OMN: Broken Institutions, and the Need to Rebuild the Commons

https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-broken-institutions-and-the-need-to-rebuild-the-commons/

Europe, the Fediverse, and the story we failed to tell

https://hamishcampbell.com/europe-the-fediverse-and-the-story-we-failed-to-tell/

A bunch of native #openweb people spent time, energy and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507

That webinar mattered. It showed that EU institutions were open to #ActivityPub as a way to reduce dependency on centralized corporate platforms.

This is exactly the kind of work we need more of, not less. So what went wrong?

Instead of building on this momentum, the grassroots fell to mess and attention drifted back to the familiar #dotcons. Which, in the end, is just more #techshit to compost later.

SocialHub itself documents this blocking story, but there’s little aggregation or narrative continuity

The missing piece: our own history. This story still hasn’t been properly told:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/eu-outreach-if-we-dont-tell-our-story-am-not-sure-who-will/2950

We are very bad at telling our own history. And that failure has consequences.

When people don’t know: that #EU–#Fediverse outreach already happened, that viable alternatives already exist, that these paths were actively neglected,

So that they fall — again and again — for the #dotcons mess, believing it’s the only “realistic” option.

This is exactly why #OMN, #indymediaback, #makinghistory, and #OGB matter.

Before we argue about funding, platforms, or scale, we need: Media to tell the story properly. History to remember what already worked. Governance to keep power visible and contestable

Only then can Europe regain any path to grassroots digital agency without reproducing the same capture dynamics under a different flag.

If we don’t tell our story, someone else will, and it won’t be told in our interests.

Progressive Mainstreaming

https://hamishcampbell.com/progressive-mainstreaming/

User Story: #MakingHistory - Digital Family Archive & Activist Memory-Building

Goal: Digitize and share activist / family archives primary sources, stories, documents in a way that’s open, participatory, and rooted in real community, not just relic preservation. The archive becomes both memory and tool for social change.

Steps & flows

Setup infrastructure - Spin up a small hosted VPS or desktop instance. Install a #DAT / ActivityPub / peer-to-peer hybrid archive app (#makinghistory).

Upload & seed - Scan family / activist archival material: photos, videos, letters, flyers. Add basic metadata (date, place, people involved). Upload into the system.

Community building - Invite family, networks, activist groups to install the app. Form an affinity group around the archive.

Columns & filtering - Interface: columns like New, Recent, plus user-added ones (by theme / era / type). Users see flows of items (boolean filters, hashtag categories) they care about. Interaction & tagging - Users contribute: add metadata, tags, stories behind objects.

Swipe, browse, edit. Items shift columns/categories as metadata evolves.

Story feature / Narrative building - With categorized & metadata-tagged material, users can assemble “stories”, narrative essays, timelines, thematic presentations.

Sharing & impact - Publish these histories publicly: open & CC-licensed. These become grassroots counterhistories. Use stories to inspire activism, education, or community organizing - showing how history roots current struggles.

Exhibition mode (Extension) - In physical exhibitions, visitors can use the app (on tablets or provided devices) to browse and contribute live: tagging, adding memories, shaping the narrative in situ.

Why it matters, it opens up history: Moves memory out of centralized institutions (archives, museums) into the hands of communities who lived it.

Counter-narrative: Offers history from below, not only top-down or official versions.

Living archive: It’s participatory, not passive. People don’t just view; they shape meaning.

Grounded in #4opens: Open data, open process, open source, open access.

Potential challenges & what to compost (Lessons from past failures) What has gone wrong before, how we compost it in this story:

Burnout among core volunteers, people overload metadata tasks, get exhausted; later momentum fades. Spread workload through community; avoid “metadatabase queen/king” roles. Use columns & tagging that feel playful and meaningful, not tedious.

Power consolidation, with one person / small team becomes the de facto gatekeeper of what’s seen / what counts. Use shared governance: decisions about themes, display, moderation are open. Rotate roles. Use open process.

Tech falling out of maintenance with custom tools built, then abandoned. Use stable, simple tools with community-supported code. Make sure data formats are portable.

Exclusion in “participation” Some voices get left out, marginalized, younger, remote. Proactively invite diverse participants; ensure the interface / metadata vocab doesn’t force people to use jargon; make offline or low-bandwidth modes possible.

Should we apply again?

Yes, not because they’ll suddenly “get it,” but because persistence itself is part of the composting, a record, a point of pressure.

Apply and simultaneously build a parallel path of community support, donations, partnerships, volunteer time. That way, the inevitable #NLnet rejection doesn’t kill all the momentum.

Shifting the blocking? Maybe translate native ideas into their language. Bureaucracies like “deliverables,” “impact metrics,” “alignment with EU digital policy.” Wrap your radical #4opens core in a frame they can recognise: resilience, digital sovereignty, anti-disinformation, democratic participation. That’s harder for them to ignore and strengthens the “native” path.

Expose the bias. Not in a bitter way, but in a constructive one: point out the repeated rejection of grassroots-native projects while funding flows to #geekproblem/NGOs. This pressure helps them re-balance (and others will maybe notice).

If you want to help, share the 3 projects (#MakingHistory, #IndymediaBack, #OGB) in #Fediverse channels. Frame this positively: “If we want a living #openweb, we need to fund and support native projects, not just corporate/NGO clones.” make it harder for them to keep sidelining.

#KISS