An interesting article I saw (from 2019) describing the potential intrinsic tendency for decentralized platforms to collapse into de facto centralized ones.
Author identifies two extremes, “information dictatorship” and “information anarchy”, and the flaws of each, as well as a third option “information democracy” to try and capture the best aspects of decentralization while eschewing the worst.
Someone said the link is broken so here it is: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html
I don’t really agree with this article. The argument seems to rest on the idea that a representative democracy is a compromise on direct democracy. In reality, even though I have the ability to meaningfully participate in every election a direct democracy would entail, I have no desire to because I have other things I would rather spend my time doing.
Similarly, even if I have the ability to run my own instance (admittedly I do not, but many of us early adopters do), I do not want to. I’m happy to let other people do it as long as those people seem like broadly agree with my morals. I don’t need an close relationship, just a trustful one. This digital forum inherently has even better benefits than real life; if I realize I dislike my current instance, I have the option to move to another instance or create my own. In real life I can only move to another district or hope to vote out my current rep.