Switzerland has a very direct form of democracy thanks to its constitutional referendums. If Swiss representatives pass unpopular bullshit like the EU bottle cap rule, their work can be permanently undone by a citizen initiative writing a constitutional resolution overriding said bullshit. This means that the representatives are on a tight leash and would not even attempt to write the unpopular regulations that the EU gets away with.

One day you piss off the voters with your poorly conceived cookie law, couple years later there's a line in the constitution saying "no cookie laws" and your hands are tied forever.

Direct democracy doesn't mean everyone votes on everything.

At the extreme you could do something like localized e-voting: citizens vote on issues that affect a given geographic radius of where they live. Because the boundaries are purely distance-based, gerrymandering is impossible.

Maybe we could have a decaying distance boundary by some measurement like population density or something like it?