Mastodawn

AI didn’t break the web. The dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume

https://kolektiva.social/deck/@jpl99/116691642387749842 This toot is a diagnosis of a small shift, but thinking it’s trapped inside a narrow, liberal property lens on what the internet is and was supposed to be. What’s being described as a “split” between a Free-For-All quarry and gated communities is what happens when you assume the web was primarily about enforceable intellectual property contracts in the first place. That framing already accepts the #dotcons worldview […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/ai-didnt-break-the-web-the-dotcons-did-ai-just-turned-up-the-volume/

AI didn’t break the web. The dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume – #OMN (Open Media Network)

#OMN (Open Media Network)6h ago

OMN history note: Failbook, activism, and the enclosure of organising

This is a mess we are finally starting to move away from. For over a decade, #failbook was one of the main organising spaces for progressive activism. On the surface it looked useful: easy groups, fast sharing, broad reach. But structurally it was never neutral. It was built as a #dotcons attention machine, optimised for engagement, conflict, and dependency. That design matters. Platforms like this don’t just host activism - they reshape it. They push people toward reaction over […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-history-note-failbook-activism-and-the-enclosure-of-organising/

witchescauldron 7h ago

A bit of #OMN history: after the first wave of the #openweb was enclosed by the #dotcons, every few years a "new" solution appears promising to give power back to people and communities. Most of the time it simply repackages the same #dotcons power structures in a different form.

#web3 is a good example of this, it is the #closedweb rebuilt as an astroturf "grassroots" movement, wrapped in the language of decentralisation while remaining driven by speculation, investment, and control.

This is why so much of the #mainstreaming embraces it. It fits neatly within existing assumptions about ownership, markets, and power. In other words, it feels like "common sense".

The real challenge isn't new branding. It's rebuilding the social foundations of the #openweb.

#OMN #4opens #Fediverse #dotcons

hamish campbell 7h ago

The #neoliberal pushing of #stupidindividualism as "common sense" has left us struggling to cooperate. You can see it everywhere on the #Fediverse, and to a lesser extent across the #openweb.

Ironically, you don't see it as clearly on the #dotcons because the platforms build individualism directly into their algorithms and business models. The behaviour is still there, it's hidden by the machinery.

If we want to escape this mess, we first need to name it.

#stupidindividualism #OMN #4opens

#OMN (Open Media Network)19h ago

The EU tech sovereignty plan

The European Commission has published its new Tech Sovereignty Plan. On the surface this sounds promising. Europe talks about reducing dependence on foreign tech giants, strengthening digital autonomy, and supporting open source. These are all things many of us in the #openweb world have been arguing for decades. But when you look at where the money and attention actually go, a different picture emerges. The plan allocates vast resources to semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, AI, and data […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-eus-tech-sovereignty-plan/

witchescauldron 1d ago

Our powerlessness feeds our desire to hate. When people feel they have no meaningful agency, frustration looks for somewhere to go, and often becomes outrage, blame, and conflict.

This is why controversy-driven #dotcons are a problem. Their business model is capturing attention by amplifying anger, division, and reaction. They feed on our sense of powerlessness while simultaneously deepening it. The more we react, the more profitable the cycle becomes.

It's good business for them, but it's bad for us, bad for our communities, and bad for the living world we're part of.

We need to step away from this and start rebuilding spaces based on participation, trust, and collective action rather than outrage and engagement metrics.

#OMN #openweb #4opens #deathcult #dotcons

#OMN (Open Media Network)1d ago

How we built the neoliberal #Deathcult

For most people, the crisis feels recent. Housing costs. Energy bills. Food prices. Debt. Insecure work. Growing inequality. Endless wars. Ecological breakdown. The #mainstreaming story is that these are separate problems with separate causes. COVID. Ukraine. China. Immigration. Technology. Bad politicians. The reality is simpler, these crises grow from the same roots - the moment things changed, one graph tells the story. From the end of World War II until roughly the early 1970s, […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/how-we-built-the-neoliberal-deathcult/

hamish campbell 1d ago

#mainstreaming and #dotcons don't control them - FOSS and DIY activism does. Where it's in reality the opposite, that's the mess to compost.

witchescauldron 2d ago

The #4opens is a social retelling of #FOSS and #opensource - a way to bring focus, trust, and power back to the commons we lost to the #dotcons over the last 30 years.

Code alone was never enough. We need open process, open data, open standards, and open process to rebuild the #openweb as shared social infrastructure, not another extraction machine.

#OMN #commons #4opens #openweb

Show thread

witchescauldron 2d ago

@gert @mrg

In what context?

This is what a #OMN is a collection of nodes, think of a #openweb #grassroots #DIY atavism fiendly Fediverse that was much less focused on copying #dotcons in ethical'ish ways... it's a very simple and #nothingnew path.