Deliberating the Decision-making process draft

Introduction

Introduction on the internal regulation process by Nil

Presentation of Nathan by Ben

Nathan knows Decidim from some time

Nathan Schneider's presentation

Nathan ran a mailing list and after many years became de facto responsible for deciding how to handle moderation issues. He realised that his mother's garden club - existing for many generations - had by-laws while the mailing list didn't have any explicitly stated rules.

‘The software defines the political structures of the space’

Bylaws exist in communities, but it didn't in some online communities

We need to have democratic practices in everyday life, otherwise collapse of democratic practices.

Article on Concept of “implicit feudalism”: https://nathanschneider.info/ImplicitFeudalism Many online communities such as mailing list were effectively “implicitly feudal”.

It's a model that can work when running a server in your basement, but not for online communities seeking governance models.

The model of the social media admin is becoming a dominant political logic. Curtis Yarvin (far alt-right 'philosopher' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin) has been calling for a technological monarchy. No coincidence that both Trump and Musk have had experience as the administrator/owner of social media platforms.

Really serious concern about tech being monarchic.

To go a different (democratic) way, Nathan started using Emke's Contributor Covenant (a code of conduct for open source communities) https://www.contributor-covenant.org/

This simplified decision-making for governance questions.

A simple set of rules can be very powerful, and their absence can be very tight to problems we could see online (like what some call "cancel culture", people piling up on someone that said something wrong).

This could be solved by by-laws about conflict resolution.

"Community rule":https://communityrule.info/ is an attempt to create simple bylaws, a basic set of rules for online communities to govern themselves.

It is necessary to craft governance in online spaces, but also offline.

Nathan covered Occupy Wall Street, following the movement and experienced the general assemblies (they had their website design for governance). Trolls took it over and destroyed it.

Cryptocurrency can also be interesting, because of the design of blockchains, they created a market for governance tools (investment in system interfaces for online collective decision-making).

Metagov (https://metagov.org/) is a global online network of researchers and experimenters trying to build tools and practices about governance and online space.

Governable Spaces (book)

Q/A session

Balancing immune system (defense) versus openness / creativity in digital governance design?

Nathan: there's such a long history of fighting against capture and invasion by finance interests. One example was a virtual text world called LambdaMOO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO#Politics) [there was a famous case documented by Julian Dibbell in an article called 'A Rape in Cyberspace' -- see also his book called My Tiny Life]... Bell Labs owned the server, and they decided they would be liable legally for misconduct and they decided they needed 'wizard mode'. Because they were the sole owners they made the unilateral decisions. You can't have shared governance without shared ownership.

Early DAOs looked for ways to collectivize ownership but venture capital came in.

How do we foster and scale collective/democratic ownership?

Online systems -- even the Unix server underlying so many networks -- gives too much possibility for monarchial control.

Conducting decision-making VS ownership, what do you need as a potential need to decide about financial aspects of the community?

The key is to be explicit. Sometimes, OSS projects pretend they can operate without naming power structure, etc. Being explicit is really the project. We need better public policy.

The goal is to help informal communities, not legal bylaws, to have basic frameworks and structures. There's a lot of power in building in those extra legal spaces, where we have a bit more room to play, where we can develop norms outside the rigid norms.

Are we falling victim to the 'tyranny of structurelessness'?

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

'extitutional spaces' as places for governance experimentation and support (as opposed to 'institutional')

'governance as a form of art and play'

Decidim is a DPG, and sometimes governments want to financially contribute to Decidim, but it's not easy, and they don't have any guarantees. How to find a good compromise between governments extractivism and project sustainability?

For instance: how do we include participants across the digital divide (for instance in Latin American contexts)? There might be specific needs from these contexts (e.g. registration without email addresses) but a relative lack of support for the project/contributions -- so how do we prioritize and provide for these communities' needs in our governance?

The Tyranny of Openness: What Happened to Peer Production? https://nathanschneider.info/tyranny

How do we recognize what a 'good citizen' of Decidim looks like? How do we value contributions of varying kinds? Give people valued roles without locking them into a particular role in the project.

Question of resentment is important, it needs to be recognized and "managed" to make sure everyone contribution is recognized according to the "good citizen" criteria.

Here's Nathan's article on 'effective voice', how community participants exercise their agency: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12470

Balance between bureaucratic representation and direct democracy?

Strengthening the direct democracy aspects of the decision-making project (compared to what is currently proposed in the draft regulation)

Deep and complex problem. Discussed Facebook IPO documentation with students, when Facebook became a broad infrastructure. Bureaucratization is a normal process when an organization grows, as more people need to know how things are working.

This is not a challenge unique to Decidim, it's the challenge of any organization growing and maturing.

How do we make sure we keep the extitutionnal spaces alive, even if we bureaucratize?

Balance between reliability/stability (particularly if you're a mature organization/platform on which people rely in important ways) and fluidity/openness to experimentation.

I work as an org designer and governance facilitator. In my work I recognize a gap between having a set of rules and groups having the experience, maturity, patience, committment to applying them effectively, including evolving them to better fit what's needed. Where is this going well and what do you see happening that makes the difference? e.g. not just having the rules and the tools, but the knowledge to apply them effectively

Biais for decision VS biais for action

Fear in the bureaucracy is the biais for decision. That's only one way to shape a structure! Sometimes, you know you are trusted and you can act.

Building for collective permission versus collective decision.

We need to build structure built around collective trust to act, not necessarily around collective decision.

Aragon: built on decision

Colony: build on action

It's also a class distinction, you can have personal and class biais for decision. Working class context can have a biais for action.

How much or little has Nathan thought about manners and etiquette?

Rules vs. application can be a matter of design for interaction.

Norms and protocols: politicians who break norms end up as the biggest threats to established orders. Norms and protocols for interaction tend to be associated with femininity and devalued by a heteropatriarchal society.

'Most of the time etiquette and manners and interaction protocols should do the work, rules are there as a backstop'