This is an interesting and insightful talk. And the idea is definitely good. But it can't be the whole story IMO. Just making sure the rules are clear and there's due process isn't enough. Not everyone can agree on what the rules *should be*. And democracy isn't a solution either. It's too collectivistic. If a site, say, bans anything that contradicts the scientific consensus (even if they are very clear about what that means and follow all these due process rules), there should be an outlet for people who want to be able to do that, and that can only be solved (AFAICS) by competition of rulesets and enforcers. This is the case even if a majority of people voted for that rule.
But you have to trust the developers somewhat anyway. The difference is that with a centralised or federated protocol you have to trust developers plus server admins whereas with a P2P (or to some degree otherwise key-based) protocol you just have to trust developers. Put that way it's obvious which is better.
That can change, and that's a trust relationship that exists regardless of how centralised or trustless a protocol is. I still don't see why it's bad for a protocol to be trustless.
Whether the person is my friend or not, all other things being equal, it’s better for him to have less power than more. And even if he is my friend, he might not be other users’.
Technological tricks that increase your power as a user (key based identity, data portability) can work in both kinds of systems.
Yes, but can radically new (for the internet) political systems such as those I described?
@strypey@raphael If you’re going to have one community for everyone, there should be some way of allowing multiple moderation styles to co-exist within it, like Aether used to have.