witchescauldron

Blog: http://hamishcampbell.com
Funding: https://opencollective.com/open-media-network
Projects: https://unite.openworlds.info

Last Notes

2026-04-06 11:37:51 UTC

Normalise mess: show that not everything has to be controlled to work. Messy, lived processes are not failure, they’re how real communities function.

2026-01-05 16:42:42 UTC

Make mediation visible again, #Blocking culture killed community memory.
Reintroduce: named mediators, public-but-careful conflict summaries, rollback instead of deletion, context instead of erasure
This doesn’t mean tolerating abuse. It means treating conflict as social material, not contamination. Movements grow by composting tension - not pretending it isn’t there.

2025-09-26 07:09:28 UTC

#makeinistory is a lightweight, federated, peer-to-peer friendly app to collect, tag, and narrate archival material (photos, flyers, docs, audio, video). Designed for activist groups, families, and grassroots collectives to own their history and weave it into living narratives.
* Archivist (Uploader)
Scan & upload material text, (images, PDFs, audio, video).
Add minimal metadata: date, place, people, tags.
* Contributor (Family / Activist Member)
Browse archive via columns (New, Recent, Thematic).
Add/edit metadata collaboratively.
Tag items (hashtags, free text).
Add contextual notes or stories.
* Story-Builder (Narrator / Researcher)
Create “Story” views: curated sequences of items.
Add explanatory text, embed links, timelines.
* Viewer (Public)
Read “Stories” or browse public archive.
Search by tag / metadata.
Comment (if enabled) via Fediverse accounts.

2025-09-04 09:10:08 UTC

The right-wing feeds on division.
The left-wing grows from trust.
This #KISS truth is buried under decades of shit: Stalinism’s dead weight, Postmodernism’s fog, Neoliberalism’s rot. Now we stand in the stink - social, political, technological mess. We don’t deny it. We compost it. Turn the pile. Let it breathe. Make decay into fertile ground. From this soil we grow trust, commons, care.
What blocks this? The #mainstreaming demand to “use proper channels.” But they own the channels. They wrote the rules. They staffed the committees. It’s a maze built for defeat. “Proper channels” exist to: bleed energy, bury dissent in paperwork, trap us in stakeholder theatre. The outcome is always the same: power stays safe where it sits.
That’s what really scares the #fashionistas + #mainstreaming crew: We don’t need them at all.
We can walk away, compost their waste, and build living alternatives. The machine of exclusion won’t “respect” you. It’s built not to. You’re noise to them, not signal. The dignity comes from composting their rot into fertile ground - together. Pick up a shovel. The work is ours.
#OMN #KISS #deathcult

2025-06-23 18:48:50 UTC

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Ideas to mediate this mess making?
The #Fediverse is set up to "splinter" and flow content, so if people are at all wise they will open up more instances - this might work to mediate the mess you point out?

2025-06-23 16:13:05 UTC

Why Doesn’t Every City Have a Fediverse Server? https://hamishcampbell.com/why-doesnt-every-city-have-a-fediverse-server/ I’ve been looking – specifically for my city: Oxford, UK. And the answer seems to be… Nope. Nothing. Not a single clearly local Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed or similar instance.

2025-06-22 09:11:28 UTC

The Fediverse path could be the most important #openweb reboot of the commons of this decade. This is a story of power, plain and simple https://hamishcampbell.com/this-is-a-story-of-power-plain-and-simple/

2025-03-11 07:59:11 UTC

A lot of #openweb work, including the #ActivityPub standard, which was developed in such spaces, without the need for a paywall or corporate sponsorship. This ethos is central to the commons-building process, where trust, collaboration, and openness are valued more than monetization or statues in formal hard structures. Fediverse, grassroots, native, trust, openness, and collaboration https://hamishcampbell.com/fediverse-grassroots-native-trust-openness-and-collaboration-thrive/

