Recently I’ve been doing media interviews – one mainstream piece for a #boatingeurope article coming out in traditional media, and another for the Cherwell student paper in Oxford focused more on biography. Both journalists said the same thing: “It was surprisingly hard to find information about you online.” ...
Treating the Fediverse as #stupidindividualism is a kind of blindness, yes, individuals matter, but the #Fediverse only works because of shared culture, shared norms, and collective responsibility. Without this social layer, federation becomes fragmentation – lots of voices, but little shared direction to hold together. ...
The #encryptionist movement has a blind spot. Not because encryption itself is bad – it isn’t. Encryption is a tool to protect dissidents, journalists, communities under threat, and everyday privacy. In the small picture, strong encryption is often necessary. ...
https://hamishcampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/20318.pngTen years ago – and honestly long before that – there were endless conversations on #failbook about how useful it was for campaigning. The dominant view back then was simple: it’s just cat memes, it’s just tooling, it isn’t political so we can use it ...
https://hamishcampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/17963.pngPile technology is an interesting and under-discussed organisational pattern that already shapes how many people actually work, especially in #FOSS and grassroots tech cultures. ...
I decided to fire up my personal instance again after a little hiatus, so I guess it's time for another #Introduction. I've been on the #Fediverse since late 2022. I'd never had much of a social media presence before that, but seeing the accelerating #Enshittification of the social web, I felt I had to get involved somehow. So, here I am, doing my small bit for the #OpenWeb by learning about the technology, by advocating for it and by simply trying to be an active member of the #Community. I'll be using this account to keep close tabs on the latest developments and discussions happening within this space. You can expect lots of boosts once I get my home feed properly populated.
Just slowly finished
@pluralistic’s Enshittification while moving into new apartment, switching to Mastodon, and replacing big tech one tiny app at a time. Enjoyed the book immensely. Am now fully radicalized. Smash the technopoly. Take me to your FOSS. #enshittification#openweb
The book ‘Enshittification’ by Cory Doctorow lying on a glass table.
We are feeling a cultural current many of us recognise but rarely name clearly. A feeling that something fundamental has gone wrong, not just politically or economically, but culturally. An experience that imagination has narrowed, participation has thinned, and people are increasingly pushed into the role of spectators rather ...
If we want meaningful change rather than internal noise, it helps to talk less about individual personalities and more about roles, structures, and class. Individuals come and go, but the patterns they operate within repeat. Shifting focus this way isn’t about avoiding accountability, it’s about understanding the dynamics ...
We need to describe a real structural problem that shows up again and again in grassroots projects. Well-meaning people arrive claiming to help “community”, but operate through control patterns learned from institutions, #dotcons platforms and professional #NGO culture. They work very hard, believe they are doing good, and ...
Let’s look at an example of how belief systems shape political reality. Some people still deliberately conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. This confusion isn’t neutral, it shapes how discussions are framed, who gets silenced, and which political paths remain possible. Let’s be clear: ...
The #openweb reminds us that meaningful autonomy comes from shared infrastructure, collective governance, and mutual trust. Projects like #OMN are built on this understanding: individuals do not create networks alone; networks create the conditions that allow individuals to flourish. Real freedom grows from commons-based ...
Across Europe, large-scale “mainstreaming” tech projects are increasingly shaping the future of the digital commons. From infrastructure initiatives to sovereign cloud strategies and federated social technologies, the EU tech stack is becoming more organised, more funded, and more institutionalised. ...
Everywhere we look – what we see, touch, and use – we are living inside systems shaped by decades of economic and technological assumptions. This isn’t only something happening “out there”. It has been normalised and internalised over the last forty years. ...
Democracy? What Democracy? It's all about the old mighty cold dollar... ->
"When the World Wide Web went live in the early 1990s, its founders hoped it would be a space for anyone to share information and collaborate. But today, the free and open web is shrinking.
The Internet Archive has been recording the history of the internet and making it available to the public through its Wayback Machine since 1996. Now, some of the world’s biggest news outlets are blocking the archive’s access to their pages.
Major publishers – including The Guardian, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and USA Today – have confirmed they’re ending the Internet Archive’s access to their content.
