this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Online? Dictatorship. Let the guidelines be clear and the conversations civil and on topic. If my speech isn't wanted in a particular community I can find another, or make another where I'm the dictator.
IRL? Democracy. It sucks, but it's better than everything else. I do, however, wish there were better laws forcing media to be locally owned, and bound to be truthful. And some way to keep late stage capitalism's hand off the scales.
I like StackOverflow's democratic moderation. It also scales better than centralised moderation.
(first, thank you for achieving the straightforwardness that has escaped so many others here)
What is the difference between online society and irl society that makes dictatorship preferable in one and democracy preferable in the other?
Is it the size? The complexity?
Online spaces are limitless, basically. If you don't like living under someone else's rules it's dead easy to spin up your own space with your own rules. The dictatorship-ness of these virtual spaces keeps then semi-civil and on-topic. Ideally, at least. We are talking spherical cows here, obvs.
Real life spaces, not so easy to spin up your own country. So we have to use a political system that (on paper, at least) caters to the majority without stepping on the minorities too much.
@DominatorX1@thelemmy.club
To build off this. Part of why people, who come off as reasonable and decent in person, can get so...very...VERY unhinged online is that
Tap for personal opinion
you don't have to see the reaction of the people who read/hear what you're putting out there. Even in places where you don't actually have any real anonymity, there's an assumption that because no one is in the room with you while you madly smash away at your keyboard...well... People used to say there's no girls on the internet...I feel like most people just type whatever like there's no PEOPLE on the internet...TL;DR - can't see people being disgusted with what you just said.
People are generally very breakfast cereal. One musn't get worried about that.
And the incongruity here. Preferring the one kind of government for one kind of society, but the other for another. That's a big deal. Bears discussing.
It's one of those things that you wonder why nobody ever pointed it out.
"Government" of an online forum? Completely unserious.