2026-04-27 08:40 UTC
Replies (8)
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@codewizard@hear-me.social 2026-04-27 08:56
@rimu@piefed.social is this your post @rimu@mastodon.nzoss.nz ??🤔🤔🤔
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@schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-04-27 09:07
Decentralisation is a well-known trope in Cyberlibertarianism, as the late David Golumbia has already explained in his book of the same title (read Aline’s thoughts about it here). I remember finding some of the writings of David Golumbia some years ago. At first I thought it was making me unreasonably angry that someone might believe such wrong and stupid things, but as I thought more about it, I realized that my anger was actually very reasonable. Hint: pretty much everyone thinks their own ideas are “progressive” because the word “progress” generally has a positive cultural connotation!
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@bearboiblake@pawb.social 2026-04-27 09:34
This is something that has been on my mind as well - centralized platforms such as Reddit et al. are functionally monarchies, but the Fediverse is functionally feudal… which, y’know, isn’t great… the thing is, I’m not sure how we can solve this problem, and I’ve thought about it quite a bit over the years. The root of the issue is that there is no way to preserve privacy and also ensure that every user is a real human and not a bot/sockpuppet or whatever, so any forms of democracy are dead on arrival on the Internet. The only thing I can really think of would be a real-world fully mutual co-operative that requires in-person voting to decide on issues, but obviously that would mean that instances would need to be tied to a real-world location. I suppose live video calls might be possible, but idk… with modern AI deepfakes, even that might be prone to manipulation by malicious actors. Until we’ve got a solution to that problem, I think federated feudal states is about the best we can do, and it’s a vast improvement over the monarchic alternative.
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@misk@piefed.social 2026-04-27 09:44
Arguably the barriers to entry for running your own Fediverse software instance are relatively low, therefore users are at not that much of an admin mercy as with commercial social media platforms. People running their instances for others provide a service and they should be allowed to run them as they wish, in accordance to a tried principle of many self-governing communities where those that actually do things should have the most say in how those things are done. I wouldn’t discount the value of instances being effectively little kingdoms either - it allows them to be ran with focus and purpose. We can’t afford paid admins / moderators and we need them not to burn out, therefore they need a degree of autonomy too. There are many benefits to be found in an instance where leadership simply aligns with your values and you can trust them to do the right thing most of the time, without Wikipedia worth of community rules. Everyone should be encouraged to find an instance like this but it requires thoughtful participation which circles back to the issue that most people don’t want to do this work. There are plenty of solutions that cater to them though. I get the idea that the article takes a stab at the communities becoming dangerous silos but in the world where so much social media thrives on conflict and outrage, there’s a value in a safe space too. We need spaces for people with common beliefs to discuss things without being derailed by already discounted arguments from outside because there’s enormous value in proliferation of ideas happening on an open platform without resorting to closed off spaces.
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@aeronmelon@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 10:17
Until it’s possible to pick up posts, comments, vote history, user profiles, user history, entire communities, etc. and take that information to a different instance, federation still feels like silo’d social media.
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@Quokka@quokk.au 2026-04-27 11:28
Sadly the UN is ineffectual, being dictated to by the largest and most influential. It ignores the plights of smaller nations, and results in factionalism. I think the model of the FAF with its focus on giving power back to its users and promoting instance voting on decisions is a much better system to emulate. Ultimately what we need are less admins who act on their own, and more community accountability for decision making. Having many smaller people led communities can allow for free association between groups who share likeminded ethics.
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@sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-27 13:03
This is somewhere between ’not a very compelling argument’ to ’oh ok I guess left-anarchism doesn’t exist’. The whole thing is essentially ideology by, and as, analogy. Cool! Wanna try any empiricism? Not an erudite vibes based argument? Imagine Mastodon had a governance system where all users, admins and minorities were equally represented. Nah, I’d rather try to imagine a goverance system where users and admins either don’t exist as seperate categories, or are as close to indistinguishable as possible. This person defines progress as managed, fair, hierachy. … howabout abolishing class, to the greatest extent possible? But according to this person, my backlash to this is rooted in … property rights. Got it. Turbolib can’t imagine any ideology other than their own, also grass is green. Maybe they could come by the goverance comms of dbzer0 and the rest of the flotilla, for some exposure to some other ideas?
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@Cybersec@piefed.social 2026-04-27 13:45
Great discussion thank you.