While publishers say they support the archive’s preservation mission, they argue unrestricted access creates unintended consequences, exposing journalism to AI crawlers and members of the public trying to skirt their paywalls.
Yet, publishers don’t simply want to lock out AI crawlers. Rather, they want to sell their content to data-hungry tech companies. Their back catalogues of news, books and other media have become a hot commodity as data to train AI systems.
The individual, their freedom, and their capacity for reason are products of social relationships, not independent origins. Society is not built from isolated individuals; individuals arise from shared culture, history, and collective life. As society grows richer and more humane, individuals gain the conditions needed for ...
The new #NGO generation are in the process of the second sell-out of the #openweb. These people are eather new or are comeing back to this “native” space, have stepped stright into running the current reboot after the original grassroots path burned out and was pushed aside. This new “NGO generation” holds strong views, ...
A post sparked Hacker News spouting of noise and smoke. It looks like “just fork it.” phrase in #FOSS culture provokes heat. So worth a second look, for some it’s the purest expression of freedom, to others, it’s a conversation-stopper that quietly protects power. What’s striking isn’t that one side is right and the ...
ActivityPub, the protocol that powers much of the fediverse and allows the various fediverse platforms and servers to talk to each other, has become an official W3C standard 8 years ago!
The #OMN is a good-faith project, so let’s begin from that assumption. I don’t value the mainstreaming direction of this podcast, but it is still a useful thinking point when considering our project outlines. It highlights the pressures and narratives that open projects eventually have to navigate when we deliberately choose ...
A bunch of native #openweb people spent real time, energy, and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse. This wasn’t theoretical, it wasn’t speculative, it wasn’t a #NGO whitepaper or a #VC funding pitch. It was practical outreach, grounded in working technology and lived experience, aimed at reducing Europe’s ...
What do you want to see from Mozilla in the future?
As a longtime and respected open source professional, I finally want to have a good answer when someone asks me, "What has Mozilla done for us lately?" I haven't had that answer for many a year. The perception of Mozilla in the greater open source community is that of a company that breaks its promises (where's Pocket?) and panders to big tech, unwilling
or unable to take a strong principled stance lest it lose its grip on its purse strings. Mozilla has flailed, starting and ending what feels like more products/projects than Google. It needs to refocus on its mission and double-down on regaining the trust of the community.
I do NOT want to see a focus on AI. At all. It's a red herring that's distracting from the mission, not an add-on to it. Furthermore, the ethics of AI (no matter its source) are questionable at best. Aside from IP and other concerns, even the most "open" AI still contributes greatly to degrading our environment. Anything beyond eschewing this tech trend
feels antithetical to Mozilla's mission and brand.
There is a familiar voice resurfacing in today’s debates about the future of the web, its measured, reflective, earnest, often grey-bearded., and it has funding. These are the people who were there in the Web 2.0 era. The #Flickr builders. The early platform designers. The conference speakers who once talked about ...
Disappearing from Search: A personal story about visibility, #dotcons, and the shrinking #openweb
Recently I’ve been doing media interviews – one mainstream piece for a #boatingeurope article coming out in traditional media, and another for the Cherwell student paper in Oxford focused more on biography. Both journalists said the same thing: “It was surprisingly hard to find information about you online.” ...
The #twittermigration, signal vs noise, for rebuilding #openweb culture
Treating the Fediverse as #stupidindividualism is a kind of blindness, yes, individuals matter, but the #Fediverse only works because of shared culture, shared norms, and collective responsibility. Without this social layer, federation becomes fragmentation – lots of voices, but little shared direction to hold together. ...
Trust, encryption, and the risk of “trustless” thinking
The #encryptionist movement has a blind spot. Not because encryption itself is bad – it isn’t. Encryption is a tool to protect dissidents, journalists, communities under threat, and everyday privacy. In the small picture, strong encryption is often necessary. ...
This message is a shovel
https://hamishcampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/20318.pngTen years ago – and honestly long before that – there were endless conversations on #failbook about how useful it was for campaigning. The dominant view back then was simple: it’s just cat memes, it’s just tooling, it isn’t political so we can use it ...
Pile technology
https://hamishcampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/17963.pngPile technology is an interesting and under-discussed organisational pattern that already shapes how many people actually work, especially in #FOSS and grassroots tech cultures. ...
