Mastodawn

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.

#OMN (Open Media Network)6d ago

Compost “digital sovereignty”, build working commons

The #KISS secret about the noise in “digital sovereignty” is very simple - Ignore most of this branding and build commons tech instead. That’s the path, not another layer of management, another funding bureaucracy for a glossy strategy document. Not another NGO conference circuit explaining why nothing can happen without another round of funding. Just build working commons. This matters because much of the #EU “digital sovereignty” conversation is simply more churn inside the same […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/just-build-working-commons/

#OMN (Open Media Network)May 15

Sophists – From Ancient Greece to the current #mainstreaming

“Being in #Oxford today, I popped into the #OxfordUnion to use a room. Glancing through the term card, it’s absolutely vile - and has been consistently so for the two years I’ve been back in the city. It’s a useful, if deeply dispiriting, exercise in reading the people and place. This is where parts of the next ruling class form their opinions and sharpen their instincts. Judging by what they’re platforming, we are not heading for a good time...” One useful term about this mess […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/sophists-from-ancient-greece-to-neoliberal-mainstreaming/

#OMN (Open Media Network)May 12

Turning stress, conflict, and exhaustion into commons culture instead of mutual destruction

"To put some "commons" structure into this kindness… A path before we knee-jerk criticise members of the community we should make real offers to help repeatedly (x3) in a positive community way. Only then let the "negative" monster of judgment lose to clean up the mess. Focus on clean up first, the "common senses" desire to attack second. What do you think about growing our positive norms (common sense)." This is the hard bit of any grassroots movement of turning stress, conflict, and […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/turning-stress-conflict-and-exhaustion-into-commons-culture-instead-of-mutual-destruction/

#OMN (Open Media Network)May 11

People ask why the articles are hard to follow without background, it’s a fair point

People ask why the articles are hard to follow without background, it's a fair point, but a distraction as these are not stand-alone hot takes, they are all a part of a long flowing story about how we got into this mess and how we might get out of it. So, focus, please share this and the other posts if we’re going to recover focus and direction on the #openweb path. What happened over the last ten years on the Fediverse wasn’t random. It was a slow drift away from the native path that […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/people-ask-why-the-articles-are-hard-to-follow-without-background-its-a-fair-point/

#OMN (Open Media Network)May 9

A fluff view of current tech we need to compost

You know, when people are heading over a cliff, I'm more than happy to be "left behind". This story is #openwashing, not innovation. “New European social network” is actually a fork of #Bluesky wrapped in sovereignty language, as Elena Rossini says with the same #dotcons logic - PR-first launch (Davos), reality comes later (or never). This tech mess illustrates, if people start with branding, funding, and media narrative instead of community and process, it’s not #openweb - it’s […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/a-fluff-view-of-current-tech-we-need-to-compost/

The Fulcrum (backup)May 9

The Programmer’s Fulcrum: 08 May, 2026

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.

It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

There is a lot of coverage of the shitshow that is ShitHub this week. And that makes me so happy I moved to Codeberg several […]

https://newsletter.mobileatom.net/the-programmers-fulcrum-08-may-2026/ #ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #BuildAwesome #Buttondown #Codeberg #CSS #Emacs #FediLab #FediProfile #fediverse #Forgejo #Ghost #Holos #HTML #indieweb #javascript #LibreOffice #Librewolf #Linux #Mastodon #Matrix #MicroBlog #OMN #pckt #RSS #Silex #WebComponents #xWiki

witchescauldron May 8

@rooftopjaxx its kinda OK but not very strong - the washing metaphor... what would be a more spiky native #OMN hashtag for the same subject.

Lie, cheat, steal?

#OMN (Open Media Network)May 7

Treating everything as personal conflict is a dead end

Let’s focus on being honest, the most exhausting and destructive habit in activist and alternative tech spaces is the blinded reflex to turn disagreement into personal conflict. Someone challenges an idea, and it becomes an attack, names a pattern of behaviour, and suddenly it’s a vendetta. Someone points at structural problems and gets accused of targeting individuals. This is #stupidindividualism in its purest form, and it’s #nothingnew. It’s not only about difficult personalities […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-personal-is-not-the-political-treating-everything-as-personal-conflict-is-a-dead-end/

#OMN (Open Media Network)May 4

People resist visible structure

Freedoms are not given, they are taken.-- Peter Kropotkin This post comes from real life experience with #Oxfordboaters, but I am going to address it as a tech problem as it is the same mess we need to work on composting in our social tech projects. People don’t actually hate structure, what they tend to resist is visible structure - the kind we need to make visible so we can see, question, and challenge. At the same time, they’re always perfectly comfortable inside invisible structures […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/people-resist-is-visible-structure/