> in real democracies the populists (facebook, tiktok, chrome) always win. because that's what the masses want

Is Friedrich Merz a populist? Was Angela Merkel a populist? This theory seems to have considerable limits.

Online communities win because of network effects, members get tied to their addresses and it becomes very difficult to migrate, new members always join the network because that is where everyone is already. Democracies don't necessary depend on network effects, members of political parties can relatively easily migrate to different parties, network effects is not what keeps members part of a political party. And crucially, being part of a political party doesn't mean you'll vote for the party when you cast your ballot.

Some will say that the solution to network effects on the Web is decentralization but decentralization doesn't scale. Because of spam, bots and the fact that not everyone will follow the protocol there is always a need for moderators which is just another word for government and Google's main business model.

Even Capitalism is largely decentralized but it can't function without government. I believe true decentralization (anarchism) is only possible on a small scale where everyone knows each other, very small communities. It's not possible on the global level like in Capitalism or even the Web.

Whoever has the most compute controls the narrative. It's AIs biggest contribution to the internet.

Google drop the mask