Why the future of democracy could depend on your group chats
Retrieved on:
月曜日, 6月 3, 2024
I became newly worried about the state of democracy when, a few years ago, my mother was elected president of her neighborhood garden club.
Key Points:
- I became newly worried about the state of democracy when, a few years ago, my mother was elected president of her neighborhood garden club.
- At the time, I was trying to resolve a conflict on a large email group I had created.
- Rather than practicing democracy, people most likely find themselves getting suspended from a Facebook group they rely on with no reason given or option to appeal.
- Or a group of friends join a chat together, but only one of them has the ability to change its settings.
Implicit feudalism
- But as I describe in my book, “Governable Spaces,” feudalism describes life online quite well.
- But people experience feudalism most directly among fellow users who happen to hold moderation roles.
- I believe that implicit feudalism is becoming a template for politics more broadly.
- Various pathologies of online life also become easier to understand in light of implicit feudalism.
- But under implicit feudalism, what better options do people have?
Digital democracy
- Closer to planet Earth, governments have started encouraging technology for online democracy.
- The fate of democracy anywhere, I have come to believe, depends on experiments like these.
- People around the world are losing faith that democracy is responsive to their needs.
- As the technologist Bruce Schneier has argued, “The modern representative democracy was the best form of government that mid-18th-century technology could conceive of.