Netizenship

To put it mildly, the present state of the Internet needs work. While infrastructure and communications technology have advanced greatly since the Internet was first popularized, another equally important branch of knowledge, the administration and government of Internet communities, has barely changed since the dissolution of the First Network in 1990. This is the cause of much injustice, that most visibly manifests itself on the big websites, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, but also reenacts itself on a daily basis in innumerable small forums and chat groups throughout the land.

"Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here," declaimed John Perry Barlow in his famous Cyberspace Declaration of Independence. Yet property is everything on the Internet. The actual rule in cyberspace is the Arkansas State Constitution: "The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction."

Causes and defects of present system of government

Power over a website is held, in the first instance, by its owner. However, property in websites cannot be owned indefinitely for free: website owners must expend resources to keep it online, otherwise it loses all value. So arise shareholders and advertisers, who gain the benefit of being associated with the website, whether by receiving a part of the profits in the case of the former, or by having its messages shown to the visitors in the case of the latter, in exchange for supporting it financially. When advertisers believe the increased income from site visitors following their ads exceeds the cost of advertising, they will advertise on a website. When the income from advertising exceeds the costs of hosting, a website owner makes a profit.

Can you see who's missing here? Why are people visiting the site in the first place? Because of what's on it! In most small websites, of course, the owner of the website and the creator of its content are one and the same. But that is far from the case for the giants. In most cases, the owners are "absentee landlords". They do not participate in their communities or contribute the content that make people visit the site, and neither do the advertisers that help keep the lights on. The people who create the content, which is what makes the site valuable, have precisely no say in how their site is run. The right of property is therefore used in many cases against exactly the same people that make it worth something. Truly, "our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer"!

Main forms of government

The two main forms of government on the Internet are absolute monarchy and feudal crowdsourcing. The first term is not original and that is well known. I heard the second one from Antonizoon. He defines that form of government as a system whereby members of the public are at no or very low cost to themselves, like nobles under a feudal system, given control over "fiefdoms" which they then run as absolute monarchies subject to the (often theoretical) supervision of the actual owner. If this definition makes your head spin, it made mine too when I first heard it, so an example will help to explain it.

Feudal crowdsourcing

On Discord, anyone can make a "server" that's not an actual server for free (although additional privileges cost money). Once one is made, the person who made it is its owner and can pretty much control it as they wish. They may create or delete channels, kick or ban troublemakers, appoint or remove moderators. They are also free to delegate their rights to others or transfer them in whole to another. If they violate Discord's Terms of Service or in any other way incur its displeasure, though, they are liable to have their servers removed and be personally kicked off of Discord.

Absolute monarchy

While you hopefully know what "absolute monarchy" is in a real-life context, that doesn't necessarily translate to knowing what this means in the context of the Internet. Take the example of 4chan. The owner of 4chan (Moot in the past, Hiro today) can appoint and dismiss all moderators and janitors at his will. He can create, alter, or delete boards as it pleases him. He can delete any post and ban its poster at any time for any cause. By virtue of owning 4chan, he has absolute power over it, checked only by the law.

Tribal

There is a third model, which has been named the "tribal" model. It is the closest to democracy of the three prevailing models of government on the Internet. One important disadvantage of this system is that it does not scale well. It replicates the simple decision-making of small tribes or groups of friends: everyone is consulted and has their voice heard. Usually, there is a leader, but he is primus inter pares, first among equals. One of the few examples of this form of government in large websites is Wikipedia.

There are many complaints about how biased Wikipedia it is. Many of them are well-founded. Yet it cannot be denied that it is living proof that capricious rule is not a prerequisite for successful government. Nearly all decision are taken by consensus: such as whether an article should be deleted, whether a policy should be amended or revised, and whether other needful changes should be made. The community is moderated and its decisions enforced by an elite caste of bureaucrats known as administrators. Promotion to this class is strictly merit-based and notoriously difficult. They close all "requests for comment" and other community discussions, and interpret the sense of the community so that they can become law. Problem users and particularly intractable disputes are handled by an elected committee known as the Arbitration Committee, who has the power to impose binding sanctions on users and pages.

Problems of these forms of government

Although neither model truly gives content creators a voice in their own government, both have their advantages. Absolute monarchy provides for a bureaucracy of moderators of which there is no question whose orders they take and to whom they are responsible. Feudal crowdsourcing allows for a limited degree of autonomy, though revocable at any time. The tribal model does not scale well; the only reason the example just given does is because of a high level of civic virtue among the users at large and elements of absolute monarchy.

