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I don't agree with the author's views on anarchism, and their analysis is missing a key piece of political thought: who has control of violence in their propose

I don't agree with the author's views on anarchism, and their analysis is missing a key piece of political thought: who has control of violence in their proposed system of a democratic internet? In the anarchist federated design, the answer is you, the individual. Even if the admin of your particular chosen federation instance chooses to boot you off and delete all your posts, you still hold a copy of your own data which you can take with you to another instance, or to even start your own instance. In the "democratic internet", the answer is you, via your vote - but only in principle. In reality, it's whoever holds the keys to the server you want to use. The ultimate authority over what goes on on Wikipedia is not its userbase, no matter how much of a voice they have: it's the people who physically control the hardware and software that Wikipedia is running on. The monopoly on violence that this "online state" holds over you is not a consequence of your own participation - it is a result of cold hard fact. Worse still, unlike a physical democracy, the "democratic internet" puts your experience of democracy under the control of this authority. If the very fabric of how you participate in an online system is manipulateable by the people in charge of that system, you have little-to-no protection against a coup - what do you do when someone deletes the code that lets you vote, or comment, or anything else? In a federated world, the protection you have is federation itself: a compromised instance is immediately abandonable in favour of any other instance. Personally, I find the idea of empowering tech illiteracy misguided. Computers are too powerful, and too complex, to allow foundations built on them to be written off as trustworthy. Trust in technology can only be based on a constant adversarial effort, participated in (or at least, possible for) every user. How we get there is a much harder problem, and the solution is not centralisation.

ajuc 5y ago
> In the "democratic internet", the answer is you, via your vote - but only in principle. In reality, it's whoever holds the keys to the server you want to use. The ultimate authority over what goes on on Wikipedia is not its userbase, no matter how much of a voice they have: it's the people who physically control the hardware and software that Wikipedia is running on. And in real-life democracy it's the same. Ultimately it's the army that has the tanks. > the "democratic internet" puts your experience of democracy under the control of this authority. If the very fabric of how you participate in an online system is manipulateable by the people in charge of that system, you have little-to-no protection against a coup - what do you do when someone deletes the code that lets you vote, or comment, or anything else? What do you mean by that? If wikipedia jumps the shark people can make a new wikipedia. If France turns into autocracy people can emigrate or revolt. It's pretty much the same.
- ivanbakel 5y ago
  >And in real-life democracy it's the same. Ultimately it's the army that has the tanks. There is a lot of truth to this, but the online version is far worse. In a physical democracy, you can't be prevented from participating except by the efforts of the other participants. Even in authoritarian states, there must be people who inform on you, people to drive the tanks, etc. In the online version, one person can do all of those jobs. >What do you mean by that? If wikipedia jumps the shark people can make a new wikipedia. This is missing the point of the article. "People" cannot make a new Wikipedia. The average Wikipedia user cannot write a single line of code, or administrate a server, or do anything useful towards creating a new instance. Only those with technical knowhow can actually subvert Wikipedia's centralisation. A world where "people" are able to spin up new instances when they want to is exactly what federation aims for - but the point the article makes is that such a world needs all users to be technically capable. The author's idea of an "online democracy" involves users who are empowered even though they aren't capable: how can those people avoid a technical coup?
  - ajuc 5y ago
    > The author's idea of an "online democracy" involves users who are empowered even though they aren't capable: how can those people avoid a technical coup? By becoming capable when it's required or hiring someone who is capable? I think this argument becomes more and more theoretical, in practice both in real life and online you don't need 100% of population to be able to run a country, specialization is fine. What you need is isolation so when one country goes totalitarian - there's somebody to accept refuges and bomb the death camps if needed. So the main problem with democracy online is that network effects are unchecked. When Facebook or Google goes evil - they take everybody with them.
    - ivanbakel 5y ago
