If you find this interesting, please consider subscribing to Platformocracy, my free weekly newsletter about online democracy. Thanks. 6/6
06.03.2026 14:48
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If you find this interesting, please consider subscribing to Platformocracy, my free weekly newsletter about online democracy. Thanks. 6/6
A bar chart showing the largest social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube have larger user bases than the population of the world's largest countries like India and China.
Today's largest platforms have more users than the population of the world's largest countries. That isn’t an excuse to impose bureaucratic autocracy. Our vital challenge is to figure out a new evolution of democracy that can work for global communities of billions of people. 5/6
A platform hosting a community of millions, like Bluesky or Pinterest, could create an elected assembly and vest it with authority over content policies and enforcement procedures, like modern representative democracy (also from @stasavage.bsky.social in The Decline and Rise of Democracy). 4/6
A community with thousands of members hosted in a Facebook group or a Subreddit could convene large-scale council sessions to deliberate and vote on rules changes, like the early democracy of Greek city-states and others, per @stasavage.bsky.social in The Decline and Rise of Democracy. 3/6
A group chat or a small Fediverse server could commit to communal decision-making, like the Paleolithic egalitarianism @lukekemp.bsky.social discusses in Goliath's Curse. 2/6
The evolution of democracy over time, largely as a function of population growth, points to different models of governance for different sizes of online communities. And suggests the largest platforms might require something entirely new. In this week's Platformocracy, and this thread. 1/6
As I get older I'm coming to increasingly radical views like "you have to do things to get good at them" and "you have to think about problems to solve them"
Stop writing that someone writes “a Substack.” You wouldn’t say that someone writes “a beehiiv” or “a Medium.” I don’t write “a WordPress.”
This morning we’re over 3,000 strong. Invite codes are now arriving within 24 hours of registration. How many will we be by the end of the day?
Slide: We ended up in casinos Not by choice, but by design platforms built to extract attention, maximise engagement, and serve private profit above all else.
It's not just that we live under private government of the monopolies, but it's private government by casinos. #Rebuild
Details of how to contact Aresco Management, owners of the building where ICE wants to place 40 lawyers.
Hey New Jersey! Did you know that besides the Roxbury concentration camp, ICE is also trying to lease space for 40 lawyers in Roseland? Tell Aresco Management (the owners), that you don't want ICE functionaries operating in a building with a day care center. Details in attached image. #newjersey
Now more than ever, you don't have to be cutting and pasting batshit posts that you have seen over on That Other Site and also, for fuck's sake, get off That Other Site, again, now more than ever
> @covie93.bsky.social
Maybe platform executives can push the reckoning off for decades or even longer. But a reckoning is coming, sooner or later.
Read more in this week's Platformocracy. It's not boring, I promise. I use curse words and make an Oregon Trail reference. 5/5
If platforms keep pushing off deeper reform with a “l’réseau social, c’est moi” attitude, they are setting themselves up for the more rapid and disruptive change of revolutions like those that overthrew tyrannical governments in the US, in France, against the Tsars in Russia, etc. 4/5
To modern CEOs, this probably sounds crazy, but corporate law is not the divine right of kings. When Mark Zuckerberg incorporated Facebook in 2004, the state of Delaware did not grant him absolute authority to unilaterally govern the social lives of billions of people worldwide forevermore. 3/5
The active users of a platform are not serfs beholden to the company that operates it. We had friends, interests, and organizational affiliations before social media, and our online connections are deeper and more profound than any one company’s software and servers. 2/5
Magna Carta proves we deserve the rule of law online. No, really. Forcing King John to acknowledge the law of “the law of the land” over "the law of the kingdom" was a radical act. Online platforms should also be subject to the laws of the communities they serve, not the will of their owners. 1/5
Just a reminder that governments can invalidate or destroy the things you rely on to be seen as a valid, legal participant in society pretty much at will. So if you think you’re good bc you’re not trans or not in Kansas or whatever you’re lying to yourself while danger gets closer to your community.
CW: transphobia.
See, this is why it can be painful to know too much history.🫤
This post implies that what is happening in Kansas is *similar* to what the nazis did.
But it's not just similar. It's *identical*.
In 1933, nazis revoked trans people's documents. Before 1938.
Paragraph 175 and 183.
RESEARCHERS AND REGULATORS! Harvard’s Applied Social Media Lab is launching a vital new corpus of 22,000 privacy policies, terms & conditions, and community standards for over 300 companies. Woohoo!
Dunk, Egg, and Cheese
We need to find one that resonates with enough people to get them to insist on change.
It’s difficult because the word “corruption” tends to evoke explicit bribes and mustache-twirling villains. So people can understand Egyptians giving Senator Menendez gold bars. But corporations bending the rules of the game in their favor seems different, even though the results are similar.
This isn’t even a new (or good) idea. See also my explainer on Guardianship.
In case you wondered why I named my newsletter Platformocracy (as something in opposition to democracy)…
Vladimir Lenin echoed this in What Is To Be Done? (1902), arguing that a revolutionary “vanguard,” who understood history and economics, was needed to guide the the transition from capitalism to communism before the working class would be ready to lead on its own.
