What About Surveillance and Security?

We’re honest: the #OMN network can’t protect you from a fascist state. No tech can. But we can:

Use pseudonymity with known-good peers.

Whisper in the forest before posting.

Protect sources while keeping distribution open.

Use P2P crypto for the 20% of cases that need it — not the 80% that don’t.

Unlike the #encryptionists or #geekproblem crowd, we’re not building bunkers. We’re planting gardens.

The current media system is stacked against us. It’s rigged, exclusive, and hostile to alternatives.

That’s why we need the Open Media Network.

Because without an open, trust-based infrastructure for communication and coordination, we’re just shouting into silos.

Let’s build something different.
Let’s make history — together.

#OMN #4opens #metadata #trustnetworks #openweb #anarchism #postcapitalism #decentralization#DIYtech #commons #grassroots#foss #geekproblem #dotcons#KISS

The solution is not technical alone. It’s social, cultural, and political. Until we fix the #geekproblem, we’re building cathedrals in the desert.

What we need is a rebalance: Geeks making accessible tools. Producers empowered to create freely. Consumers, not just watching — but feeding back and shaping.

#OMN

⁂ Article

Power Politics and the Race/Gender Card – A Contemporary Reflection

If we want to build meaningful alternatives, we must deal with difficult issues head-on. Sweeping things under the carpet – especially in radical spaces – always comes at a cost.

One of the more complex, and often misused, areas is around identity politics, particularly the playing of the race/gender card in ways that obscure rather than clarify the real issues at stake.

Let’s be clear: systemic racism and sexism are real. We all live with the deep, painful legacies of colonialism, […]

⁂ Article

The #Hashtags Tell a Story: Building Trust in a Messy World

We live in a time of crisis. Climate, community, communication, all are breaking down. Our tools and platforms no longer serve us. To make sense of this, we need to tell stories. And in the digital world, hashtags are one of the most powerful ways we do this. But our hashtags don’t just tag, they trace the roots of our problems, and signpost paths out. Each one is a seed. Together, they are a map.#dotcons – From #openweb to walled gardens. Once, the internet was a place of openness, […]

⁂ Article

Talking About the #geekproblem in Funding

Funding the #openweb is a political act, yet most funding decisions today are framed in technical terms only, dominated by what we call the #geekproblem – a worldview where infrastructure is king, user needs are secondary, and social context is largely ignored.

Let’s unpack this with real-world examples and look at how we keep falling into this trap, and what we could do to climb out. The call-out for funding is phrased in social language, to build privacy-preserving tools, improve the […]

⁂ Article

If we close everything, we are left with the evil – A bad outcome

What should be open? What is okay to be closed?

Let’s begin from a traditional liberal framing: Most social interactions should be OPEN, some private or sensitive interactions may be CLOSED.

This isn’t radical. It’s been a functional principle across free societies. But in our current digital culture, this simple framing is often flipped or ignored. Many developers, activists, and even funders uncritically push for closure, often in the name of privacy, safety and control, without […]

⁂ Article

Building Alt/Grassroots Media Networks to Challenge and Widen Traditional Media

The current ecosystem of alternative and grassroots media is too narrow in its imagination of what media could, and should, be. There’s a persistent naivety or, in some cases, a self-serving dishonesty. Many of the most “successful” progressive media groups continue to mimic #traditionalmedia without understanding, or addressing, the fact that they do not control their distribution. In effect, they’re renting space in someone else’s empire.

This is not just a mistake. It’s the […]

⁂ Article

The hashtag story shows the current state of the world

The hashtag story on this site is a way of using different hashtags to paint a picture of the current state of the world and the paths that can be taken to address the issues at hand. It involves defining each hashtag and how it relates to the larger narrative. Here is an example of a hashtag story:

#fashernista is about consumer capitalism and the negative impact it has on society, treating it as a social illness.

#dotcons are feeding this social illness by promoting constant consumption […]

⁂ Article

Why most #geekproblem software fails: Trust vs. control

Almost all of our #geekproblem software fails because it’s built with a mindset of control.

Control over users.Control over systems.Control over outcomes.

But all good societies, and all durable communities, are based on trust. When we ignore this, we don’t just write bad code, we produce #techshit that nobody uses, that burns out developers, and that confuses users. Then we start over… and call it “innovation.” That’s #techchurn.Control-driven projects: Examples of […]