The idea of corporate personhood, though it may be taken too far in certain cases, is fundamentally good. Corporate personhood gives recognition to people working together, and vests them with legal rights and duties that extend beyond death. The only problem with this is that it is too narrow. It recognizes shareholders - those who have contributed money - only, and not stakeholders - all those who have invested in and therefore have an interest in the success of the common project.

It is past time to devise a frame of government that will be responsive to the concerns of stakeholders, not just shareholders; that will allow both those who invest time and those who invest money to control the site to which they have contributed. This new model must not throw out the baby with the bathwater and reject all elements of the three preexisting models. Rather, it must take the parts of them that conduce to fair, efficient, and representative government and combine them with new institutions of its own so as to produce a workable model. An emphasis of substantive over procedural fairness, where the two are mutually exclusive, must be had. It must be practical and suited to the particular conditions of the community for which it is being made; copying constitutions does not work well, either in real life or online. From these requirements, the following principles can be derived:

Constitutional principles

• The constitution should have its eyes in the skies and its feet firmly on the ground. If it must choose one, it should be the feet firmly on the ground. By which is meant, a constitution ought preferably to invoke grand, universal principles and lofty, noble objectives in or near the beginning or end but must describe with certainty and brevity a simple model of government in the body.
• The constitution should receive wide popular support. This includes both people who officially hold power, and figures wielding informal but important influence.
• The constitution should recognize the contributions of all stakeholders, both money-investors and time-investors, and should allow neither to unduly dominate the other. At present, the former are adequately represented through ordinary company law. The latter are not. In an ideal model, each interest would have an equal voice in how the community is run.
• The constitution should grant to members of the community such rights, especially to produce content relative to the object of the community, as will tend to the success of the community, but will not jeopardize its efficient administration or run afoul of applicable legislation. The rights are not inherent or inalienable; they are granted because it is desirable for, say, a site known for lively political debate not to censor particular viewpoints. By the same logic, if the rights, when abused to excess, threaten the efficient administration of the community, they should be curtailed to the extent necessary to assure effectual implementation of the rules.

What can we do to get there?

Of course, all this talk about what we want is not going to get us anything if we do not also discuss what we can do to get where we want. Here is a brief sketch of a possible plan to achieve, or at least approach, our goal.

• Create an organization representing the Internet suffrage movement. Let it be named the Movement for Equal Representation in Internet and Technology (MERIT). Let it consist of all those who have experience in running Internet communities, or have given their time in building one up, even though they may not have led it and have an interest in the ultimate goal. Let it be purely advisory and never intervene in politics, real-life or online.
• Establish an accreditation mechanism for sufficiently representative constitutions. MERIT could introduce something like "The MERIT Seal of Accountability". This Seal would be authorized by an official qualification process to be displayed by communities with constitutions that are representative of all the interests that have a stake in their success. Once the Seal has been granted, any user of a community bearing one could apply for it to be revoked if in practice the constitution has not been obeyed, but MERIT will not consider an application for revocation of the same Seal more than once per year.
• Expand into development of a formal legal system. Once MERIT has gained a reputation, it can expand into establishing an apex tribunal for the review of bans and other official decisions of Sealed communities. This tribunal will focus on developing the law and stay out of political disputes. Any member of MERIT can be a judge after qualifying through examination; cases will be posted on an internal discussion forum, and judges will volunteer for cases until there is a panel of three for each case. Jurisdiction will be solely voluntary: each community and each other party to a case can reject the jurisdiction of the tribunal, totally, with respect to a specific field of law, or with respect to a particular case at any time. The opinions of this tribunal will be declaratory and will have no binding force; communities can also petition for advisory opinions, which can be opposed by other communities. The goal of the tribunal, like the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, will be to ensure that, for example, "freedom of speech" and other boilerplate clauses in constitutions mean the same thing.
• Encourage content creators to post their work on Sealed communities. MERIT will encourage content creators to post their work where they are heard, not exploited.
• Assist new communities in drafting constitutions. MERIT will also have a task force to help new communities write constitutions for themselves.

Outline

• Who We Are and Where We Came From
  • Our History
  • Who Rules the Internet?
• Examples of Absolute Monarchy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • 4chan
• Examples of Feudal Crowdsourcing
  • Reddit
  • 8chan
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
• Example of Tribal Governance
  • Wikipedia
• What We Must Do
  • A Vision
  • Conclusion