The #openweb is the soil, #OMN the seeds
We are feeling a cultural current many of us recognise but rarely name clearly. A feeling that something fundamental has gone wrong, not just politically or economically, but culturally. An experience that imagination has narrowed, participation has thinned, and people are increasingly pushed into the role of spectators rather ...
An affinity group is not just “a group of people who agree”
A practical bridge-building approach for the #openweb / #OMN – for grassroots organisers, Fediverse communities, and sceptical #FOSS engineers. ...
Nobody said it would be easy
If we want meaningful change rather than internal noise, it helps to talk less about individual personalities and more about roles, structures, and class. Individuals come and go, but the patterns they operate within repeat. Shifting focus this way isn’t about avoiding accountability, it’s about understanding the dynamics ...
People need permission to stop controlling
We need to describe a real structural problem that shows up again and again in grassroots projects. Well-meaning people arrive claiming to help “community”, but operate through control patterns learned from institutions, #dotcons platforms and professional #NGO culture. They work very hard, believe they are doing good, and ...
Composting the myths: power, hidden religions, and why the #openweb matters
Let’s look at an example of how belief systems shape political reality. Some people still deliberately conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. This confusion isn’t neutral, it shapes how discussions are framed, who gets silenced, and which political paths remain possible. Let’s be clear: ...
Funding Proposal: Open Media Network (#OMN) – Building Portable, Human-Centred Digital Commons
https://nlnet.nl/fediversity ...
The EU opportunity and danger, what grassroots projects can offer
The #openweb reminds us that meaningful autonomy comes from shared infrastructure, collective governance, and mutual trust. Projects like #OMN are built on this understanding: individuals do not create networks alone; networks create the conditions that allow individuals to flourish. Real freedom grows from commons-based ...
Why mainstream EU tech funding needs counter-currents, why tech activism matters
Across Europe, large-scale “mainstreaming” tech projects are increasingly shaping the future of the digital commons. From infrastructure initiatives to sovereign cloud strategies and federated social technologies, the EU tech stack is becoming more organised, more funded, and more institutionalised. ...
Yes, its messy stepping out of the churn
Everywhere we look – what we see, touch, and use – we are living inside systems shaped by decades of economic and technological assumptions. This isn’t only something happening “out there”. It has been normalised and internalised over the last forty years. ...
The uncomfortable path
The individual, their freedom, and their capacity for reason are products of social relationships, not independent origins. Society is not built from isolated individuals; individuals arise from shared culture, history, and collective life. As society grows richer and more humane, individuals gain the conditions needed for ...
How our “mainstreaming” people understand what they’re doing
The new #NGO generation are in the process of the second sell-out of the #openweb. These people are eather new or are comeing back to this “native” space, have stepped stright into running the current reboot after the original grassroots path burned out and was pushed aside. This new “NGO generation” holds strong views, ...
Power, the social cost we keep talking past in #FOSS
A post sparked Hacker News spouting of noise and smoke. It looks like “just fork it.” phrase in #FOSS culture provokes heat. So worth a second look, for some it’s the purest expression of freedom, to others, it’s a conversation-stopper that quietly protects power. What’s striking isn’t that one side is right and the ...
Reclaiming the Meaning of “Common Sense”
The #OMN is a good-faith project, so let’s begin from that assumption. I don’t value the mainstreaming direction of this podcast, but it is still a useful thinking point when considering our project outlines. It highlights the pressures and narratives that open projects eventually have to navigate when we deliberately choose ...
Europe, the Fediverse, and the story we failed to tell
A bunch of native #openweb people spent real time, energy, and focus pushing the #EU toward the #Fediverse. This wasn’t theoretical, it wasn’t speculative, it wasn’t a #NGO whitepaper or a #VC funding pitch. It was practical outreach, grounded in working technology and lived experience, aimed at reducing Europe’s ...
The greybeards and the second sell-out of the #openweb
There is a familiar voice resurfacing in today’s debates about the future of the web, its measured, reflective, earnest, often grey-bearded., and it has funding. These are the people who were there in the Web 2.0 era. The #Flickr builders. The early platform designers. The conference speakers who once talked about ...