Digital Democracy

Danah Boyd has a new post on the recent uproar within the facebook community regarding a new feature on facebook with large privacy concerns. If 700,000 facebook users banded together to protest this new feature can the facebook owners ignore them. Should they ignore them, and of course should they be allowed to ignore them.

At the moment the inhabitants of communities like myspace, facebook, and flickr are like the citizens in a dictatorship. They don’t really control their own community, and the dictators are free to do what they like. Within reason of course, if the dictator gets too much there could be a revolt, but revolution is a very extreme proposition. Emmigration is more likely, just look at friendster.

But revolt is always a possibility too, just look at the tax revolt over at second life. Or better yet the Ultima online nude sit in from way back in 1997

History has shown gamers that online protest can result in positive change, as exemplified in Ultima Online’s 1997 naked riot demanding bug fixes and server upgrades. Not only were some of the rioters’ issues addressed by the game publisher following the incident, but the event was widely reported, and gamers worldwide have been inspired to acts of virtual civil disobedience ever since.

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For the most part though gamers are at the mercy of the game owners. If Blizzard decided to turn off the servers for WoW tomorrow there is not really anything that the millions of citizens of Azeroth could do. I guess the question I am asking is though, should there be anything they can do? As these virtual worlds become more and more complex and full featured the amount of time, money and creativity being poured into them is exploding. Is there a point where the citizens of virtual worlds start to want to have a say in how their worlds are run. If facebook can have a half a million angry members demanding change and being heard, what about if the same thing happened in WoW? There is a fascinating article from yale law meme which is asking these questions, and reaching the same kind of conclusions too.

I don’t think it is going to be very long before we start to see real world laws beginning to effect online communities. One really doesn’t have to look further than the wailing and gnashing of teeth around latest massive scam in the eve online world. This is a world with a built in focus on piracy and while some are asking the question why an enormous scam wiping out the hard earned fortunes of hundreds of players should be allowed others are saying why not. If piracy is allowed why not fraud.

It is a tough question of course, since the real world value of game items is rising we have to ask at what point stealing in the game becomes stealing in real life. Even if the game is built around stealing? Some of course are starting to propose a police force to hunt down criminals in Eve, but then of course you need laws, and government and…

Most online games are still incredibly primitive so I can only look forward to exciting times as these new worlds mature.

Technorati Tags: second life, wow, games, privacy, eve online, danah boyd, democracy