#OMN - The Open Media Network

The #OMN is plumbing for the #openweb. It's about creating a human-scale, community-governed media infrastructure that isn't controlled or capturable by big corporate platforms. It is built on #FOSS pracitces and the #4Opens, and designed and built with a continual motivation to #KISS.

The #OMN consists of simple flows, not platforms; it's a way of thinking about media as flows of objects and shaping that media as it moves through a network. People shape the flow.

You can find a more technical view to read after here.

Overview

Data within the #OMN has roughly the following lifecycle:

• Write: Create content
• Tag: Categorise it, so others can find it
• Publish: Make it available on the web
• Federate: Share it across different trusted networks
• Enrich: Add metadata to it as it passes through trusted networks
• Archive: Ensure it remains accessible over time

Interoperability

Interoperability is default, not an afterthought; nothing is locked in. Instead of building another isolated platform, we plug into the existing ecosystem, and extend it to compost what doesn't work. This is how we grow the #openweb - by building better flows inside what already exists - not by replacing everything.

#OMN instances/nodes are crucially not separate silos, they're expressions of the same underlying flows. The system is native to the Fediverse, built on ActivityPub. That means content flows in from existing platforms and codebases and flows out to existing networks and apps.

The #4Opens Framework

The #4opens are four principles designed to keep power in the hands of communities and users rather than central authorities:

• Open Data: Information belongs to the community
• Open Source: The code is free to see and change
• Open Process: Decisions are made transparently
• Open Standards: Systems can interoperate without gatekeepers

The Five Functions (#5F) Framework

It doesn't start with features, apps, or ideology, it starts with flows.

Imagine the network as pipes and holding tanks.

Content (objects) flows through them, communities decide how that flow is shaped. Nothing magical, nothing hidden. This matters because:

If people can't picture how a system works, they can't govern it. And when systems become opaque, power centralises.

So the #OMN reduces everything to five simple functions:

1. Publish

Add a drop to the flow

Publishing is simply adding an object - a story, a post, media, data - to a stream.

• No automatic amplification
• No built-in authority
• No algorithmic boost

Publication is contribution to something larger, not a static broadcast to be lost in the noise.

2. Subscribe

Connect the pipes

Subscription is how people, groups, topics, instances connect, establishing flows. This replaces platform logic - "you are inside us" - with network logic

• this connects to that".

There is no centralised, opaque ranking, communities decide which pipes connect.

3. Moderate

Filter and route the flow

Moderation is not censorship; it's sieving. Flows may:

• pass through
• be filtered
• be slowed or prioritised
• be contextualised

Trust is local, visible, and reversible.

Different communities can apply different filters to the same flow. This is a feature, not a bug.

4. Rollback

Drain and reset the flow

Rollback is how systems recover:

• remove past content from your stream
• undo aggregation decisions
• correct mistakes
• respond to abuse

Without rollback, errors become power struggles. With rollback, accountability becomes procedural, not punitive.

5. Append and Edit Metadata

Shape meaning downstream

Content is not rewritten - it is contextualised by attaching metadata to existing objects. Metadata can include:

• tags
• summaries
• trust signals
• warnings
• translations
• relationships

This is where meaning is created; not by algorithms, but by people.

The Holding Tanks

Underneath it all is a simple storage layer

Each node in the network maintains a database of stored objects, effectively moving through flows.

There is no "AI brain" or hidden feed logic, just data shaped by social processes.

Why This Matters

Most current systems bundle everything together:

• identity
• publishing
• distribution
• moderation
• monetisation

This creates centralised control, even when systems claim to be "open".

OMN does the opposite; it separates the core functions.

This makes the system:

• understandable
• auditable
• forkable
• governable

#NothingNew by Design

This model isn't new, it mirrors systems we already understand such as plumbing, electrical grids, packet-switched networks, version control.

This is intentional. Systems that people understand are systems people can govern.

From Platforms to Commons

The #5F are the smallest possible set of actions needed to run a media network:

• Publish
• Subscribe
• Moderate
• Rollback
• Edit

Everything else - feeds, timelines, notifications, UI/UX - is just interface; nice to have but not essential.

The Point

The OMN is not about building a better platform. It's about building infrastructure for a democratic digital commons

Simple flows, social mediation, human control. It is about developing systems built on trust, not control.

Some Considerations to #KISS

The system should be so simple that anyone can mentally model how it works. If it's too complex to understand, it's too complex to govern.

• Social over Technical: To mediate the #geekproblem (tech that's too hard for normal people to use), prioritise how people use the tools over how "elegant" the code is
• Compost the Past: Instead of starting from scratch or repeating old mistakes, take previous projects and turn them into "fertile soil" for new, federated networks
• Trust-Based Networking: Move away from global algorithms toward small, connected "nodes" of people who trust each other (or not)

Any application may be built from this foundation - that's the point of keeping the core this simple. On top of the basic #OMN #5F, we're developing a set of seed projects to put this into practice:

• #makinghistory: tools to keep grassroots and mainstream history alive, linked, and evolving across the #openweb
• #indymediaback: a reboot of grassroots news, open publishing with modern federated infrastructure
• #OGB (Open Governance Body): lightweight, federated governance for coordinating people, decisions, and trust
• #digitaldetox: a horizontal tool to step away from addictive, manipulative platform dynamics