When you start thinking that using social media is just natural, remember what you're actually feeding. The #dotcons are built around and profit from some of the worst parts of human nature. If we want civilization and society to survive, we cannot keep feeding these systems.

This is a complex and counter-intuitive subject. As capitalism and the so-called "free market" stop providing the trust and social glue that hold society together, we're left with a more fundamental question: who controls our social data?

Open or closed becomes the choice we face.

* Open: social data as a shared commons, something we collectively build and benefit from.

* Closed: social data as something owned, controlled and exploited by someone else.

Look at the two paths that have developed over the last decade: the closed path of the #encryptionists and the more open path of the #Fediverse.

There's an interesting contradiction here. The #Fediverse grew through a hybrid open/closed model, selling a version of openness that was never quite the whole story. That ambiguity helped it grow quickly. You could almost respect a good social con!

But don't learn the wrong lesson from its success. The direction we need to travel is towards more openness, not more enclosure.

We need to judge projects by the #4opens first, then by the #PGA hallmarks. These give us practical ways to distinguish genuine commons-building from another flavour of the same old enclosure.

This is what the #OMN is about: rebuilding the social foundations of the #openweb, not simply building another set of social media platforms.