Quality (philosophy)

World Wide Web

Philosophy

Ecology

Biology

Reign

Online community

Set (abstract data type)

Computer science

Business

Competition (biology)

Politics

Political science

Democracy

Epistemology

Political economy

Sociology

Feudalism

Programming language

New Media & Society

Online platforms train users to interact with each other through certain widespread interface designs. This article argues that an “implicit feudalism” informs the available options for community management on the dominant platforms for online communities. It is a pattern that grants user-administrators absolutist reign over their fiefdoms, with competition among them as the primary mechanism for quality control, typically under rules set by platform companies. Implicit feudalism emerged from technical conditions dating to early online networks. In light of alternative management mechanisms with more democratic features, it becomes all the more clear that implicit feudalism is not a necessary condition.

Admins, mods, and benevolent dictators for life: The implicit feudalism of online communities