      >So the main problem with democracy online is that network effects are unchecked. When Facebook or Google goes evil - they take everybody with them. I think the trouble with this discussion is that you don't really agree with the author. They are proposing a massive online community centralised on a single system - and which is kept in check by user democracy, not alternative instances. If network effects are what keep Facebook and Google in power, imagine the network effect you would get from all the participants in a real-world democracy being on the same platform. How are those users going to start another instance, even "hiring someone who is capable" to make it for them? They won't, simply. In such a system, most users are not able to circumvent a technical coup. Just look at how many "evil" steps Facebook has taken, successfully holding on to their userbase.
zozbot234 5y ago
Blockchain systems can only really be manipulated by controlling a true majority of their resources (a 51% attack). In this way, they can be said to enforce a quasi-democratic form of "voting" albeit in a way that still reflects real-world constraints on, e.g. resource use.
- ivanbakel 5y ago
  But blockchains are basically federated - every user is able to hold a complete copy of the chain and participate in the same way, provided they are technically adept enough. The current state of cryptocurrency proves my point, in a sense: how can a non-technical user be involved in the blockchain, without needing to understand private key cryptography or maintain a wallet, or a copy of the chain? By centralising that effort in an exchange, along with thousands of other users. But exchanges have exactly the issue of the author's "online democracy" - they are easily subverted by the people who actually control the technology. Thus, exchanges get hacked and their users' "decentralised" currency gets taken, because those users tried to bypass the technical effort required to operate the blockchain in the first place.
lapinot 5y ago
Indeed, both the takes on anarchism and democracy are ridiculously simplistic and soaked with western dominant thinking (being at the top of current political systems, linear view on progress, masses are dumb, liberal democracy is the only option). I'm gonna quote this gem: > In political history, the birth of free nations typically contains three stages: dictatorship, briefly overthrown to anarchy, reformed to democracy. They don't even seem to realize that both words have so much different acceptions that they have no precise meaning by themselve, yet asserts facts like "Anarchy fantasizes that freedom protects itself", "In any democracy, centralised power is wielded to protect freedom". Another hard no-no is the plot. This plot should have been log-log ffs! You're already saying it's probably power law and then continue on saying: > There is a massive spike corresponding to just a few instances, and the rest of the graph is nearly invisible to the naked eye, so tiny and so overshadowed by just a few giants. Frankly, this distribution is closer to the Dirac delta function than a power law. This is not serious, especially for someone studying math and doing such elite low-level dev. Don't math-wash your opinions (perhaps you know you're just joking/bs-ing but other people might not). In the light of all these flaws, the actual content is a mix-n-match of unsubstantiated opinions (democracy is good, anarchy is bad) and then at the end a call to build social institutions on the internet.. I'm quite annoyed at this post, on one hand this is all nice and kind, and i can (hope to) see the good intentions, but on the other hand it's really really sloppy and so easy to conter-argue on. edit: there is also not a single mention of p2p systems, in an article about centralization and federation, which is like the elephant in the room
coldtea 5y ago
>In the anarchist federated design, the answer is you, the individual. Even if the admin of your particular chosen federation instance chooses to boot you off and delete all your posts, you still hold a copy of your own data which you can take with you to another instance, or to even start your own instance. Which is not much consolation if everybody is on the first instance. The beauty of how e.g. email is decentralized is that I can change email provider and still get to talk to everybody I used to over email - without having to convince them to switch.
- ivanbakel 5y ago
  >Which is not much consolation if everybody is on the first instance. Federated systems are typically designed so this isn't an issue. You aren't limited to seeing only content that originates on your Mastodon instance, for example - you can follow users on other instances, and the instances will share their content as needed. Of course there are other considerations there - instances may choose to share content conditionally e.g. only with other instances that comply with their banlists. But this is true of email as well.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  > The beauty of how e.g. email is decentralized is that I can change email provider and still get to talk to everybody I used to over email - without having to convince them to switch. If Google blocks your email address as spam, how exactly are you going to talk to everybody on Gmail, regardless of actual mail server provider to that address?
  - coldtea 5y ago
    My point wasn't about being "blocked as spam" though, but about wanting out of Gmail or having your Gmail account closed. That said, if Google marks your email as spam, you can create an alias and send email as that, or create a different email account - same as they can if their previous provider throws them out, folds, and so on. You still get to email your gmail-using friends.

