⁂ Article

We need an honest conversation

The current generation of activism is crap – fragmented, self-referential, lost in identity wrangles, #NGO capture, and #fashionista online posturing. What can be learned:

Affinity and Trust > Bureaucracy and Branding

The 1990s/2000s alter-globalization movement and early #Indymedia weren’t “organisations,” they were ecosystems. Small affinity groups moved fast, trusted each other, and shared infrastructure without needing a brand deck or a funder’s approval. Lesson we can learn: […]

⁂ Article

We need an honest conversation

The current generation of activism is crap – fragmented, self-referential, lost in identity wrangles, #NGO capture, and #fashionista online posturing. What can be learned:

Affinity and Trust > Bureaucracy and Branding

The 1990s/2000s alter-globalization movement and early #Indymedia weren’t “organisations,” they were ecosystems. Small affinity groups moved fast, trusted each other, and shared infrastructure without needing a brand deck or a funder’s approval. Lesson we can learn: […]

⁂ Article

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

In the tech world of social change and challenge, we’re living with a strange imbalance. Too often, the spaces we use and try and build are crowded with useless, self-destructive prats – people more interested in ego, control, and clout than in making anything grow from the roots. And when they do very rearly act, their “help” is often poison: it blocks, slows, and derails.

At the same time, the number of people doing truly useful, collective, grounded work feels small. You can see […]

⁂ Article

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

In the tech world of social change and challenge, we’re living with a strange imbalance. Too often, the spaces we use and try and build are crowded with useless, self-destructive prats – people more interested in ego, control, and clout than in making anything grow from the roots. And when they do very rearly act, their “help” is often poison: it blocks, slows, and derails.

At the same time, the number of people doing truly useful, collective, grounded work feels small. You can see […]

⁂ Article

Activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch

For two decades, activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch. We’ve built bunkers (security tools, encryption layers, anonymity networks) but very few bridges. That’s left the field fragmented, insular, and often unattractive to the people we’re supposedly trying to empower.

If the aim is to push social change and challenge rather than just survive, here’s what I think needs building:

#4opens-native infrastructure Open data → not just sharing docs, but making activist […]

⁂ Article

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

⁂ Article

Compost the blocking, keep the seeds alive, and make space for growth

It’s good to see more people turning their focus back to the #openweb. For the past five years of the #reboot we’ve been distracted in a signal-to-noise mess from the #fashionistas. That time needs to be over, we need to start looking clearly at both internal rot and the external threats.

A good first step is in balancing the realisation that we actually have far more direct power to deal with the internal mess than we do over the eternal #dotcons and their #closedweb “common sense”. […]

⁂ Article

Compost the blocking, keep the seeds alive, and make space for growth

It’s good to see more people turning their focus back to the #openweb. For the past five years of the #reboot we’ve been distracted in a signal-to-noise mess from the #fashionistas. That time needs to be over, we need to start looking clearly at both internal rot and the external threats.

A good first step is in balancing the realisation that we actually have far more direct power to deal with the internal mess than we do over the eternal #dotcons and their #closedweb “common sense”. […]

⁂ Article

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

⁂ Article

Activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch

For two decades, activist tech has been stuck in a defensive crouch. We’ve built bunkers (security tools, encryption layers, anonymity networks) but very few bridges. That’s left the field fragmented, insular, and often unattractive to the people we’re supposedly trying to empower.

If the aim is to push social change and challenge rather than just survive, here’s what I think needs building:

#4opens-native infrastructure Open data → not just sharing docs, but making activist […]

⁂ Article

Compost the Chancers: How Careerists Kill Horizontal Tech Movements

It happens every time. A fresh grassroots project kicks off, chaotic, joyful, full of promise. The code is rough, the conversations messy, but the energy is real. People come together not for money or prestige, but because something needs doing and no one else will do it.

