Digital Federalism
Contextual Quote
“Absent the credibility of information, there is no solid ground for public discourse to establish consensual truths that undergird any governing consensus.”
- Renee DiResta [1]
Description
Renee DiResta:
"As DiResta sees it, the migration away from large, centralized one-size-fits-all platforms to smaller, ideologically distinct spaces is transforming the social media space into a kind of digital federalism, “where local governance aligns with specific community norms, yet remains loosely connected to a broader whole.”
“Unlike centralized platforms, where curation and moderation are controlled from the top down, federation relies on decentralized protocols — ActivityPub for Mastodon (which Threads also supports) and the AT Protocol for Bluesky — that enable user-controlled servers and devolve moderation (and in some cases, curation) to that community level. This approach doesn’t just redefine moderation; it restructures online governance itself. And that is because, writ large, there are no refs to work.”
While centralized platforms with their centrally controlled rules and algorithms are ‘walled gardens,’” writes DiResta, federated social media might best be described as “community gardens shaped by members connected through loose social or geographical ties and a shared interest in maintaining a pleasant community space.”
The downside of digital federalism comes from precisely what it has corrected for in societies where no common narrative prevails: “Without centralized governance, there is no single authority to mediate systemic issues or consistently enforce rules,” DiResta writes.
She continues: “Beyond the challenges of addressing illegal or harmful content, the Great Decentralization raises deeper questions about social cohesion: Will the fragmentation of platforms exacerbate ideological silos and further erode the shared spaces needed for consensus and compromise?
Our communication spaces shape our norms and politics. The very tools that now directly empower users to curate their feeds and block unwanted content may also amplify divisions or reduce exposure to differing perspectives.”
(https://www.noemamag.com/how-disinformation-deforms-democracy/)
Discussion
Renee DiResta on the Great Social Media Decentralization
Renee DiResta:
"She asks, “What happens when sprawling online communities fracture into politically homogenous, self-governing communities?”
For DiResta “what ultimately splintered social media wasn’t a killer app or the Federal Trade Commission — it was content moderation. Partisan users clashed with ‘referees’ tasked with defining and enforcing rules like no hate speech, or making calls about how to handle Covid-19 content. Principles like “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” — which proposed that ‘borderline’ content (posts that fell into grey areas around hate speech, for example) remain visible but unamplified — attempted to articulate a middle ground. However, even nuanced efforts were reframed as unreasonable suppression by ideologues who recognized the power of dominating online discourse. Efforts to moderate became flashpoints, fueling a feedback loop where online norms fed offline polarization — and vice versa.
And so, in successive waves, users departed for alternatives: platforms where the referees were lax (Truth Social), nearly nonexistent (Telegram) or self-appointed (Mastodon). Much of this fracturing occurred along political lines.”
This “Great Decentralization,” as DiResta calls it, is accelerating. Just last week Meta, too, announced it was ending its content moderation and turning to “community” self-policing."
(https://www.noemamag.com/how-disinformation-deforms-democracy/)