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  People live with far too much manufactured fear. The #deathcult keeps us afraid of change, afraid of each other, afraid of losing what we have - even when what we have is clearly not working. We need to move away from the current mess, not cling to it because fear tells us it's safer. Change is scary, but staying trapped is a choice too. #OMN #openweb #lifecult #KISS

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  News culture on the Fediverse https://hamishcampbell.com/news-culture-on-the-fediverse/ This is one of the important cultural shifts the #OMN is supporting, the move from hierarchical validation to networked understanding.

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  Digital Detox Is Urgently Needed https://hamishcampbell.com/digital-detox-is-urgently-needed/ What we’re facing in our digital mess isn’t only a failure of self-control, it’s a structural capture problem.

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  This is worth thinking about - How our “mainstreaming” people understand what they’re doing https://hamishcampbell.com/how-our-mainstreaming-people-understand-what-theyre-doing/

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  Understanding these #KISS psychological ideas helps – a little- to shovel the shit we need to compost https://hamishcampbell.com/political-belief-systems/

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  A lot of #P2P projects keep failing socially because adoption stays tiny. The #Fediverse has done better socially because it keeps the familiar social #UX. So maybe the path forward is a half-step: Bridge #Fediverse + #P2P in real, usable ways until decentralized clients become socially relevant. We need bridges and killer apps. Seamless UX where federated and p2p content feels like one stream. A server that can read from both channels without making users care which protocol is underneath. T...

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  What is the value of “bounded” projects https://hamishcampbell.com/what-is-the-value-of-bounded-projects/ Without this boundary we have a tendency to fight and create mess

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  The universal mandate of #SSL – We need a pragmatic approach to #openweb security https://hamishcampbell.com/a-balanced-and-pragmatic-approach-to-native-openweb-security/

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  In organizing, when you create hard structures, people pick them up and hit each other with them. Rules become bureaucracy. Roles become power. Metrics become targets. Structures built to help the work start controlling the people. So what happens when we push soft structures instead? Structures that guide rather than command. Boundaries that can change. Roles that rotate. Power that can be challenged, recalled and redistributed. That is part of what we are exploring with the #OMN. Not no st...

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  The #geekproblem in tech security - and the endless race to run after it - can be VERY anti-social. More security. More control. More complexity. More people locked out. We keep treating social problems as technical problems, then wonder why the solutions don't build stronger communities. If we have any hope of challenging and changing the #mainstreaming, we need to rebalance our thinking. Technology is a tool. People and society are the point. #openweb #4opens #KISS #commons

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  There is such a thing as reality, and humans have an intrinsically limited idea of what it actually is. All human thought and culture are created by humans. In that process, there is a strong tendency for our ideas to become religion, things we believe to be true rather than things we keep testing. The West developed a useful hack to try to escape this trap. Religions are built around truth. Science is built around doubt. Make an observation. Test it. Try to prove yourself wrong. Keep the res...

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  The point I’ve been making to some of the best people in progressive #mainstreaming is simple - over the last ten years, the balance of what you supported and funded has been wrong. Your texts say one thing, but what gets funded and built is a limited subset of what those texts claim to value. I don't think this is necessarily bad faith. But at some point we have to be honest about the gap between what we say we believe and what our actions actually produce. When the support needed is...

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  The point I’ve been making to some of the best people in progressive #mainstreaming is simple - over the last ten years, the balance of what you supported and funded has been wrong. Your texts say one thing, but what gets funded and built is a limited subset of what those texts claim to value. I don't think this is necessarily bad faith. But at some point we have to be honest about the gap between what we say we believe and what our actions actually produce. When the support needed is...

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  One of the biggest problems we face is that we've forgotten how to talk about society. Outside the #mainstreaming agenda, conversations quickly collapse into individual opinions and personal choices. We struggle to think in terms of communities, the #commons and collective action. That's one of the deepest effects of #deathcult thinking. It trains us to see everything through the lens of individualism, making even simple #KISS ideas about cooperation and shared responsibility seem stra...

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  Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution https://hamishcampbell.com/mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution/ The left needs to learn this, to focus more on building instead of arguing, because evolution never rewarded the loudest ideology, it rewarded the communities that learned to adapt together.

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  Progress is rarely a straight line, and it requires a lot of grit, patience, and consistency to push through the plateaus. Progress is not easy https://hamishcampbell.com/a-path-that-works-for-progressive-ends-is-not-easy/

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  The networks we use shape who we are – and the networks we are given by #dotcons are designed to make us spectators. Real Community, Not Algorithmic Spectacle https://hamishcampbell.com/real-community-not-algorithmic-spectacle/

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  The real difference between “closed” and “open” systems is mostly about where power sits inside this stack. Shifting power in #openweb projects https://hamishcampbell.com/shifting-power-in-openweb-projects/

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  Using the power of #4opens https://hamishcampbell.com/using-the-power-of-4opens/ Because if we do not make power visible, power will always hide itself.

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  Churning of pointless tech projects https://hamishcampbell.com/churning-of-pointless-tech-projects/ The #OMN is one attempt at this – a shovel for composting the inhuman mess, so something living can grow from it.

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  The subject of “branding”, flags, banners is a real balance, they have power… And we need power in horizontal movements. What is the value of “bounded” projects https://hamishcampbell.com/what-is-the-value-of-bounded-projects/

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  Build the gift economy not as charity, not as moral purity and not as nostalgia. As survival, resistance and a way to start living again. Get Out of the Money Economy – Rediscover the Gift Economy https://hamishcampbell.com/get-out-of-the-money-economy-rediscover-the-gift-economy/

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  #Anarchist economics https://hamishcampbell.com/anarchist-economics/ The irony is that this is often more practical than capitalism itself.

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  The challenge now is not only resisting the current system, it is relearning how to build outside its assumptions. How did we get into such a mess? https://hamishcampbell.com/how-did-we-get-into-such-a-mess/

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  #OMN is not a finished answer, it is an attempt to walk this last path seriously, in practice, not just in theory. Practical tech philosophy https://hamishcampbell.com/practical-tech-philosophy/

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  Most of the current “open paths” are cosplay at best, we need a network that links them as flows for there use to be unlocked from the current limits of #stupidindividualism shaping them – to become a native part of the expanding #openweb reboot. Closed systems protect individuals, but they rarely build movements https://hamishcampbell.com/closed-systems-protect-individuals-but-they-rarely-build-movements

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  #Fediverse moderation today is mostly per-instance and hierarchical, with each server acting as its own silo. Many replicate commercial social media models, inheriting their flaws. This reflects a deeper bias toward control - shaped by both programming culture and mainstream expectations - rather than messy, collective solutions. As networks scale, top-down moderation becomes unworkable, leading to burnout, censorship, and fragility. The native paths need to explore trust-based, horizontal mode...

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  At #NOAW event I talked a lot about the digital commons so thought it might be useful to write a post grounding this. The Digital Commons: The Ground We Already Stand On https://hamishcampbell.com/the-digital-commons-the-ground-we-already-stand-on/

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  The #OMN represents a small but practical step to build something different, not a platform empire, or another startup. Why It’s Difficult – and What We Can Do About It https://hamishcampbell.com/why-its-difficult-to-build-the-omn-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

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  The projects start from a social understanding: technology alone doesn’t create networks. Culture, trust, and shared practice do. A bit of #OMN history and where the current paths come from https://hamishcampbell.com/a-bit-of-omn-history-and-where-the-current-paths-come-from/