If the goal is solidarity and community, creating a world where little feudal lords reign over independent territories and negotiate the terms of the interchange of ideas can hardly be the best answer. I very much understand that in times of rising authoritarianism such an escape into decentralised resistance is alluring to progressive political movements. But this is a temporary fix at best. It is not a progressive vision for what comes after. Decentralisation without social institutions that debate, define and – when necessary – enforce fairness and equality is a euphemism for survival of the fittest.
Imagine Mastodon had a governance system where all users, admins and minorities were equally represented. Imagine this system intervened in the practices of some admins. Right now I can only imagine the Mastodon community to react with an outcry about such an audacious attack on their free and decentralised kingdom. This reaction would be completely in line with libertarian impulses that are so very present in all things digital. Cyberlibertarians routinely invoke the “free internet” as a vague supreme ideal that has to be defended against any kind of collective, democratic governance. Their ideology is based on private control and decentralised market-based exchange. It has no use for community, solidarity and participation. It is founded on contempt for democratic intervention, a belief in the unique nature of the digital realm and the superiority of those controlling it. These ideas are very present in the Mastodon community as well. Most often this is not the result of an active ideological commitment to libertarian or right-wing views. It is, however, very open to being instrumentalised by these ideologies and it is reinforcing them – willingly or not.
This is basically an article arguing for a fedi equivalent of the UN.
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?
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?
Yep, first thought that popped into my head after reading it was that it had big “freedom for me but not for thee” vibes. But of course their “freedom for me but not for thee” is better for everyone than the other kinds.
Not only is it better, its the only possible option.
Other options literally do not exist, you can’t see them at all through the frame job of this Overton window, drapes are done up in Hayek, and if you don’t like the drapes, you’re an anarcho capitalist.
lmao yeah xD
I stopped reading as soon as he said “you know who else liked decentralization…”
Thanks for delivering the misericord.
I never thought to express it that way but yeah I pretty much would like everything to be controllable by the individual. I get there are bad actors so having things like blocks setup by default is fine as long as the user can turn them off.