Let’s take a step back. In an old thread about online governance, I found it revealing – and a bit frustrating – that almost nobody actually engaged with what the thread was about: building a lightweight, federated, working governance layer.

The project in question is the OpenWeb Governance Body ( #OGB):
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/

We were writing a funding proposal to take a simple, well-tested social workflow (which we already know doesn’t scale in its current form), and federate it, to scale through distribution, not centralization. Think of it like this, we already have a proof-of-concept that this can work. It’s called the #Fediverse. Yes, there will be a lot of “smoke”, confusion, distraction, bureaucratic inertia. But we’ve got practice cutting through it, and could use the funding to bring in more people who see clearly and act with purpose.

A cultural problem, not just a technical one. This isn’t about personal attacks, it’s about recognizing a systemic cultural issue. Many people (often, but not exclusively, middle-aged white men) simply can’t see that some projects have value despite being outside their frameworks or institutional comfort zones. It’s a kind of intellectual and emotional poverty endemic to the late capitalist #deathcult era.

“Distilled, grassroots, radical governance is a good fit for the fediverse.”

And that’s what we’re doing. This work comes from decades of experience, 30+ years of distilled practice from social change spaces:

Squats and protest campsClimate camps and Reclaim the StreetsIndymedia, XR, and even OccupyAnd Rainbow Gatherings — still running on consensus-based governance born from the Vietnam-era anti-war movement (not “hippy dippy” utopias, as some imagine)

What we’re doing is embedding this lived practice into the tools and frameworks of the #openweb, giving people digital tools that reflect real-world collective experience. These are bottom-up, permissionless, and rooted in doing and trust built through doing. This is not about technical fixes. It’s about giving people the space to get messy and find their own path to cooperation.

Why we don’t use #processgeek paths like “Sociocracy”? Some suggest alternatives like sociocracy. And sure, if that works for your group, go for it. But from our side, sociocracy is often the equivalent of a well-meaning hippy round the campfire saying “can’t we all just get along?” while someone pisses on the garden they planted and another person ignores the washing-up rota they just taped up. It’s a structure that presumes goodwill and compliance, and that’s not enough. We’re building for mess, for people who don’t agree, for trust that emerges through doing, not rules imposed from above.

Multi-stakeholder Co-ops? Yes, but not from your typical bureaucratic blueprint. What we’re proposing looks like a multi-stakeholder co-op at times, but it’s far more grounded in anarchist and community-based models. It’s not about creating legalistic enclosures or hierarchical enforcement, we deliberately ignore that logic.

About centralization, Yes, Mastodon’s >90% of instances are in five countries. Yes, some instances hold way more users than others. And yes, that’s an issue. But we address this differently, we recognize centralization as a problem and create space for alternatives by encouraging small, local, resilient hosting.

If you run an instance in the #Fediverse, you already understand, It’s your voice, there’s a positive feedback loop here, the more care you give to your space, the more your voice matters. No need for complicated representation schemes. This is the natural governance of federation. You don’t get a vote unless you actually show up, that’s fair, if you want influence, spin up an instance, participate in the culture, do the work.

Governance isn’t something you build from scratch. It’s something you distill from lived experience.We don’t want complexity. We want clarity, action, and real tools that reflect how people already cooperate. #KISS wins — every time.The project matters more for what it refuses to do, than for what it builds.

The #OGB path is not #mainstremin, it’s a counter current, it is about building shared governance for the #openweb, grounded in the #4opens and real-world collective experience. Want to help? Step out of your institutional box, get your hands dirty, help make governance useful again.