Toward Healthier Digital Public Spaces: A Cultural and Structural Challenge

From a practical perspective, the challenges in digital and social technology are not technical, they are cultural. This may seem obvious, but it is often overlooked in policy and implementation. At a basic level, there are two broad approaches to handling disagreement and complexity in online spaces: Exclusion-focused approaches (e.g. blocking, filtering, silencing), which reduce immediate friction but reinforce fragmentation and polarisation. Engagement approaches (e.g. dialogue, […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/toward-healthier-digital-public-spaces-a-cultural-and-structural-challenge/

Beyond Blocking: Building Trust Infrastructure for the Open Web

A Policy Case for Commons-Based Moderation in the Fediverse The problem with the current approach The normal response to harmful content and behaviour on federated social platforms today is the block. Instance administrators block other instances. Users block other users. Communities build blocklists and share them. This is understandable - it is the tool available - but it is not a solution. It is, at best, a temporary containment strategy. Blocking is the digital equivalent of closing […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/beyond-blocking-building-trust-infrastructure-for-the-open-web/

Why you should help

The internet's public square is privatised, algorithmically controlled for "engagement" over any idea of truth, and placed under the control of a handful of American corporations with no accountability to European citizens or values. The #Fediverse is the most credible existing alternative - but it lacks the shared infrastructure to function as a native commons for news and media. #OMN builds that infrastructure: trust-based, community-controlled, transparent, reversible, and owned by nobody. […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-you-should-help/

Refuse false clarity: the #dotcons sell certainty and simplicity. The #openweb is different, it’s about holding complexity without collapsing into control.

So how do we mediate this fear?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcm-tOGiva0 Who would have though this would sum up our needed path for the #Oxfordboaters and the #fedivers? You would have to be an #asshole to unthinkingly disagree with what we are doing and pretty wise to thinkingly disagree with the path. Which one are you? So why are we in such a mess? Because people are acting from fear. Not always consciously, not always honestly - but fear is the driver. Fear of losing control. Fear of losing status. Fear of […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/so-how-do-we-mediate-this-fear/

The mess we made with the #dotcons https://hamishcampbell.com/the-mess-we-made-with-the-dotcons/ Balancing this mess we made requires continuing efforts to promote decentralization, #4opens and “native” #openweb culture and infrastructure.

Why do we keep bringing this up?

If we want a better web, we have to stop pretending this is just about “bad tech companies doing bad things.” Of course, they are-that’s what capitalist incentives produce. The real question is: what are we doing differently? That means accepting some uncomfortable truths. The better path will be less convenient, at least at first. We will have to socially support things that used to look free on the #dotcons. Because the cost we didn’t want to face is simple: the #openweb was always […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-do-i-keep-bringing-this-up/

Do you remember when technology felt like a way forward?

Do you remember when tech felt like a way forward? That moment’s gone on the mainstream #closedweb path. What we’ve got now is something else entirely. Tools like Palantir and Project Maven aren’t about truth or insight. They’re excuse generators. Power does what it wants, then points to “the data” as cover. That’s the product. And the people building this? Still cosplaying as the good guys, well-paid servants of the #nastyfew, wrapped in the fading myth of being “freedom […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/do-you-remember-when-technology-felt-like-a-way-forward/

Rebuilding Journalism as Commons (not a product)

https://hamishcampbell.com/news-culture-on-the-fediverse/ It should be obvious that we need a path back to good journalism - journalism that sheds light on facts, connects the dots, and lets people trace those dots back to sources. This is what allows us to share, question, and discuss within our own trusted communities, and then spread that knowledge outward through federation, always linking back to the source. Right now, the #mainstreaming path is broken. It’s sometimes hard for people […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/rebuilding-journalism-as-commons-not-a-product/