Is Mastodon a commons? · Doc Searls Weblog

Doc Searls is deeply thoughtful on many Internet "systems" and when I saw him invoking the commons it made me want to read on. I particularly like that he pulled in Elinor Ostrom's characteristics of a commons from Governing the Commons, work that she won a Nobel prize for.

This "commons" term is thrown around a lot, often times along with things like freedom of speech, but it lacks a specific meaning of what a commons is. I feel strongly that a commons is not certain things, like it isn't Twitter. A commons cannot be a company that has a market cap. It isn't a mall. Searls takes a look at these and tests them with Mastadon.

1. Clearly defining the group boundaries and the contents of the common pool resource.
2. The appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions.
3. Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process.
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators.
5. A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules.
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access.
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities.
8. In the case of larger common-pool resources, organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local common pool resources at the base level.

Reflecting on that list it is notable that a commons is intertwined with some resource, and that resource is finite. What is the finite resource of a commons that is about speech? That is a question mark for me.

The above requirements are incredibly well suited to a DAO. That is interesting to me.

Isn't the web a commons? The web with its millions of websites seems to meet these requirements. Don't we have a commons already? Haven't we had one since the creation of the web and blogging platforms?