2025-02-21 18:14:38 UTC

From birth, we’re conditioned to accept the system as inevitable. The #mainstreaming propaganda machine is relentless—schools, media, entertainment, workplaces—all reinforcing one message:
There Is No Alternative (#TINA). They are trained to: See resistance as futile – “You can’t change anything, so why try?” View rebellion as chaos – “Radicals just want to destroy everything.” Accept compliance as normal – “Be reasonable, play the game, fit in.”
The #deathcult survives by convincing people that they have no agency. It punishes dissent and rewards obedience with shallow comforts—consumerism, distraction, performative politics.
Breaking free requires deprogramming—seeing through the illusion of stability and realizing that the real danger isn’t rebellion, but obedience to a collapsing path.
The #OMN is about rebuilding what’s been erased—trust, autonomy, and real alternatives. Because the biggest lie of the #deathcult is that we have no choice.
We do.
#4opens #nothingnew #stupidindividualism #geekproblem #openweb

2025-02-21 18:11:36 UTC

Worshipping the #deathcult isn’t just about fear, it’s about comfort. Even those who recognize the system is broken still cling to its predictability. Why? Because change is hard, and uncertainty is terrifying.
The #deathcult doesn’t control through oppression; it seduces. It offers: Endless consumerism – Buy your way out of discomfort, drown in distraction. Instant entertainment – Streams of content to keep you numb, passive, and compliant. Social validation – Perform the right opinions, keep your head down, and you won’t be cast out.
Even those who hate the system find themselves going along with it, because the alternative—stepping into the unknown—is daunting.
The illusion of stability is powerful. People stay in bad relationships, toxic jobs, broken systems because they at least know what to expect. Risking real change feels worse than enduring a slow decay.
But comfort is a short-term drug with a long-term cost. The longer we delay action, the worse the collapse.
The #OMN isn’t about offering a comfortable alternative, it’s about building resilient networks where people can step out of the #deathcult and into something real.
Because comfort in a burning house is an illusion.
#4opens #nothingnew #stupidindividualism #openweb #geekproblem

2025-02-06 14:31:28 UTC

Let’s at least try to compost the mess.
We’ve wasted billions on #encryptionist fantasies, spent 20 years lost in the #dotcons, and now? The #Titcock generation is locked in algorithmic zombification, while 40 years of dead ideology still rules as “common sense.”
"What is to be done?" The answer isn’t another tech utopianism or individualist escape hatch. It’s about affinity groups, actual social movements, and using the #4opens to sort what’s worth pissing on to compost both figuratively and literally, every little bit helps the rot break down the #techshit into something useful.
#stupidindividualism is the real blocker, the key takeaway, we don’t need lone "smart" people solving things, we need movements.

2025-02-04 18:07:46 UTC

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we need a tool like the #4opens to judge this. to make native and non-native visible to #mainstreaming people and some of our own #geekproblem who push #closedweb over the #openweb

2025-02-04 09:53:19 UTC

Good video on group use of #ActivityPub https://spectra.video/w/xwCSYfZh1mJY64zJ9GngbE from #nodeBB

2024-11-15 11:34:19 UTC

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this is both true, and a part of the problem we need to compost. It's useful to see these tech paths as social, as it is social media:
- Twitter (on the path of fascism)
Microblogging social media today:
- Threads (a #dotcons)
- Bluesky (on the path of #VC funded #dotcons)
- Mastodon (#openweb'ish)
- Nostr (our encryptionists brothers)
Then there is the #fedivers, which is actually native to the #openweb that we need to move to, so this matters.

2024-10-27 16:20:48 UTC

The distinction between #BlueSky and #ActivityPub is a fundamental contrast in values: BlueSky, backed by venture capital, aligns with a profit-powered approach that prioritizes monetization and control, much like traditional #dotcons. On the other hand, ActivityPub is a people-powered protocol rooted in #FOSS open-source principles and community development, to foster decentralized, #4opens #DIY paths. This contrast underscores the differing paths each protocol envisions for the future of the #openweb—profit-driven versus community-driven—each with its implications, economic, social and political.

2024-10-20 18:46:55 UTC

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There is a project people have been working on for the last ten years that does this is #KISS and soughted #OMN
There have been quite a few, mostly funded projects, that have failed to do this over the last 20 years.
#techchurn is a real problem, we need to compost the #techshit as much as make more :)

2024-09-16 08:01:38 UTC

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this is touching on the #4opens which is simply a retelling of #FOSS as a social movement https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens It's something that we need, ideas please on how to communicate this?