Ask HN: Is true democracy possible in online tech communities?

Most online communities start democratic but eventually become oligarchies. Reddit has upvotes but moderators have absolute power. Discord servers are basically digital dictatorships.

I've been wondering: Is it possible to build a truly democratic tech community?

Key challenges: - How do you prevent mob rule while maintaining democracy? - Should all voices be equal, or should expertise/contribution matter? - How do you handle spam/quality without authoritarian moderation?

Curious if anyone has seen successful examples, or has thoughts on what the key principles should be.

(Context: Currently researching governance models for a developer platform)

Discourse's trust level system (https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-t...) offers a practical example of democratic governance that scales through automated promotion/demotion based on participation patterns rather than explicit voting or moderator intervention.

1 day agoby ethan_smith

Not tips for a "democracy" but a "good, tolerant community":

- Use a boilerplate rules list like "no spam, no personal attacks, no hate speech, don't be obnoxious, etc." (but more specific, e.g https://www.statsoc.org.au/Forum-rules or https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201265337-Fo...). Have a "no politics" rule unless you want culture warring on your platform for whatever reason.

- Then you enforce the rules as you see fit. The final rule should be "moderators have discretion" and if someone is pushing against the rules and/or irritating others, ban them. At the same time, be lenient and give second and third chances at least for non-blatant offenses; escalate, first with a warning, then with a temp ban, then a longer temp ban, etc. It's a careful balance, but if done correctly, your form will be both tolerant and not dominated by assholes.

- To prevent spam and banned users opening new accounts, either: make the form invite-only (where users can invite others) and screen applicants; charge a small fee for signing up; require flexible proof of identity (e.g. one of: phone #, Google account, GitHub account, Facebook account, etc.); require new user posts to be approved by moderators before they show up; or something else. This will make it significantly harder for your userbase to grow, and many people will refuse to sign up, but it will be hard and some people won't sign up anyways.

- If your forum grows enough, you can recruit moderators. You need enough people and activity to select moderators who you trust, because every time you override their moderation or kick them beyond "very rarely", you look worse (more incompetent, power-tripping, incoherent) and the overall community "vibes" become slightly more toxic.

1 day agoby armchairhacker

What exactly is true democracy? Even socrates back in the days understood that it is far from ideal (or “true”) form. Anyway all the flaws stem from human nature and human nature has nothing to do with technology.

10 hours agoby aristofun

There may be challenges unique to online communities, but in our real-world community, we’ve implemented a protocol specifically designed to address this issue— a system built to prevent the emergence of gatekeepers, and it's actually working in practice. There are small problems, sure, but they haven't disrupted or degraded the overall service.

In fact, we’ve seen people who try to assert authority join the community, but they usually don’t last long. They naturally drift away because they don’t truly understand the value of long-term commitment and authentic relationships.

If you're interested, we've written a formal proof that explains how the structure prevents gatekeeping:

https://github.com/contribution-protocol/contribution-protoc...

1 day agoby mzk_pi

I see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

As the real problem. I don’t tend to believe in natural hierarchies, but I do believe in this one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

That in some sense that early adopters are better than other people and that things start out cool and deteriorate and one way to counter that when the party gets too big you start a new party and get the early adopters to come along. I would point out this essay

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

And say that I think her analysis is right factually but I take the opposite position that the ‘structureless’ organization she describes is capable of activism that more sustainable groups just can’t do and say form that kind of organization when you can and know it isn’t going to last.

Sustainability is non-profit speak for ‘profitability’ and if you value that an organization because Oxfam or the ACLU or the Mozilla Foundation and suffers from the corruption of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

I’d say ‘benign despotism’ is alright for an organization where you’ve got the right to exit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

But due process, democracy and all that are necessary for when you don’t have exit.

Jurgen Habermas wrote a ponderous 2 volume book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Communicative_Ac...

which pursues the idea of a perfect deliberative process which one some hand seems closer because of widespread electronic communications yet our experience with things like Twitter makes it seem terribly naive between (1) people not acting in good faith and (2) others believing that people are not acting in good faith.

1 day agoby PaulHoule

> How do you prevent mob rule while maintaining democracy?

You don't. Look at California's direct democracy, allowing voters to put propositions on the ballot that alter the State Constitution.

(That's not really "mob rule" but it can lead to all sorts of interesting consequences)

> Should all voices be equal, or should expertise/contribution matter?

So if you're not an expert, your vote only counts for 3/5ths of a vote?

> How do you handle spam/quality without authoritarian moderation?

Stupid people are allowed to vote.

1 day agoby p_ing

Was on a discord server that let everyone delete one comment and temporarily ban someone using a command. People were careful to not misuse it because people would just use it on them if they did. Unfortunately it broke down when big factions started coordinating attacks, and smaller factions just left the server entirely.

23 hours agoby zeroCalories

In good faith, I’d love to know.

Democracy as Socrates or written by Plato would have said democracy is hard to succeed at as it’s ruled by many who may not have the education.. wisdom.. to run well for all. Read Ship of State.

A certain level of freedom of speech is required, or else it’s a pool of similar thinkers. A collective who everyone else must talk and think alike, for the good of the collective. See Ayn Rand.

Pretty much like downvoting, I get downvoted without knowing who or why and is a form of censorship and one or more are offended or just don’t like it. Just cuz you don’t like it doesn’t mean it should be downvoted.

My other comment here on YT shorts being useful is an example. A down vote and all I said is “ I learnt drums for a song I like from shorts. Blanket bans are not a solution”

Take care to not apply so much policy that group think and collectivism takes hold.

1 day agoby quintes

No matter what, you won't have free speech; you will have censored/moderated speech where the users or mods vote it down. Some will vote it down because they disagree, others because they find it offensive or wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy Look towards Aaron Swartz on how he wanted information to be free and not behind a paywall. He wanted true Democracy and freedom of speech without being censored.

1 day agoby orionblastar