Interesting take, in a way it resembles direct democracy, but I don't think it qualifies since votes are meaningless in terms of what substantive power you gain

Interesting take, in a way it resembles direct democracy, but I don't think it qualifies since votes are meaningless in terms of what substantive power you gain from votes. Just because you have the right to speak your mind and have other people hear you does not mean you have any power over the direction of the platform or any additional agency. You can say (almost) whatever you want on the platform, but Facebook is still the arbiter of what speech is allowed on the platform and can ban you at any time, and as a user you are still nothing more than raw materials to them while they seek to monopolize your attention and energy. The same goes outside of Facebook too for Americans, we can speak our minds but our political rights are being taken away because they inconvenience wealthy and powerful people. Without other freedoms, like freedom over your body, freedom from corporations abusing you by breaking the law and suffering no consequences, the right to vote, the Fourth Amendment, etc, freedom of speech is pretty empty on its own. Direct democracy can have problems like you're describing, but I don't think it's the issue here. Rather it's exposing the fundamental issues of late capitalism that fails to meet human needs (healthcare, housing, belonging/emotional needs), compounded with unchecked corporate power which is increasingly resembling fascism. In fact, at this point most of the major tech companies (Google, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit) are hiring many people from intelligence services. Corporate power merging with government power, especially by corporations hiring government spies, is a huge red flag for fascism taking hold. Before questioning democracy (which is a trend I've seen lately, as if to normalize democratic backsliding), I think we should start questioning that first. - https://mronline.org/2021/06/14/jessica-ashooh-the-taming-of-reddit-and-the-national-security-state-plant-tabbed-to-do-it/ https://mronline.org/2021/06/14/jessica-ashooh-the-taming-of... - https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number-spooks-secret-agents/281114/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number... - https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-search-engine-google-ranks-cia-agents/281490/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-search-engin... - https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tiktok-employing-national-security-agents/280336/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tikto...