Our grassroots path, which created most of the value you see being used around you on this openweb It is going through one of its cycles of break down, coming out of this it does need to take a more productive path. There is a lot of scope to do this with the current #mainstreaming flooding into this openweb reboot we all played a part in making happen, it is fertile times for tech change and thus challenge.
Let my try to help with some focus, to help people/cats who feel lost and thus hopeless.
All technology is social, thus the is politics hardcoded. In this, it’s useful to frame left and right as driven by fundamental emotional motivators—fear for the right and trust for the left, a way to cut through the complexities of political debates. This lens highlights how cycles of fear perpetuate control-oriented agendas, while trust foster openness and collaboration. It’s a powerful way to step outside the immediate mess, recognizing the #KISS dynamics at play.
Do you think this could be used to influence current openweb projects and the paths we take amidst #mainstreaming pressures?
Can we build our works from something this simple, to start to create the affinity groups that we need to be affective.
There will be a strong pushing for common sense #NGO paths, this if not balanced can be a very real problem.
On the Fediverse the #NGO path are basically imperialism Imperialism - Wikipedia, there is a long history of this, and the important thing to realise is that these people have no idea they are doing this.
As a rule of thump, you can tell if it’s on balance a mess or sense, if it doesn’t link to #socialhub it’s likely mess, agen the people involved have no clue why this is the problem it is.
Let’s hope what they make is not only more #techshit to compost, the history of this imperialism for the last few hundred years is not good.
Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The NGO-Industrial Complex is definitely a thing. But not everything with a bill is a duck, and not every activist coalition is astroturfing. Similarly not all NGOs.
We need to build a bridge between this space and the #SWF project, linking is a good start both ways.
We need to build and strongly hold a bridge between this space and the inflowing #dotcons, this bridge likely needs guard towers and some defences put into place. The #SWF could maybe become a part of this guarding if we can build on trust and #4opens links and hold these in place.
The balance of cats and humans is still something we need to work on, can cats become humane?
Who is up for helping make this happen?
And yes we do have to try and work in this mess as it’s the mess we are working on. A musical look at this:
The Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC): A Double-Edged Sword in #FOSS and Activism
What I call #NGO’s in the hashtag story. The Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) strypey links to is a look at how entanglement of non-profits, big businesses, governments, and social activism, leads to mess we need to compost. While nonprofits can fund crucial tech and activist work, their reliance on corporate-linked foundations dilutes this, to keep receiving money, the is STRONG presser to softening critiques to align with business interests, ultimately limiting transformative change. This power dynamic mirrors critiques of the Prison-Industrial and Military-Industrial Complexes, highlighting how funding sources shape the scope and direction of activism and the #FOSS tech we build.
In the grassroots #DIY world, it’s critical to remain aware, and work to mediate these influences, ensuring that the needed systemic challenges are not compromised by external funding interests.
Let’s focus here on planting seeds of real change, beyond the comfortable narratives of the #NPIC that the #SWF has to compromise with, this is what we are doing on #socialhub
I think it’s important not to judge people by the tools they use. Some of our allies use online tools we may disapprove of (eg SWF’s use of a Xitter account). Similarly, they may use legal tools we may disapprove of, like Trusts and Foundations, or political parties. My strategy for working with NGOs is very similar to my strategy for working with political parties. It’s all about looking through the institutional forms, to the people involved, and building relationships around common causes where it makes sense.
Like political parties, NGOs come in many sizes, shapes, and forms. Like parties, they are set up with many different combos of motives. Like parties, they may be funded by donations from the public, grants from wealthy philanthropists, public funding from governmental bodies, or some combination of the above
As a result, NGOs, like political parties, can be divided between as least 3 distinct buckets;
movement institutions set up by activists to support our work
mission-driven cooperation bodies set up by people who are well-meaning, but politically naive
astroturf fronts set up by corporatists and propertarians to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful
People who set up type #2 usually think they are doing #1. But they are in danger of being co-opted by people wanting to hijack their org and make it a #3. So my strategy is to make contact with them, discuss various ways they can collaborate with existing #1 orgs, and try to put them in contact with relevant people in them. As I do that, I try to help them understand the political-economic dimensions of their mission, and the various tactics astroturfers use in their attempts to convert a #2 into a #3. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure ; )
In summary, for me it’s not about writing NGOs off as the enemies of commons organising. On the contrary, you can’t have a commons without an organised system for regulating that commons and ensuring its sustainability. Neither is it about a false dichotomy in which an NGO is either ‘for us or against us’. It’s clearly more complicated than that, and taking an aggressive attitude towards people from NGOs risks driving them into the arms of the astroturfers. Not what we want.
