The Obstacles Facing Internet-Based Democracy

The advent of the internet allows unprecedented communication and collaboration between people all over the world. As such, it only makes sense to use this incredible platform as a way to improve a historically restricted arena: politics. Internet-based democracy promises to improve transparency in government, eliminate barriers between the people and their representation, and allow for new voices and ideas to receive fair consideration. The system holds additional advantages. Web platforms can be constantly edited, improved, and modified to better meet the needs of users. Change can be made quickly, relatively inexpensively, and in direct response to the feedback of those who interact with it, all the necessary elements for Intelligent Trial and Error. Furthermore, the internet is already used by over 2 billion people in ways similar to this proposal. While legacy thinking might slow adoption of such a system, the public’s inherent familiarity with its foundation put it ahead of most radical new ideas. Yet, despite genuine hopes that such an internet-based democracy system could someday exist, a number or specific obstacles remain to be overcome before immediate adoption could even be considered.

The first problem is something I’ll term: “the comment section dilemma”. While there are many different systems through which internet communication happens, one of the most ubiquitous is the comment section featured at the base of an article, video, blog, or product page. In smaller scale communities, this section can often foster intelligent, productive conversation that adds to the page’s existing content or perhaps advances the ideas covered above. These communities frequently rely on self-regulation to keep conversations productive. When applied to much larger pages with heavier traffic, however, this system often breaks down. Spam, joke posts, and hateful comments quickly crowd out the more productive comments, leading nowhere. This problem is not exclusive to comment sections either; large scale forums and chat-rooms regularly deal with these challenges as well. While some sites have been able to deal with these problems to an extent, it often comes at a price. Some sites have recently eliminated comments (or selectively limit comments based on how controversial the content is), or made it more difficult to access (either through drop-down menus, or by requiring registration). Others still have relied on heavy censoring. While censoring is undoubtedly necessary in any potential internet democracy system, the magnitude and method of enforcement are extremely important questions. Automated censoring systems can deal with massive scale, but face problems with intelligence. Existing systems appear to struggle with anything more than obvious spam or profanity. The task of identifying hateful or unproductive posts (beyond simple profanity) requires an actual understanding of the concepts being discussed. Furthermore, any system of censoring (both automated and manual) will hold some degree of bias. Free speech is an essential component to democracy, and the use of censoring in such a forum is dangerous (and perhaps even constitutionally illegal). An official internet democracy site would need to handle these issues nearly flawlessly to gain public approval (especially given the tremendous size of its user base), an obstacle that we, both technologically or socially, have yet to overcome.

The second obstacle is another unintended consequence of scale: the problem of maintaining equality and organization. A site with a massive user-base would generate far more content than any one human could read or comprehend. If perfect equality and equal attention were given to all posts, nobody would ever be heard. Furthermore, the benefit of transparency in this system begins to be lost if the content is hidden not behind closed doors, but behind terabytes of other information (a much more intimidating problem). It quickly becomes clear that for any idea to be seen by enough people to gain support, some kind of ranking system must be developed. Aside from the ethical questions surrounding ranking users or ideas, there exist technical challenges associated with this as well. Many sites, such as Reddit, use complicated algorithms to judge the merits of posts and users and choose how many others will see them. Unfortunately, a perfect algorithm for identifying the best political discussion points does not exist. The disadvantages to an imperfect solution, besides not promoting the best content, are that it can be “gamed” by users attempting to reverse engineer the algorithm. In other words, users can find ways of artificially increasing the ranking of their post that are not directly tied to its merit. The struggle with equality in internet democracy is broader than the specific implementation though. The development or usage of any new technology represents a form of legislation that may be unequal. For instance, an internet-based system gives more political influence to those who can afford internet access and a computer. Many of the poorest and most in need could become even less represented. Such a system also implies a degree of computer literacy. There may be a number of more elderly citizens who do not have the required skills to access and contribute to the system in the way that the younger generation could. The inherent inequality and struggles with organizing an internet-based democracy prevent it from being put into action in the present time.