Mastodawn

Rebuilding Journalism as Commons (not a product)

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 to see this because the decline has been slow, a gradual […]

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

Rebuilding Journalism as Commons (not a product) – #OMN (Open Media Network)

#OMN (Open Media Network)1d ago

Gates vs Bridges: the obscure politics of the #geekproblem

In the #geekproblem mindset, crossing a protocol flow is a gateway were in #openweb terms, it’s a bridge. That difference is not technical - it’s social - the difference between CONTROL and TRUST. A gate is something you lock, permission, authentication, enforcement were a bridge is something you cross, connection, flow, relationship. In the physical world, we don’t put gates on bridges as a default, but in software, we keep rebuilding them, and then wondering why things fragment. RSS […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/gates-vs-bridges-the-obscure-politics-of-the-geekproblem/

#OMN (Open Media Network)5d ago

The Digital Commons: The Ground We Already Stand On

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 are not a future vision, it’s something we already have. At its simplest, the digital commons are the widely used #4opens digital resources of software, knowledge, data, and culture created collectively, governed by communities, and made available for public (re)use. This is the native path of the #openweb it's been around for a long time, it might be […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-digital-commons-the-ground-we-already-stand-on/

witchescauldron Mar 17

The problem is not that the current #dotcons systems are broken, the problem is that they are working exactly as designed. Growing the #openweb – Notes for Burning Down the #dotcons (and building an #OMN) https://hamishcampbell.com/growing-the-openweb-notes-for-burning-down-the-dotcons-and-building-an-omn/

Growing the #openweb – Notes for Burning Down the #dotcons (and building an #OMN) – #OMN (Open Media Network)

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 17

Growing the #openweb – Notes for Composting the #dotcons (and growing an #OMN)

Today there are a lot of dishonest people - it’s become the default. Finding someone who is actually truthful is rare. So with this in mind, let’s stop being polite about this, what we’re living inside online right now isn’t “social media.” It’s a managed enclosure - a system designed to extract value, shape behaviour, and concentrate power. It's what I have been saying for the last 20 years. Call it what it is - digital #feudalism - The Lords, the Serfs, and the Server. When […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/growing-the-openweb-notes-for-burning-down-the-dotcons-and-building-an-omn/

witchescauldron Mar 17

#NOAW @FediVariety think a good #KISS path out of this mess is to move social communications to the Fediverse. But I’m going to say something that sounds controversial, but isn’t: they should not primarily use any of the current codebases, as they are kind of kludges.

The proposal is that they fund the production of three new codebases based on commons publishing. Why three? Because funding this would cost cents on the euro compared to what they currently spend. Why three? Because likely two of them will mess up, so we need diversity.

Why not use existing codebases? Simply because they are copies of #dotcons or #NGOs. But what they have achieved is the standardisation of code, protocols, and culture, and for this, we should thank them.

As this is a federated network, people can still access and interact with it from these existing tools. So widening the native #openweb adds to their value as well.

https://hamishcampbell.com/thinking-of-workshops-to-run-at-nodes-on-a-web-noaw-unconference/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 17

A Note on “Security” for the #FOSS Crew

We need to have a clearer, more grounded conversation about “security” and what it actually means in the context of the #openweb. There is a long history of thinking in #FOSS spaces that security is something we can solve purely technically: better encryption, better protocols, better architectures. But in everyday life and practice, people need to work from a much simpler starting point - We do not trust client–server security. We only meaningfully trust what can be verified through […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/a-note-on-security-to-the-foss-crew/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 16

The Tech “Empiricism” Problem

A recent essay on deadSimpleTech makes a point the #openweb community should hear: the biggest problem in technology is not only the tools, it’s also the culture behind them. For years the tech world has operated under a form of narrow “tech empiricism”: the belief that if something produces results quickly, then it must be working well. In this mindset, success is measured by novelty, speed of production, and the ability to create something new. The heroes of this culture are […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-tech-empiricism-problem/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 15

Thinking of workshops to run at “Nodes On A Web” #NOAW unconference

Hamish Campbell is a long-time #openweb activist and technologist working on grassroots media and digital commons. He was involved in the early development of #Indymedia and continues this work through projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN), which works on how federated tools and community publishing supports public-interest media infrastructure. His focus is balancing building native platforms and on growing the social culture that makes the #openweb work: transparency, […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/thinking-of-workshops-to-run-at-nodes-on-a-web-noaw-unconference/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 15

Individual fears

Individual fear scales into collective outcomes, when people act mainly from fear, they tend to choose control, isolation, and short-term protection, and those choices accumulate into worse social paths. It's useful to frame this as the dynamic between fear/control and trust/open in #openweb thinking. So the practical question becomes - how do we reduce fear enough that people act more cooperatively? We can try some grounded ways to make this to work. Build Real Social Support Fear grows […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/individual-fears/