• Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    9 days ago

    On your instance too others are contributing the content, not you as a mod. Humans regardless of hierarchical or anarchical systems are the community. It’s the gathering & exchanging. It’s not the king paying for a feast that makes the guests mingle & communicate with each other. That’s just infrastructure. If they go away to anther party there is no content there, unless the kind posts for themselves.

    But are you saying that owning the server makes you own whoever donates their content in a discussion just bcs they have a systemic power?

    I don’t think people are generally confused at all how hierarchical online platforms are. Why would they be?

    • atomicpoet@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 days ago

      The feast metaphor doesn’t hold. If I pay for a banquet hall, the guests can mingle—but they don’t control the locks on the doors, the electricity, or whether the venue even stays open tomorrow. If I decide to shut the place down, the party ends whether they like it or not. That’s not neutral infrastructure. That’s systemic power.

      I’m not saying the admin “owns” people’s words. Users own what they write. But whether that writing continues to exist, whether it stays visible, whether it can even be reached—those are all contingent on the admin. Content lives inside infrastructure, and whoever holds the keys controls the environment where it persists.

      And people absolutely are confused about this. Look at lemm.ee: did the community want to vanish overnight? No—but the admin pulled the plug, and everything disappeared. The same happens on Reddit when admins close subreddits, or on Discord when a server gets nuked. People routinely find themselves blindsided because they mistake participation for ownership.

      That’s the point I’m pressing: software that demands admins and mods creates hierarchy, no matter what ideals we wrap around it. If we want a true commons, the architecture has to change—there can’t be “users,” only peers, each running their own node. Until then, pretending otherwise is just comforting metaphor.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        9 days ago

        That is systemic power to end it, not to have content created. For that is just a space.

        I’m not sure who was arguing against there being a hierarchy to online or most offline social communities.
        You don’t have a town square if nobody builds it, you have the woods.

        Also what is the big deal if a community gets obliterated from time to time? It’s not a family.

        • atomicpoet@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          9 days ago

          Space isn’t “just a space.” Space is what makes words accessible. A post that nobody can reach might as well not exist. Infrastructure isn’t neutral—it’s the condition that makes communication possible in the first place.

          And admins don’t just have the power to end a space. They have the power to prevent speech from ever happening. They can de-platform, silence, or exclude before words are written. That’s not trivial. That’s systemic control over what gets created, not just what gets erased.

          And sometimes communities really are families—both literal and ad hoc. People pour years of energy, conversation, and memory into them. When they get obliterated, it’s not “just a space” disappearing—it’s a shared history wiped out because one person with keys decided it was over.

          What makes your comment even more striking is that it contradicts your earlier points. First you downplayed hierarchy by saying admins are just neutral facilitators, now you admit they hold systemic power but dismiss it as “no big deal.” Which one is it?

          That’s the imbalance I’m pointing at. If we want real commons, that has to change. Otherwise we’re all just tenants, and the landlord can decide at any moment to bulldoze the building. Dismissing that as unimportant is exactly how these power structures stay invisible.

            • atomicpoet@piefed.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              9 days ago

              Fair enough—I probably came in sharper than I needed to. I get that you’re not denying the power imbalance, just framing it differently.

              We’re closer in view than it might have sounded. My aim wasn’t to dunk on you, just to stress that these structures aren’t neutral. If we’re both pointing in the same direction, then good—that’s where the real work begins.

              • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                8 days ago

                Yes, kinda.
                But as authoritarian as mods are, that also means their behaviour is more on display (I mean that regardless of rule choices, just as basically branding, which I frame under infrastructure too - tho some mods post a lot).
                Much like (in normal countries) judges can lose their jobs due to private life & examples they set (it’s a full-time representation, not just the hours in a robe).

                • atomicpoet@piefed.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  8 days ago

                  You’re framing visibility as if it’s accountability.

                  But mods aren’t accountable to users—they’re accountable to admins. If a mod aligns with an admin, users can scream all they want, nothing changes. If a mod sides with the community but not the admin, the admin overrules both. That’s hierarchy, full stop.

                  Let’s be real. The whole conceit of YPTB is a farce. You’re not “holding mods accountable.” You’re doing populism dressed up as anarchism, aligning with admin tastes when it suits.

                  Out of all the possible people in the community, it just so happens that the true authorities—the ones setting the norms and nurturing the culture—are the same ones holding the keys to the entire server. And those are the very people wielding YPTB as a cudgel in the name of “accountability.” That’s not accountability. That’s a closed loop.

                  If lemmy.dbzer0.com were serious about anarchism, the admins would say: “No mods, no users, no hierarchy—everyone go operate their own nodes.” But they don’t. Instead, this community exists under the admin’s keys, which feeds an illusion.

                  And that “visibility” you’re pointing to? It’s not accountability—it’s branding. Admin branding. It only exists because lemmy.dbzer0.com allows it to exist, and only as long as the server remains federated. Flip that switch and your visibility, your supposed accountability, evaporates overnight.