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README.md
MakingHistory: Trust-Based Media Flows for the Fediverse
Overview
The #makinghistory project is a decentralized, open-source archiving and storytelling network designed to preserve and amplify grassroots histories. It’s founded on the idea that history isn’t written by the winners – it’s made by those who resist, build, and care. Using digitized collections like the CampbellFamily archive as a seed, the project invites communities to reclaim their narratives through shared, federated networks. This isn’t just another data repository – it’s a living, breathing ecosystem where collective memory is gathered, enriched, and kept accessible for future generations and movements.
The application functions as a community-installable tool that allows anyone to host their own archive node. These nodes, whether local or remote, connect into a wider peer-to-peer network of storytellers, archivists, and activists. Core features include uploading and organizing digital files, enriching metadata flows, and linking material to broader narratives using human-created tags and annotations. The platform follows a participation-first path, encouraging affinity groups to contribute not just data, but context, weaving a rich web of interlinked histories.
But #makinghistory goes further than archiving. It’s a space for collaborative storytelling, publishing, and public exhibition. Its narrative layer draws from the archive to trace connections between people, places, and events, transforming scattered fragments into stories of solidarity, resistance, and change. These outputs feed both digital commons and real-world installations like the Resistance Exhibition, where history is brought to life in public, participatory spaces. This is the infrastructure for radical memory work, a composting system for movement knowledge. Developers are not just needed to build features, they’re invited to help shape the very flows and protocols that keep history in the hands of those who live it. Developer Roadmap: #makeinghistory – Testing & Prototyping
Phase 1: Core Object Listing
Implement a single-column interface that lists objects (text, image, link).
Set up two test instances that can post and sync objects between them.
Default view lists objects by most recent. Super simple.
Phase 2: Hashtag Columns
Add support for hashtag-based columns (inspired by Mastodon’s Tweetdeck interface).
Reuse and adapt existing open-source implementations where possible.
Phase 3: Story Objects
Introduce a new “Story” object that composes and links existing media objects, with added narrative context.
These stories are published through collective/community accounts (discussion needed on access/trust models).
Phase 4: Federation & Flows
Begin mapping and testing how edits, hashtags, comments, and objects flow across federated instances.
Align this with the #OMN trust model and the work from the #indymediaback reboot (estimated 90% overlap).
User Interfaces
Desktop: Use a Tweetdeck-style interface, similar to Mastodon’s current layout.
Mobile: Build a simplified UI with a single-column scroll. Objects open fullscreen with sideways swiping (like Tusky for Mastodon).
Every Object
Has edit capabilities (if user has login/auth).
Editable hashtags.
Comment threads.
All changes sync across instances via federation/trust flows (option 4).
The current test interface and images will need refreshing, as they’re based on early-stage mockups. But the concept remains: keep the interface minimal, usable, and focused on narrative composting. This project is both infrastructure and imagination, grounded in the old but reaching toward the new.
https://unite.openworlds.info/attachments/58327ecc-d1da-4c82-8aa0-b1bc3310b42f
MakingHistory is a project of the Open Media Network (#OMN), a long-running initiative to build community-governed, federated media infrastructure on the #openweb. Where the #OMN provides the broader ecosystem and values framework, MakingHistory is the concrete first-stage build: a working proof-of-concept that puts those values into running code.
The project creates a decentralised, participatory network for documenting and sharing grassroots movements, historical events, and underrepresented narratives. It empowers communities and institutions to take control of their own stories - preserving and amplifying them outside corporate-controlled platforms. At its technical core, MakingHistory develops a trust-based "flow layer" that connects existing Fediverse infrastructure into a coherent, media and archiving network.
This first-stage grant funds proof of concept and validation. A second-stage proposal will follow to deliver a fully production-ready system.
The Problem
The dominant social media platforms - Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and their successors - are built on surveillance, algorithmic amplification, and centralised control. Grassroots movements, histories, and social narratives are particularly vulnerable: they are either ignored, suppressed, or appropriated by these systems, and when platforms shut down or change policy, the record disappears with them.
The Fediverse offers a genuine alternative built on open standards, but it currently has significant gaps. Moderation models rely on top-down, per-instance control, with each instance acting as its own isolated kingdom. There are no coherent cross-platform content flows, no trust-based propagation mechanisms beyond chronological or algorithmic feeds, and very limited shared commons model for media and archiving. Many existing approaches simply reproduce the failures of commercial platforms at smaller scale.
