#Fediverse #TheCommons #DWeb #Readings

Two of my favorite readings this January speak to the pains and gains of sharing public resources, or "the commons," from very different perspectives. The first is Ethan Zuckerman's essay, "How social media could teach us to be better citizens." The second is an excerpt from Michelle Nijhuis's book, "The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth." While Zuckerman speaks about the recent human experience of mingling in the digital world, Nijhuis brings up the perspective from our ancient relationships with natural resources and wildlife. An overarching message? There is no unique "solution" for collective living: WE must engage with local communities to learn how to create sustainable and civic environments.

There is no silver bullet, but there are helpful guidelines to create thriving collectives sharing common resources. Nijhuis's essay echoes Nobel recipient Elinor Ostrom's work in Economics: "There are many, many ways of doing things that work in different environments." This is an essential message to people like me who were educated to search for, and only accept, clear and final solutions to problems. Her Nobel was awarded for observing how collectives worldwide successfully managed their shared resources. Nijhuis offers an excellent summary of these findings:

"The features of successful systems, Ostrom and her colleagues found, include clear boundaries (the 'community' doing the managing must be well-defined); reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a reasonable balance of costs and benefits for participants; a predictable process for the fast and fair resolution of conflicts; an escalating series of punishments for cheaters; and good relationships between the community and other layers of authority, from household heads to international institutions."

I remember repeatedly reading this list of features throughout my academic life dedicated to dreaming about the social web and how it should have been. Not surprisingly, reading this text triggered once again a dormant thread of hopes: Will The Commons turn a new page in its life? Is it now the time we will pay attention to Prof. Ostrom's work when practicing creating our information commons?

And as we got to the topic of Information Commons, Zuckerman's piece offers some arguments on why we should be more active members and managers of our online communities. He states that taking control over the governance of our social spaces and operating the platforms we use, would mean regaining power over our collective resources in a world where our lives are increasingly dependent on such digital resources. But Zuckerman also thinks that governing the online spaces we are members of is a unique opportunity to go to "democracy school." He further explains his argument in a Mastodon conversation, where I originally found his text:

*"To be effective civic actors, we need practice. We need spaces to learn how to run meetings, to have productive disagreements, to work with people we don't always like. Historically, this happened in social clubs, bowling leagues, etc. Now it happens online." * Zuckerman@Mastodon

I love that I found his academic text through his Mastodon profile mainly because this is the social network that, for the first time, I feel I have been practicing his suggestion: get involved and practice being a civic actor! Although Zukerman does not cite Mastodon or any recent movements toward the decentralization of social media -- sometimes also referred to as the Fediverse; I think this is only a matter of its novelty and lack of studies around it. He exemplifies his arguments with the communities on Reddit, which changed the landscape of Online Forums by giving more control and independence to its "sub-Reddit" moderators. This power-sharing is such that moderators have rebelled against some platforms' decisions and organized strikes, temporarily closing their communities and content. In the Mastodon case, community members have a chance to own both the governance and the platform, making them responsible for decisions on data privacy, moderation procedures, and all the involved liability.

For many, this can be too much, which is fair; that is the reality of the offline world, too, isn't it? For instance, how many parents in a school or workers in a union actively get involved in the governance of their collectives? The point here is to allow groups to create their ways and have the means to operate their digital social spaces, a rare attitude in the past as privately-owned and for-profit platforms proliferated. In my experience volunteering in the admin team for the HCI.social Mastodon server, I quickly learned how much trust is invested in creating an online civic space. For example, take what Ostrom defines as "clearly defining the boundaries of a community": it takes many eyes and hours of discussion to respond to moderation requests and decide the ins and outs of our commons. And that is in our case, where we are playing the role of "benevolent gods," making decisions in the name of hundreds of members. Others decided to experience a more involved approach to collective governance (e.g., social.coop), which is incredible to observe. I am fully on board with Ostrom's idea that there are many, many ways for communities to work and break. I hope that more of us will pay attention to Ostrom's observations and the centuries of experiences as brilliantly reported by Nijhuis. I hope that with many more of us trying it out, some will succeed. And, by trying, many individuals like me, as suggested by Zuckerman, will have their fair share of civic training.