ajuc 5y ago

> In the "democratic internet", the answer is you, via your vote - but only in principle. In reality, it's whoever holds the keys to the server you want to use. The ultimate authority over what goes on on Wikipedia is not its userbase, no matter how much of a voice they have: it's the people who physically control the hardware and software that Wikipedia is running on. And in real-life democracy it's the same. Ultimately it's the army that has the tanks. > the "democratic internet" puts your experience of democracy under the control of this authority. If the very fabric of how you participate in an online system is manipulateable by the people in charge of that system, you have little-to-no protection against a coup - what do you do when someone deletes the code that lets you vote, or comment, or anything else? What do you mean by that? If wikipedia jumps the shark people can make a new wikipedia. If France turns into autocracy people can emigrate or revolt. It's pretty much the same.

ivanbakel 5y ago
>And in real-life democracy it's the same. Ultimately it's the army that has the tanks. There is a lot of truth to this, but the online version is far worse. In a physical democracy, you can't be prevented from participating except by the efforts of the other participants. Even in authoritarian states, there must be people who inform on you, people to drive the tanks, etc. In the online version, one person can do all of those jobs. >What do you mean by that? If wikipedia jumps the shark people can make a new wikipedia. This is missing the point of the article. "People" cannot make a new Wikipedia. The average Wikipedia user cannot write a single line of code, or administrate a server, or do anything useful towards creating a new instance. Only those with technical knowhow can actually subvert Wikipedia's centralisation. A world where "people" are able to spin up new instances when they want to is exactly what federation aims for - but the point the article makes is that such a world needs all users to be technically capable. The author's idea of an "online democracy" involves users who are empowered even though they aren't capable: how can those people avoid a technical coup?
- ajuc 5y ago
  > The author's idea of an "online democracy" involves users who are empowered even though they aren't capable: how can those people avoid a technical coup? By becoming capable when it's required or hiring someone who is capable? I think this argument becomes more and more theoretical, in practice both in real life and online you don't need 100% of population to be able to run a country, specialization is fine. What you need is isolation so when one country goes totalitarian - there's somebody to accept refuges and bomb the death camps if needed. So the main problem with democracy online is that network effects are unchecked. When Facebook or Google goes evil - they take everybody with them.
  - ivanbakel 5y ago
    >So the main problem with democracy online is that network effects are unchecked. When Facebook or Google goes evil - they take everybody with them. I think the trouble with this discussion is that you don't really agree with the author. They are proposing a massive online community centralised on a single system - and which is kept in check by user democracy, not alternative instances. If network effects are what keep Facebook and Google in power, imagine the network effect you would get from all the participants in a real-world democracy being on the same platform. How are those users going to start another instance, even "hiring someone who is capable" to make it for them? They won't, simply. In such a system, most users are not able to circumvent a technical coup. Just look at how many "evil" steps Facebook has taken, successfully holding on to their userbase.

zozbot234 5y ago

Blockchain systems can only really be manipulated by controlling a true majority of their resources (a 51% attack). In this way, they can be said to enforce a quasi-democratic form of "voting" albeit in a way that still reflects real-world constraints on, e.g. resource use.

ivanbakel 5y ago
But blockchains are basically federated - every user is able to hold a complete copy of the chain and participate in the same way, provided they are technically adept enough. The current state of cryptocurrency proves my point, in a sense: how can a non-technical user be involved in the blockchain, without needing to understand private key cryptography or maintain a wallet, or a copy of the chain? By centralising that effort in an exchange, along with thousands of other users. But exchanges have exactly the issue of the author's "online democracy" - they are easily subverted by the people who actually control the technology. Thus, exchanges get hacked and their users' "decentralised" currency gets taken, because those users tried to bypass the technical effort required to operate the blockchain in the first place.

lapinot 5y ago

Indeed, both the takes on anarchism and democracy are ridiculously simplistic and soaked with western dominant thinking (being at the top of current political systems, linear view on progress, masses are dumb, liberal democracy is the only option). I'm gonna quote this gem: > In political history, the birth of free nations typically contains three stages: dictatorship, briefly overthrown to anarchy, reformed to democracy. They don't even seem to realize that both words have so much different acceptions that they have no precise meaning by themselve, yet asserts facts like "Anarchy fantasizes that freedom protects itself", "In any democracy, centralised power is wielded to protect freedom". Another hard no-no is the plot. This plot should have been log-log ffs! You're already saying it's probably power law and then continue on saying: > There is a massive spike corresponding to just a few instances, and the rest of the graph is nearly invisible to the naked eye, so tiny and so overshadowed by just a few giants. Frankly, this distribution is closer to the Dirac delta function than a power law. This is not serious, especially for someone studying math and doing such elite low-level dev. Don't math-wash your opinions (perhaps you know you're just joking/bs-ing but other people might not). In the light of all these flaws, the actual content is a mix-n-match of unsubstantiated opinions (democracy is good, anarchy is bad) and then at the end a call to build social institutions on the internet.. I'm quite annoyed at this post, on one hand this is all nice and kind, and i can (hope to) see the good intentions, but on the other hand it's really really sloppy and so easy to conter-argue on. edit: there is also not a single mention of p2p systems, in an article about centralization and federation, which is like the elephant in the room

coldtea 5y ago

>In the anarchist federated design, the answer is you, the individual. Even if the admin of your particular chosen federation instance chooses to boot you off and delete all your posts, you still hold a copy of your own data which you can take with you to another instance, or to even start your own instance. Which is not much consolation if everybody is on the first instance. The beauty of how e.g. email is decentralized is that I can change email provider and still get to talk to everybody I used to over email - without having to convince them to switch.

ivanbakel 5y ago
>Which is not much consolation if everybody is on the first instance. Federated systems are typically designed so this isn't an issue. You aren't limited to seeing only content that originates on your Mastodon instance, for example - you can follow users on other instances, and the instances will share their content as needed. Of course there are other considerations there - instances may choose to share content conditionally e.g. only with other instances that comply with their banlists. But this is true of email as well.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> The beauty of how e.g. email is decentralized is that I can change email provider and still get to talk to everybody I used to over email - without having to convince them to switch. If Google blocks your email address as spam, how exactly are you going to talk to everybody on Gmail, regardless of actual mail server provider to that address?
- coldtea 5y ago
  My point wasn't about being "blocked as spam" though, but about wanting out of Gmail or having your Gmail account closed. That said, if Google marks your email as spam, you can create an alias and send email as that, or create a different email account - same as they can if their previous provider throws them out, folds, and so on. You still get to email your gmail-using friends.