Then, they arrive, the careerists, the chancers, the opportunists who talk a good game of “community” and “values” while quietly positioning themselves for influence, funding, reputation. You know these people, they […]

⁂ Article

Compost the Chancers: How Careerists Kill Horizontal Tech Movements

It happens every time. A fresh grassroots project kicks off, chaotic, joyful, full of promise. The code is rough, the conversations messy, but the energy is real. People come together not for money or prestige, but because something needs doing and no one else will do it.

Then, they arrive, the careerists, the chancers, the opportunists who talk a good game of “community” and “values” while quietly positioning themselves for influence, funding, reputation. You know these people, they […]

⁂ Article

A guide for staying honest and native

A community is only viable if enough people care enough to keep it relevant. In this era of #stupidindividualism, most people don’t lift a finger to make that happen.

This is the norm across many #4opens spaces: a near-total lack of interest in building or maintaining shared paths. It’s a textbook case of right-wing Tragedy of the Commons. Developers show up when it suits them, use the space for their narrow needs, then drift off without contributing to the upkeep. They treat community […]

⁂ Article

The #OGB: A Native Path for Open Governance

The #OGB (Open Governance Body) isn’t built around the smooth, efficient ideals of platform logic or institutional control. It’s messy by design, because it’s rooted in real-world activist practice. It draws from the hard-won experience of protest camp organising, where consensus, affinity, and trust are the foundations of action.

The #OMN governance model we’re working with doesn’t come from corporate boards or #NGO playbooks. It comes from the mud, the rain, the late-night meetings […]

⁂ Article

The #OGB: A Native Path for Open Governance

The #OGB (Open Governance Body) isn’t built around the smooth, efficient ideals of platform logic or institutional control. It’s messy by design, because it’s rooted in real-world activist practice. It draws from the hard-won experience of protest camp organising, where consensus, affinity, and trust are the foundations of action.

The #OMN governance model we’re working with doesn’t come from corporate boards or #NGO playbooks. It comes from the mud, the rain, the late-night meetings […]

⁂ Article

A guide for staying honest and native

A community is only viable if enough people care enough to keep it relevant. In this era of #stupidindividualism, most people don’t lift a finger to make that happen.

This is the norm across many #4opens spaces: a near-total lack of interest in building or maintaining shared paths. It’s a textbook case of right-wing Tragedy of the Commons. Developers show up when it suits them, use the space for their narrow needs, then drift off without contributing to the upkeep. They treat community […]

⁂ Article

Why #NGO and fluffy #openweb tech events should include radical real grassroots projects

If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.”It’s “I just write the code.”It’s “We’re neutral tools.”It’s “Let’s keep politics out of it.”

This isn’t just naivety, it’s a deep, culturally reinforced avoidance of responsibility. And it’s one of the key reasons why even […]

⁂ Article

Trust is the foundation of moderation in decentralised networks like the #OMN

In the world of decentralised, peer-to-peer, and federated networks, from the Fediverse to grassroots projects like the #OMN, moderation works differently. It’s not a matter of top-down control or terms-of-service written by #process lawyers. Instead, the basic unit of moderation is trust – and this shifts everything.

Yes, we need practical moderation tools – blocking, filtering, reporting, curation – the whole established toolkit. But more importantly, we need to root these tools in a tech […]

⁂ Article

Why Most Fediverse Codebases Are Languishing

Do you ever stop and wonder, really wonder, why most of the codebases outside #Mastodon are languishing? It’s not a technical issue. It’s not “a lack of funding” (though that’s what they love to talk about). It’s not even about network effects, not really. It’s because they’re all following Mastodon’s lead, straight into the #NGO world.

This is a path paved in smiles and slow death. A warm bath of grant cycles, diversity reports, and performative panels. On this dead-end, the […]

⁂ Article

We Don’t Need More Liberal Techno-Utopianism

There’s a lot of #fluffy around these days. Take books like Abundance – dressed up as bold new visions, but really just more of the same old liberal centrism with a shiny, tech-friendly finish. It flirts with Marx at the end, but only to dress up in borrowed credibility. At heart, it’s not socialist, it’s a manifesto to reassure the #mainstreaming chattering class that everything will be OK if we innovate harder and manage smarter. This is blinded feel-good “supply-side liberalism” […]