It's a fun idea and there's similar ideas, but in the end, someone always has to be in the contract of the server provider or host the infrastructure at home and is basically the admin overlord. That person is also liable if illegal stuff shows up.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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Hinges on the fact that server is run on donations, so admin has an incentive to not run the server against the idea.
I know, the hosters sanity and goodwill is still doing a lot of heavy lifting. I must think through this better.
I think that's why wording mentions friends not a public service
Still needs an instance owner who is legally responsible for all the content on the entire site - this way the police know who to come for if there is illegal content like CSAM. At that point, better make sure that the admins are trustworthy individuals who have been vetted more extensively than simply having applied.
But sounds a great way to engender a sense of ownership among mods (& perhaps those admins who were vetted).
Btw PieFed also has several features that implement democratization of moderation, lessening the work that a mod traditionally is forced to do on Lemmy since the end-users can do the thing on their own, aided with software. e.g. if someone wants to see less content about Musk or Trump, then keyword filters provide that option (All, Some, or None), rather than a moderator having to decide for all of the community members at once. Or if someone wants to avoid contentious content, they can hide or just collapse (requiring an extra click to read) comments below a certain (user-definable) score threshold. Or NSFW content can be blurred, rather than simply allowed vs. removed; also NSFW is distinguished from NSFL (gore). Also fwiw, moderator reports federate, and someone is actually notified if their content is removed or if they are banned, plus much more - PieFed already allows much more democratic processes than the more authoritarian-styled Lemmy provides for (I believe there is even a deeper description of administrative roles built right in). So you may want to read about that. See also this article.
However it is accomplished, it sounds like a grand experiment!
I have also been wondering about this. But
admins and mods are selected sortitionally( randomly) from people who apply
That's your point of starvation. The application
I think, instead, everyone on the instance should be a voting member. And the decisions should be taken based on some requirement on the votes
- person one flags a post -> that's a vote
- maybe add a header that this post is under review? The voting process should probably be taking some time
- another person flags the same post -> that's a vote
- someone else says it should not be flagged -> that's a vote in opposite direction
- ??? <- can be changed by an instance wide vote too
- post/comment/user is either moderated or not, depending on votes and logic from the previous vote
In order to boost participation, randomly ask an active account to cast a vote on an ongoing discussion
I think there should be some way for "backend admin" to step in and ban something. But they should only do that for spam/csam/scam/etc. Nothing else, no matter how crazy or rude the take is
(btw, maybe the instance could also normalize asking someone to reword their take if it's rude or can be interpreted badly out of context?)
Hm, so voting would be a system similar to up- and downvoting, except only activated when somebody flags a post?
I was rather thinking about reports also having votes
Application is important because applying means you're motivated enough to take the role. Also limiting to people who have an account in the instance.
And yes, you bring a good point, random people can and should participate in it.
Csam was the true bane, and while cloudflare does have some protection, I am actively looking for better ways, even thinking of using qwen or deepseek v4 for specifically that. Except with open weight models it's not just the model but who's hosting it that's also something one must take into consideration.
I believe admins would be good enough for spam, csam and scam stuff, let's see though how it works out first
I'm afraid that with applications it would end up with the same situation we have now. 2-3 people per instance
For sure only local accounts should have voting rights
Well, bringing down the level of commitment required for being an admin or mod may increase the number of applicants, though if it's enough to sustain the idea is something I don't think I have an answer for.
You can just form a regular institutionalized user group / hobby association and run that this way if you want.
That's the end point I see for the fediverse too, localized specialized interest groups that run themselves, know each other IRL and both finance the space because they see the value it brings them and democratically decide how to run it.
... but it doesn't work perfectly with sign ups being unlimited, anonymized and open to the general internet.
It's possible but will be very easy to manipulate by people making alts and sockpuppets. You'd need a way to verify individuals.
The Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla is already experimenting with this sort of radical democracy, through our regular governance threads and our radical admin recalls but we have to rely on paid supporters and individually vouched people to stave manipulation.
Anyway, people can already repurpose the threativore which is the bot that enables this voting to handle the extra stuff you suggest and give it a try.
Democracy is when people pay to gain the right to vote
Thanks! You're an instance admin too I believe. Yes the idea is very close to anarchism, but Athens used sortition on top of it for day to day work.
Do you think the admin recalls and governance threads are working well, and haven't been abused? Also I don't find the fediverse instance you said, is it the same as dbzer0?
The FAF is a confederation of instances which ultimately act as one. /0 is one of them yes.
Until now our democracy seems to be working well.
Gives me confidence!
So, someone pointed out, there's always someone who's paying for the server costs and they might not like paying for instance someone else is running, what would be your take on that? Is there a way to tackle that issue?
That's what the FAF is for. We have multiple instances with the same admins, rules, defederations etc to hedge against rogue sysadmins.
