Web2's pervasive blind spot: governance

https://reb00ted.org/tech/20220411-web2-blind-spot-goverance/

by jernst • 4 years ago

2 5 4 years ago

theamk3• 4 years ago

What about forums? They seem to check your checkboxes - there is a great selection to choose from, in many of them users have the control directly and the governance is pretty clear.

If your answer is "but no one uses forums! everyone I know uses facebook", then what makes your thing different?

jernst2• 4 years ago

Forum governance is often better than other forms of Web2 governance, but still very rudimentary. How do the members override or fire a moderator, for example? Or what's the appeals process for being banned?

theamk3• 4 years ago

Depends on the forum? Some of them are quite elaborate [0], with multiple levels and community-elected councils which can override moderators. But the real power is in the user mobility -- forums have lots of competition, and if someone does not like the moderators, they just go to the next one.

But that's not the point. Someone who knows that Internet is bigger than Facebook will recognize that most arguments in your opening paragraph are false. Heck, even reddit invalidates half of those and it is pretty well known! And the rest of the post is written under the same assumption, which is simply not true.

So the answer to your question, about why do people completely ignore Web3 "innovations", is because they are only innovations if your entire world is Facebook. Compare it to something else, and those are just incremental improvements -- "maybe nice, but not sure if they are worth the overhead".

[0] https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/8th-community-...

Web2's pervasive blind spot: governance

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