The #mainstreaming web - the #dotcons, corporate platforms, and now “AI empires”, already decided what kind of world they want: closed, extractive, and controlled. Every click feeds surveillance, every tool is rent-seeking, and every new “innovation” is built to enclose people and community in someone else’s business model. It’s efficient, yes, but only for those who own the platforms, the #nastyfew

The #mainstreaming web - the #dotcons, corporate platforms, and now “AI empires”, already decided what kind of world they want: closed, extractive, and controlled. Every click feeds surveillance, every tool is rent-seeking, and every new “innovation” is built to enclose people and community in someone else’s business model. It’s efficient, yes, but only for those who own the platforms, the #nastyfew

We’ve come full circle. The web has been enclosed. Corporate social media — the #dotcons — turned public communication into a controlled, manipulated marketplace. #Indymedia was one of the few projects that truly embodied “publish, don’t just consume,” and its reboot brings that agency back, using modern #openweb paths.

Because the web, and the world, needs a working example of what trust-based, open, collective media can be again.
We’ve tried the #dotcons way, and it’s killing both truth and community.

#indymediaback #OMN #openweb #4opens #grassroots #FOSS

Right now, the same forces that buried our earlier waves — the #NGOs the “professionalisers,” the #dotcons — are at it again, turning commons into brands, movements into products. The #OMN is our refusal of that — a collective act of remembering and re-rooting, bringing back working practices and paths that actually functioned: open process, transparent code, affinity-based governance, and shared care for the commons.

Because the web, and the world, needs a working example of what trust-based, open, collective media can be again.
We’ve tried the #dotcons way, and it’s killing both truth and community.

#indymediaback #OMN #openweb #4opens #grassroots #FOSS

We’ve come full circle. The web has been enclosed. Corporate social media — the #dotcons — turned public communication into a controlled, manipulated marketplace. #Indymedia was one of the few projects that truly embodied “publish, don’t just consume,” and its reboot brings that agency back, using modern #openweb paths.

#OMN and its projects represent one of the few remaining native paths to rebuild a free, trustworthy, and cooperative grassroots #openweb — from the ground up, not from the boardroom down. In a time when every #dotcons platform, #NGO, and state initiative wants to manage people into compliance, #OMN offers the opposite: a framework where people manage themselves through open code, shared trust, and transparent governance.

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-importance-of-words-and-ideology/

All language is metaphor, and the metaphors we choose shape how people think about problems and solutions. The “digital drugs” metaphor works because it makes the addictive design clear, but it can also push people into a moral panic frame (“users are addicts”), which risks oversimplifying.

A few metaphors you might find less #blocking of the #hashtag story:

* Food & Nutrition

#Dotcons = junk food (engineered to keep you consuming, empty calories).

#Bsky = diet soda (feels lighter, but still unhealthy).

#Fediverse = a community kitchen (messy, you have to cook and wash up, but nourishing and shared).

* Urban Space

#Dotcons = shopping malls (bright, controlled, profit-driven).

#Bsky = curated boutique arcade (less harsh, but still enclosed).

#Fediverse = the street commons (chaotic, noisy, sometimes rough, but free and collectively shaped).

* Agriculture/Gardening

#Dotcons = monoculture agribusiness (neat rows, efficient, but sterile and toxic).

#Bsky = organic supermarket (nicer branding, but still transactional).

#Fediverse/#OMN = messy permaculture garden (takes effort, community labour, but self-sustaining and alive).

These metaphors keep the critique, from individual pathology to collective space.

A detox-focused UX for the #openweb isn’t about another shiny platform. It’s about breaking addiction. The #dotcons are digital drugs: infinite scroll, dopamine loops, algorithmic junk food.

#Bsky is digital methadone — a softer addiction, but still dependency.

The #Fediverse is cold turkey — messy, uncomfortable, but the only real way out.

The shift is from passive consumption, to active participation. From being fed content, to tending relationships, building meaning, and shaping our own media environment. Detox is not easy — but it’s the only path to collective social and environmental health.

#OMN

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-importance-of-words-and-ideology/

All language is metaphor, and the metaphors we choose shape how people think about problems and solutions. The “digital drugs” metaphor works because it makes the addictive design clear, but it can also push people into a moral panic frame (“users are addicts”), which risks oversimplifying.

A few metaphors you might find less #blocking of the #hashtag story:

* Food & Nutrition

#Dotcons = junk food (engineered to keep you consuming, empty calories).

#Bsky = diet soda (feels lighter, but still unhealthy).

#Fediverse = a community kitchen (messy, you have to cook and wash up, but nourishing and shared).

* Urban Space

#Dotcons = shopping malls (bright, controlled, profit-driven).

#Bsky = curated boutique arcade (less harsh, but still enclosed).

#Fediverse = the street commons (chaotic, noisy, sometimes rough, but free and collectively shaped).

* Agriculture/Gardening

#Dotcons = monoculture agribusiness (neat rows, efficient, but sterile and toxic).

#Bsky = organic supermarket (nicer branding, but still transactional).

#Fediverse/#OMN = messy permaculture garden (takes effort, community labour, but self-sustaining and alive).

These metaphors keep the critique, from individual pathology to collective space.

A detox-focused UX for the #openweb isn’t about another shiny platform. It’s about breaking addiction. The #dotcons are digital drugs: infinite scroll, dopamine loops, algorithmic junk food.

#Bsky is digital methadone — a softer addiction, but still dependency.

The #Fediverse is cold turkey — messy, uncomfortable, but the only real way out.

The shift is from passive consumption, to active participation. From being fed content, to tending relationships, building meaning, and shaping our own media environment. Detox is not easy — but it’s the only path to collective social and environmental health.

#OMN

The current state of the web, especially on the path of the #dotcons, is colonized communication. News, the signal-to-noise mess https://hamishcampbell.com/news-the-signal-to-noise-mess/ Even the current #openweb reboot, for all its potential, reproduces these patterns, because we carry them within us.