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   Apostolis (apostolis@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 06-Jun-2025 03:46:57 JST Apostolis

   • Robin Berjon

   @robin

   Polycentricity is not the same as democracy.

   Pushing the governance at the "local" level , to multiple actors disregards the fact that the design of the common medium, the infrastructure, has its own complex dynamics, that it requires democratic governance.

   There is no such thing as a generic infrastructure that does not impose its own views / ethics / dynamics. It will always impose the views of its creators.

   Robin, I have not seen you somewhere mention that.

   @khinsen

   • Embed this notice
     Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 06-Jun-2025 03:46:46 JST Christine Lemmer-Webber

     in reply to

     • Robin Berjon
     • Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber

     @apostolis @robin @khinsen Tho that particular quote is from @mlemweb :)

   • Embed this notice
     Apostolis (apostolis@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 06-Jun-2025 03:46:55 JST Apostolis

     in reply to

     • Robin Berjon
     • Christine Lemmer-Webber

     A critique of ATProto by @cwebber demonstrates this with clarity.

     "When you build architecture that in theory anyone can participate in, but the barrier to entry is so high so that only those with the highest number of resources can participate, then you've still built a walled garden. -- Morgan Lemmer-Webber, (summarizing things succinctly in our household over breakfast)"

     https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

     @robin @khinsen

   • Embed this notice
     Robin Berjon (robin@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 09-Jun-2025 15:16:56 JST Robin Berjon

     in reply to

     • Christine Lemmer-Webber

     @apostolis @cwebber @khinsen

     A few quick notes.

     Polycentrism isn't democracy but you can't have democracy (durable, at scale) without it.

     Complex problems are multiscalar and need multiscalar solutions — therefore polycentric.

     If you try to do everything locally you get captured by whoever can solve the large scale problems. Eg. email is concentrated because dealing with the whole world is too hard. The web is captured because you have to have search.

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Robin Berjon (robin@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 09-Jun-2025 15:16:56 JST Robin Berjon

     in reply to

     • Christine Lemmer-Webber

     @apostolis @cwebber @khinsen
     Some large-scale things can be expensive.

     We have this huge centralised and expensive thing called the postal service (in most countries), it's better than the alternatives. Most digital infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper though, and even when expensive it's cheaper than losing to fascism!

   • Embed this notice
     Apostolis (apostolis@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 09-Jun-2025 15:16:58 JST Apostolis

     in reply to

     • Robin Berjon
     • Christine Lemmer-Webber

     My own critique on this, from 2017:

     https://ryaki-org.blogspot.com/2017/10/freedom-and-autonomy-as-emergent.html

     @cwebber @robin @khinsen

     Tim Chambers repeated this.