Robin Berjontweets archive

Thread · 5 tweets · 3 May 2021

Robin Berjon @robinberjon ·
"Admins, Mods, and Benevolent Dictators for Life: The Implicit Feudalism of Online Communities", by @ntnsndr. mediarxiv.org/sf432/ A nuanced look at the way in which we build anti-democratic patterns into our digital systems, leading to a proliferation of benevolent dictators.
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Robin Berjon @robinberjon ·
"Nuanced" because it doesn't say "feudalism bad". It may work well at highly embedded levels (where there's accountability because you can tell it to their face) or in early stages (where you can just exit because there's little investment or entrenchment).
Robin Berjon @robinberjon ·
The work that the @W3CAB is doing to establish a Director-free model to prepare for the post-Tim era, 25 years into the org (and probably a good 15 years later than ideal) shows how hard building democratic models is.
Robin Berjon @robinberjon ·
Fostering institutional diversity should help us build these muscles, but I would hesitate to ask the big platforms to enable it. They thrive on scale and diversity (of anything) is precisely what they are the worst at. It's scientific forestry all the way down.
Robin Berjon @robinberjon ·
One difficulty in getting institutional diversity is the widespread belief in tech that there is a single optimum in the landscape and that it can rationally be attained. They see not feudalism but meritocracy, more like Veblen's Soviet of Technicians.
Robin Berjon @robinberjon ·

Replying to an earlier tweet of mine

But! On the off chance that it might happen, he concludes with details about how to organise this in a "MEMORANDUM ON A PRACTICABLE SOVIET OF TECHNICIANS". YMMV but IMHO totally worth reading a book just for that heading.
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