MakingHistory addresses these gaps directly — not by building yet another platform, but by developing the connective tissue that existing Fediverse tools are missing.
What Is Being Built
The project delivers two interlocking things: a trust-based flow layer for the Fediverse, and a community archiving environment called the Witches Cauldron, used as the live test case for that infrastructure.
The Flow Layer is a middleware service that routes content between federated instances based on trust relationships rather than algorithmic ranking. Content moves through the network because communities choose to share it, not because a recommendation engine promotes it. Moderation emerges from those same relationships — flows slow or stop where trust is weak. This is built on ActivityPub and designed for interoperability with Mastodon, PeerTube, and Lemmy from the outset.
The Witches Cauldron / MakingHistory Archive is an open archive and data commons built on the #4opens principles (open data, open source, open processes, open standards). It creates a metadata-enriched digital collection hosted on a redundant, federated network of servers, with user-generated timelines, multimedia integration, and collaborative curation tools. Communities and institutions can document history in real time or retrospectively — uploading materials, tagging with hashtags for federated discovery, and contributing to a distributed archive that no single entity can take down or lock away.
The key technical components are:
- A flow service managing content movement between instances according to trust relationships
- A trust-based moderation model where visibility and propagation emerge from community relationships, not platform rules
- A distributed archiving layer using redundant federated storage with metadata tagging for long-term preservation and retrieval
- A reference implementation demonstrating these flows in practice, with the MakingHistory archive as the user-facing test environment
The R&D Hypothesis
The central research question is: can trust-based moderation and distribution flows replace algorithmic amplification in a federated community media and archiving ecosystem? We will work to explored this through designing and implementing trust-driven flow logic, testing propagation across trusted versus untrusted nodes, and evaluating usability, resilience, and moderation outcomes across real community deployments.
Deliverables and Milestones
By month 3: Technical specification of the flow architecture; a prototype flow service routing between two instances; documentation of existing Fediverse flow patterns; early integration with one platform; initial archive environment and testing data sets set up.
By month 6: A cross-platform prototype connecting at least two systems (Mastodon and PeerTube); a working demonstration of trust-based moderation flows; a public code repository with full documentation; and a user-facing MakingHistory test environment with real community content.
Infrastructure Model
The project uses a hybrid infrastructure model that avoids the twin failures of fragile grassroots projects (no institutional support) and captured institutional ones (no community autonomy).
The grassroots layer consists of many small, low-cost, community-run instances providing built-in redundancy for text and media. The institutional layer anchors the network through larger nodes hosted by universities, libraries, public service organisations, and European institutions — providing stability without centralisation, and public-interest support for core infrastructure without control over the edges.
Sustainability
Sustainability is treated as a social and infrastructural challenge, not just a financial one. Core infrastructure is supported through institutional hosting partnerships (discussions are underway). Network resilience comes from distribution and redundancy rather than dependence on any single host. Development is sustained through commons collaboration under the #4opens framework, with no reliance on advertising, venture capital, or extractive funding models.
Community engagement — workshops, onboarding sessions, and outreach through the Fediverse — is built into the project from the start, not added at the end.
Team
Hamish Campbell (Project Lead) — 40+ years in grassroots media and technology; 8+ years working with Fediverse and ActivityPub systems. Responsible for vision, coordination, network-building, and core documentation.
Michael (UX & Logic) — Ten years developing #OMN projects; focu on, dev, core system logic and user-facing design; experienced in building small, working coding projects end-to-end.
Ben (Developer) — Software developer focused on helping building on the existing Emissary codebase, and mentureing.
Wider community — Active testers and contributors drawn from the existing OMN and Fediverse networks.
Alignment with Funder Priorities
MakingHistory directly supports European digital sovereignty and aligns with Next Generation Internet (NGI) goals: human-centric internet development, open and interoperable technologies, and trust and resilience as core infrastructure principles rooted in the #4opens framework.
The project builds on 20+ years of directly relevant prior work — from Indymedia to the ongoing #OMN — and represents the next concrete step in a long-term effort to reclaim community narrative power and ensure grassroots history is preserved and accessible for future generations.