Because despite the Web not necessitating that architecturally, the platform owners own you.

In olden days - you just leave for some similar forum, inform all your friends you want to keep communicating on the community’s subject via some of a dozen places where you and any particular friend are registered, and of course the community asks the admin or the moderator why the hell they banned you. There were some moderators even then who’d also ban for discussing bans, but in the end such places would get deserted quickly. Banhammers were to be carried with responsibility and honor.

Anyway, those bans wouldn’t affect your ability to communicate via ICQ or something else.

I think this is the exact reason so much propaganda and Troyan horse effort has been spent to make IM and forums inseparable functions in the minds of the masses. And, of course, to aggregate them all together.

Because now they can ban one person everywhere. It’s a vertical structure without responsibility. Very dangerous. Arbitrary bans negligibly affect platform’s reputation, while sufficiently affecting the environment.

One can compare big platforms to European politics before peace of Westphalia, and things like Lemmy as an attempt to create something similar to European politics after peace of Westphalia.

But ultimately we need both homogeneous distribution of power (many mutually replaceable instances of the same) and heterogeneous distribution of power (that same being divided by narrow functionality and layer).

As a ginger. I support this.

As a ginger. I support this.