We're all connected, but no one's in charge.
Thomas Friedman
From its creation many people saw the potential for the internet to bring democracy to the world (Open Source Democracy), but it’s still just a tool—literally a bunch of cables and connections and has easily been dominated, by those with economic power, for their own interests. The invisible hand is 'in charge' as with the rest of capitalism.
While we can’t depend on the internet alone for democracy because it could go down periodically or be hijacked or destroyed. But we can use a website to begin building a democratic system in the real world for everyone to cooperate on an equal basis.
We know this can be done because Mark Zuckerberg already did it, except that he built facebook for his own personal benefit. Others seeing the potential for profit invested for their personal benefit. After about a decade, facebook had grown to be in a position to influence, or be used to influence elections in many countries and even facilitate genocide in Myanmar.
‘Social’ media provides opportunities for the most anti-social behaviour. The internet has become like the bathroom wall of the world where anonymity allows for the worst behaviours to take place unchecked. Many people swear off facebook and other platforms, but then they are left out of the healthy discussions which do take place there—and that doesn’t stop facebook from growing and controlling more of the world every day. We can build a truly social media platform to provide all of the socially useful services which people around the world have come to depend on and replace facebook and other private platforms with one platform cooperative, controlled democratically by the members. Think of it as a Digital Community Centre for the world.
