All communities on the Internet can only ever be what the system is designed to allow.
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All communities on the Internet can only ever be what the system is designed to allow.
If a platform is built for hierarchy, then it is a hierarchy—regardless of the ideals people bring into it. No amount of goodwill or re-labelling (“provider,” “protector,” “facilitator”) changes the fact that the software has hard-coded roles with asymmetric power.
And this isn’t some quirky personal view of mine. People far more intelligent than me have been pointing this out for decades. Lawrence Lessig, in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999), put it bluntly:
“Code is law. What people can and cannot do in cyberspace is regulated by the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is.”
Geert Lovink, in Networks Without a Cause (2011), made the same point about platforms and power:
”Design decisions are power decisions. Interfaces, defaults, permissions—they do not merely ‘enable’ interaction, they structure it, and in doing so they impose hierarchies.”
Helen Nissenbaum, in Values in Design (2005), sharpened it further:
”The architectures of systems—their technical frameworks—inevitably embed social and political values. Claims to neutrality obscure the ways in which they establish constraints and privileges.”
History is full of examples where egalitarian ideals ran headlong into the hard wall of software architecture.
Wikipedia was envisioned as a flat, peer-produced project—yet its reliance on admin powers and arbitration committees quickly created an entrenched hierarchy of “super-editors.” Reddit’s early culture thrived on openness, but its karma system and centralized admins ultimately entrenched a ranking-and-punishment order that couldn’t be wished away. Even early Usenet communities, which imagined themselves as free-flowing conversations, were shaped by killfiles, moderators, and backbone hierarchies dictated by the protocol itself.
So when I point out that most Internet communities are hierarchical—including on the Fediverse—it’s not some rhetorical trick. It’s simply recognizing that hierarchy is baked into the software.
You can call admins “facilitators,” you can hold elections, you can promise benevolence—but the structure is still a pyramid, and it will always tilt power toward whoever holds the keys.
That’s not a matter of interpretation. It’s a matter of design.
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All communities on the Internet can only ever be what the system is designed to allow.
If a platform is built for hierarchy, then it is a hierarchy—regardless of the ideals people bring into it. No amount of goodwill or re-labelling (“provider,” “protector,” “facilitator”) changes the fact that the software has hard-coded roles with asymmetric power.
And this isn’t some quirky personal view of mine. People far more intelligent than me have been pointing this out for decades. Lawrence Lessig, in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999), put it bluntly:
“Code is law. What people can and cannot do in cyberspace is regulated by the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is.”
Geert Lovink, in Networks Without a Cause (2011), made the same point about platforms and power:
”Design decisions are power decisions. Interfaces, defaults, permissions—they do not merely ‘enable’ interaction, they structure it, and in doing so they impose hierarchies.”
Helen Nissenbaum, in Values in Design (2005), sharpened it further:
”The architectures of systems—their technical frameworks—inevitably embed social and political values. Claims to neutrality obscure the ways in which they establish constraints and privileges.”
History is full of examples where egalitarian ideals ran headlong into the hard wall of software architecture.
Wikipedia was envisioned as a flat, peer-produced project—yet its reliance on admin powers and arbitration committees quickly created an entrenched hierarchy of “super-editors.” Reddit’s early culture thrived on openness, but its karma system and centralized admins ultimately entrenched a ranking-and-punishment order that couldn’t be wished away. Even early Usenet communities, which imagined themselves as free-flowing conversations, were shaped by killfiles, moderators, and backbone hierarchies dictated by the protocol itself.
So when I point out that most Internet communities are hierarchical—including on the Fediverse—it’s not some rhetorical trick. It’s simply recognizing that hierarchy is baked into the software.
You can call admins “facilitators,” you can hold elections, you can promise benevolence—but the structure is still a pyramid, and it will always tilt power toward whoever holds the keys.
That’s not a matter of interpretation. It’s a matter of design.
@atomicpoet Some things work well as hierarchies.
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@atomicpoet Some things work well as hierarchies.
@mpjgregoire That may be true but certain anarchists are trying to tell me their Lemmy server is non-hierarchical—and I simply don’t believe it.
Ideals don’t change how software is written.
