[…]why should a few companies — or a few billionaire owners — have the power to decide everything about online spaces that billions of people use? This unaccountable model of governance has led stakeholders of all stripes to criticize platforms’ decisions as arbitrary, corrupt or irresponsible. In the early, pre-web days of the social internet, decisions about the spaces people gathered in online were often made by members of the community. Our examination of the early history of online governance suggests that social media platforms could return — at least in part — to models of community governance in order to address their crisis of legitimacy.

  • The problem that I see is that power comes in great part from the responsibility to educate yourself. In a community, you don’t have to know everything to contribute to its workings, but someone has, enough people do you escape the clutches of external players. Everything is quite individualist right now though. Things must just work without the help of anyone.

    • In a community, you don’t have to know everything to contribute to its workings, but someone has, enough people do you escape the clutches of external players

      Any chance you can rephrase this? Trying to parse it several times and I can’t figure out what you meant.

      • I think that the other user is conveying something like this:

        “If you’re in a community you don’t need to know something, as long as someone else knows it. And if enough people know it, you escape being manipulated by external players.”