so youtuber trolligarch has been doing videos about "simulated democracy" experiments on the internet. you know the type, someone's like "what if we did the bureaucracy of democracy, as a means for organizing a subreddit/forum/minecraft server/neopets fansite?" and everyone runs campaigns and has elections and a constitution written out and blah blah blah

i think it's really interesting to chronicle these in part because like... they are closely related to the less formal governance of websites

Replying to @shoofle@beach.city

i would be interested in a book that is just a bunch of case studies in the history of moderation of social spaces on the internet. like what happened on somethingawful? i don't mean "what are the funny stories from SA" i mean like. what moderation decisions were made at what times, and what results did they have? how did the site respond to newcomers trying to join? how did it respond to not having activity? things like that

Jul 5, 2026, 18:49 UTCen