Thanks. I'll think over everything you said. It does look like my instance could be eligible as a companion instance if executed well enough. Regarding alt accounts, I feel one must at least contribute somewhere on the instance to participate..... Yeah it's gonna be a tough problem to crack, and also the one other user pointed out, about funding. For an initial period I may run the pilot project, but when admins themselves aren't stable, it's going to create some problems.
Thanks for your feedback. I'll think over it
Hah, lemmy.world would never choose to join the faf. In any case we only accept anarchist instances as we are supposed to share rules
Cryptographic IDs? Doesn't work for everyone in the voting process but it could be a useful way to make sure mod x is whintheybsay they are
I think it's a great idea. Why the Athens way with a lottery, though? Is that to address some specific thing, or just because you'd like to see how it goes? Because we kind of moved away from that in modern democracy, and now we do elections instead of a lottery. Likely because of ...reasons.
Time slots etc also good ideas. We already have to factor that in because the userbase lives in vastly different timezones. And it's great if spam etc gets removed in a timely matter and we don't always have to wait until it's 5pm in the States. Some good mod and admin teams already do it.
I'll like to see how it goes. Sortition because they believed elections meant rich can back their favorable candidates and win. With sortition, since there's no election most people who are contesting get more or less an equal footing. I am curious how did they manage to get an entire council with high participation
Hmmh. Good point. One remark I have: That's kind of made for councils. So you get a representative sample of the population. And than you have like 501 individuals to discuss and make policy. I'm not entirely sure, but it feels to me there's a lower boundary with group size. Once you randomly sample just 3 individuals, I'd be surprised it works as I expect you more to end up with randomness (in the decisions as well). Not with representation.
But also doesn't feel like a new problem to me. For example the US Americans sample their juries in a court. On the other hand they don't randomly sample the sheriff. Looks to me someone already put in some thought. And there's extra things. Like extra steps when sampling the jurors. It's not ...here's your jury, off you go... But there's an entire complicated extra process to it. I suppose that might be related to something like the comparatively small group size of such a jury.
And @cinoreus@lemmy.world : Another democracy idea I recently wrote down somewhere, was the idea of German clubs / organizations I'm familiar with. That can be anything from a few people do sports once a week, maybe your boy scouts, or KDE e.V. or the Free Software Foundation Europe e.V.
That's a legal status. Comes with minimum standards. But I think one clever thing about it is how it tends to push democracy down to the members / people involved. Like: you have to come up with your individual statute, you're responsible to appoint your management board. And your highest body is the general assembly. The people in power are more in a role to execute what the organization wants. Specifics are down to what the members like to implement.
And the authorities don't care too much(?!). There's standards on how clubs have to operate. Like your group needs to follow a purpose and write it down. Simple majority rule for regular decisions in the general assembly, 75% majority votes to change the statute. But you do it as a community, you do your statute, assemblies, subgroups and elections and then you get to identify with it. Government doesn't hold your hands too much from my perspective. They'll read the statue and care if it meets the requirements. And later on they'll simply need to (occasionally) check whether your organization is up to their own statute. Especially once there's complaints. (And Germans love to complain, so you can be sure there will be feedback once something remotely goes wrong.)
And in practice, you'll get things like a regular general assembly. You can come as a member, listen to the board explain what they did, what issues they faced, what they spent your membership fee on... Maybe you're in a position to vote on something or elect the next board. Or give your opinion on whether you're alright with what your old board did. Sometimes you can send in ideas as a member and make people decide on it. And someone is going to write a summary so there's accountability for third parties in case they're interested.
My idea was to push people towards something more like a grassroots democracy. Maybe as an admin I don't care too much with making exact rules that fit for every community. Maybe democracy should be done and be alive / lived by the involved people themselves. That'll strengthen their group cohesion. And they need to live it anyway. Make them come up with an idea for a community along with goals and rules, the first board of moderators, signed by 7 people and off they go. After that you (as an admin) just check on them. See if they do general assemblies at regular intervals, if those meet your minimum democratic requirements. But other than that they get to live democracy and the community put in the work to make it happen. And what they have to do is send back some accountability to retain their status as a democratic entity.
(And depending on the minimum requirements set, this might even include an Athens style democracy, if a communitiy likes to come up with a statute like that.)
Yeah idea may sound stupid to some, but is it a question not worth pondering over?
I'm curious, can't wait to see how it goes!
Quite a stupid idea honestly. You seem to not understand that someone needs to host the infrastructure that an instance runs on. So what you are saying is: give the admin rights to a server that someone pays money for, to some other person every few weeks. This just does not work.
I think the scope of the idea is the service itself, not the hosting part. So the rotation would be for those who set sidebar, not those who deploy
Aren't most instances on lemmy running on donations? While I absolutely understand your point, because of this I don't think the hoster will have a veto unless they are the one funding it from their pockets
Someone has to make the actual contract with a hosting provider, unless there is a separate legal entity for this (e.g. Fediverse Foundation for feddit.org). Thus, someone needs to have skin in the game. I doubt someone would easily hand off the instance he/she is responsible for to a third party. At least I wouldn’t.
Fair point.
Don't be a dick.