March 30, 2024 | Permalink
Nathan Schneider’s new book Governable Spaces revolves around the key observation that online associational life is typically authoritarian in its governance, what he calls “implicit feudalism.” It’s a really smart point, and Schneider does a good job tracing the authoritarian default of online spaces, where typically the founders of an online group get to make all the rules for the group, indefinitely.
I don’t really buy the grander claims that the lack of democracy online is leading us to authoritarianism offline, but Schneider doesn’t really put a lot of force behind making that link. Nevertheless, it could still be good for our online associational lives to be more democratic, and Schneider presents a number of creative ideas about how we could go about making that online democracy happen.