The Fediverse isn’t a democracy though. Admins self-select, and moderators are merely those who made the community first or were selected by those who made the community (or maybe replaced by the admins). Hosting a big instance costs quite a bit of money, so it’ll naturally attract people with some kind of agenda. Those in charge will self-select their users whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The discourse on Lemmy (don’t know about the rest of the Fediverse) largely happens on a handful of instances, and I think that’s to be expected from the above. We’d probably be better off if we actually has democracy, but I think that’s the wrong metaphor to use since we’re not restricted to a geographical area like we are on real life.

I think the solution is distributed systems. Instead of a handful of people running things, everyone should take part in running things. Instead of a handful of people moderating things, everyone should be a moderator, and users should be able to select which moderators they trust and which they don’t. Internet services can do things that physical services can’t, and I think we should while explore that (and I’m doing just that on my own projects).