Development Document for the #OpenMediaNetwork (#OMN)
With #makinghistory as example project
Vision & Unique Selling Point - The #OMN is not only a tech platform, it’s a radical rethinking of how information and identity flow through digital spaces. At its heart lies "common sense", quite literally: Everything - content and people - is a commons data object by default, only becoming private or owned by exception. This principle is a direct challenge to the proprietary silos and ego-centric architectures of the #dotcons.
The OMN is a trust-mediated semantic web, built on a foundation of #DIY ethics, #folksonomy tagging, and open federation, structured around the #4opens. Its "anything in / anything out" design makes it a flexible engine for media making, sharing and archiving - a data soup constantly stirred by trust.
Architecture: The #DataSoup
The OMN runs as a dynamic, open-flow "data soup":
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A mix of tagged data objects (text, audio, video, events, people, orgs, etc.)
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Flowing through and between federated instances
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Mediated by people/community-defined trust relationships
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Navigated and organized through folksonomy tags and trust metrics
Lossiness, redundancy, and fuzziness are intentional features - not bugs. These qualities enable resilience, diversity, and evolution of meaning to cross way to oftern closed contexts. Trust as infrastructure, unlike traditional platforms, trust is not a gate but a filter:
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You don’t need permission to publish.
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You need trust to be heard and distributed.
Core Functions of the OMN
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Publish objects (text, video, events, images) into tagged streams, with metadata for federation, remix, and reuse.
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Subscribe to content flows based on tags, people, groups, topics, or organizations building custom flows across the federated network.
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Rollback to prune flows of historical content (based on tag/source/flow), enabling organic moderation of trust failings.
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Edit tags and content wiki like allowing collaborative curation and adding content and context across the network.
Development Stages
Stage 1 – Seeding (#makinghistory alpha). Build a basic working demo using existing fediverse infrastructure. Core UI for publishing, subscribing, and folksonomy tagging. Trust layer: begin with personal whitelists + manual blocklists? Focus on narrow specific content domain (e.g., alternative history, grassroots archives etc for this early stage). Goal: Demonstrate the data soup model in action with minimal friction and maximum #DIY transparency.
Stage 2 – Sprouting (networked pilot projects). Multiple instances with cross-instance trust flows and subscriptions. Integrate moderation tools from Mastodon/Peertube etc. Expand #makinghistory to include live content sourcing from outside blogs, wikis and archives. Goal: Show the network effect - how flows grow organically with shared trust and overlapping communities.
Stage 3 – Canopy (full federation). Real-time federated editing and tagging, cross-instance rollback and trust signal sharing, browser extension/mobile app for publishing/subscribing/editing from anywhere. Expand “commons by default” framework to identity: tagged people-as-objects in social flows (opt-in). Goal: Establish the #OMN as a flexible, federated public commons infrastructure.
Stage 4 – River to Sea (scaling and autonomy). Fully modular tech stack (#WitchesCauldron as a reference design). Trust graphs become shareable, remixable, portable, integration with legacy #dotcons (read-only), archival services, and mainstream news feeds (for context injection). Goal: Achieve sustainable, decentralized media flows that feed and grow independent news and grassroots storytelling.
Cultural & Ethical Design
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KISS Principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid—no overengineering, no gatekeeping.
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Post-Ownership Ethos: Creativity and contribution trump copyright and control.
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Pluralism as Foundation: based on enlightenment paths, multipolar discourse.
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Forkability by Design: Communities can fork and evolve flows based on local needs.
Example: #makinghistory Project
A prototype built with OMN tech that curates radical, marginal, and grassroots narratives into a public stream:
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Individuals and collectives upload stories, media, and documents
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Tagged by era, location, issue, movement, people
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Distributed via trust flows to researchers, journalists, educators
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UI shows diverging perspectives and encourages remix
Result: A living, growing networked archive of grassroots history, shaped by those who lived it – to feed into the institutions that ignore it. Then taking there history flows and remixing them to build a combined view.