, chants, and charismatic leaders, what remains is behaviour, not belief. A destructive cult is not defined by how strange it sounds, but by what it does to bodies, lives, and futures. This matters because it breaks a common illusion: cults are judged by outcomes, not vibes.

So the real question for our #mainstreaming culture is simple: does this system produce harm through deliberate collective action? If the answer is yes, then […]

Let’s be honest about something we usually skate around. Many of our #fluffy activist friends are not fighting for change. They are fighting for equality of access to the existing system. That system is the #deathcult - growth, extraction, hierarchy, control - and most progressive mainstream activism is about making that worship fairer, nicer, more inclusive. More seats in the temple, better language on the altar, safer rituals for those already kneeling. This is not transformation, it is […]

Good to look at this without attacking individuals, we need to mediate the safety-absolutism that is quietly killing change and challenge. When fear becomes #blocking, safety becomes dangerous. This is hard to say plainly, but it needs to be said. Fear is now one of the primary blocking forces in our movements. And the way we currently talk about “safety” is actively preventing change and challenge.

This isn’t about mocking trauma, denying harm, or dismissing the very real violence […]

The #OMN is not trying to invent the future, it’s trying to restart a social path people forgot they had. That path was never clean, it never asked permission, it never felt safe. But it was real, and that’s the only soil movements have ever grown in.

Why this has to happen now? Because the ground we’re standing on is collapsing. The #dotcons are rotting - hollowed out into surveillance, manipulation, and rent extraction. Journalism has collapsed into PR cycles, outrage farming, and […]

This space has a long history. The #fediverse grew out of the “cats” of libertarianism and, to a lesser extent, anarchism - notably without the (O). That lineage mattered. It shaped the instincts of the space: suspicion of central authority, an emphasis on autonomy, and a belief that technical decentralisation could substitute for social and political process.

I wrote this a few years ago.

Today the landscape has shifted. This #openweb space is increasingly layered with #NGO capture and […]

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions - the geeks, developers, architects, and maintainers who shaped how this stuff actually worked in practice.

That matters, because it means we still have direct power over what happens next. […]

Venezuela has oil, a lot of it. And in a collapsing global system, access to energy is power - not in the abstract, but in the most brutally material sense. When growth stalls, debt grows, and #climatechaos tightens the margins, oil stops being a commodity and becomes leverage. Control over it is no longer about markets; it’s about survival for #blinded states and profit for capital.

What the United States offers in this context is not persuasion or principle, it is a deal. Side with us, […]

Have you noticed how, over the last few decades, many sentences are repeated so often they start to become "common sense"? “You need to love yourself” is one of these, it sounds harmless, kind, even progressive. But this sentence didn’t only reshape how we feel about ourselves - it reshapes how the economy works. This is a story about how "self-esteem" become an engine of #stupidindividualism, that helped produce the explosion of inequality and mess we now live inside.

Today, […]

Venezuela has oil, a lot of it. And in a collapsing global system, access to energy is power - not in the abstract, but in the most brutally material sense. When growth stalls, debt grows, and #climatechaos tightens the margins, oil stops being a commodity and becomes leverage. Control over it is no longer about markets; it’s about survival for #blinded states and profit for capital.

What the United States offers in this context is not persuasion or principle, it is a deal. Side with us, […]