#OMN (Open Media Network)

2026-05-09 19:35:47

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 #closedweb in a mask, when people ignore existing commons is easy to see the red flag.

Why is this a mess? Existing working systems: #Fediverse (e.g. Mastodon), RSS, open standards, were ignored or dismissed as “non-scalable” or “non-monetizable” so there plan is reinventing the wheel → badly. With “scaling” used as an excuse for control with claims that the #fediverse “can’t scale” and “needs monetization”. The simple reality is scaling here is an old story of centralising control + extracting value.

Let’s look at this from a native view of grassroots scale = trust, diversity, human limits vs corporate scale vs control, extraction, surveillance. They are different processes → different outcomes with ID verification = anti-commons architecture. What this creates is exclusion, surveillance, and power asymmetry. This shallowly hidden #dotcons path flips the #openweb model from permissionless participation to controlled access and tracking. It’s not a public space – it’s “smiling” infrastructure for governance and policing.

Let’s look at how the media failed as it’s a part of the problem, journalists repeated press releases with no technical or cultural literacy, leading to the #mainstreaming mythology of “first European network” unchallenged, this cultural memory hole is a recurring mess we need to compost. The outcome is every shallow reboot looks “new”.

This feeds the real divide in tech vs culture. You see the same split again on the dev side: forks protocols, builds platforms → ignores social process. And on the activist side: understands community → stuck in Facebook/Slack. Without combining both you either get silos or you get capture. One useful way of seeing this is to follow the money, to see the outcome of investor-driven, marketing-heavy teams with “Monetization” as a core requirement. Funding-first projects don’t build commons, they build exits, leverage and control systems.

It should be obviously – nobody should be surprised that this liberal pushing of “Sovereignty” is being hijacked, using #EU branding as legitimacy. This is the #eurowashing of #dotcons models we touched on at the start. Real “sovereignty”, what ever it means, lives in open protocols, distributed governance and local autonomy. Not in a branded platform, or the nation state any more – thus the danger is confusion. People will still join because “it’s European”, “it’s new” and “it sounds ethical”. Thus, the problem isn’t only evil actors – it’s signal-to-noise collapse.

What this means for projects like the #OMN (the actionable bit). This whole story reinforces the core path – that we focus on stopping building “new platforms” to start composting what already exists. A common’s strategy using existing protocols (#ActivityPub, RSS), rooted in grassroots trust networks. Keep processes open (#4opens) to accept human-scale limits then scale by federate for reach, not control.

The #WSocial mess shows exactly what happens when you strip the #openweb of its culture and replace it with PR, funding, and control. Our native path is the opposite, growth from the commons. Its #KISS or you just recreate the problem.

The Smile

By William Blake

There is a Smile of Love

And there is a Smile of Deceit

And there is a Smile of Smiles

In which these two Smiles meet

And there is a Frown of Hate

And there is a Frown of disdain

And there is a Frown of Frowns

Which you strive to forget in vain

For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core

And it sticks in the deep Back bone

And no Smile that ever was smild

But only one Smile alone

That betwixt the Cradle & Grave

It only once Smild can be

But when it once is Smild

Theres an end to all Misery

W Social uncovered: the reality behind the hype

An article dispelling myths about W Social, the new European platform that aims to rival X: it is a fork of Bluesky that shares many similarities with Eurosky and requires government ID to sign up.

^{Elena Rossini}