Social Media, Downvotes, and Pure Direct Democracy Majority Rule

Does 100% direct democracy work well? This is where every single person votes on issues if they want, and the majority get to decide what happens.

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Democracy means rule by the common people. What we end up getting in a 100% "pure democracy" is direct democracy where the majority rules, because whatever the majority decides is what happens, be it right or wrong, true or false, correct or incorrect. This is rule by a mob. It's all opinion that can be easily influenced in a direction. Anyone can vote how they want, without being guided by principles or facts.

Where is the application of right vs. wrong, when a majority can decide to implement something because they are unwise fools, and think it's right when it's wrong, when they make decisions based on whims, wants, desire and emotions instead of rational critical thinking about the consequences their decisions will have in the short- or long-term?

People can easily be influenced and end up making poor decisions, collectively. At least we would only have ourselves (all of us together) to blame and not politicians in the case of direct democracy, but is that really better?

I remember watching some interesting fictional shows that demonstrated how direct democracy is highly problematic due to it working through popular opinion of the common people.

One such show is from The Orville, S01E07.

Majority Rule - The Orville (2017-)

The crew of the Orville are headed to a planet to find two missing people who were sent to observe the planet.

Shortly after the episode starts, we get a glimpse of how the society on the planet operates. It's a direct democracy with downvotes and upvotes given to anyone for any reason.

A man who is walking with a coffee and reading, accidentally bumps into someone else and spills coffee on them.

Everyone wears upvote and downvote buttons on their clothes by law, and the coffee spiller gets a downvote from the upset man he accidentally spilled coffee on. The coffee spiller also said sorry when it happened, but that didn't matter to the one who got upset and downvoted.

Everyone has access to the data on everyone's status of upvotes to downvotes. It's even publicly displayed:

The crew quickly find out that they need to have the status buttons on their clothes at all times or they will get arrested. So they buy black market buttons.

One of the crew, Lemar, ignorantly "grinds" at a statue to mock a team member regarding a conversation about weird dancing.

Little did he knows, he was being recorded. And worse yet, he was "grinding" a highly revered statue of the planet's cultural history.

Next we see a women try to buy a coffee in a coffee shop, but she is refused as they have a policy to not serve anyone above a 500,000 downvote number:

She has been to 12 coffee shops, but can't get any coffee to drink. Most of her 500,000+ downvotes are from her 20s she says, but she has changed her life around. It seems that the past haunts everyone on this planet.

The 4 members of the Orville crew witness this, and then they see the downvote numbers on Lemar's badge go up and up and up. They turn around on the TV screen to see the recording of what he did to the statue, along with the "Badge Code" to downvote him for his "crime".

Anything can be captured on video and uploaded to "the master feed" (an opinion feed) where the direct democracy judges the fate of individuals for anything they have done. Within 20 seconds he was already above 500,00 downvotes, getting banned from the coffee shop.

Upon exiting the shop, everyone starts filming him and surrounding him, and pushing the badge downvote button he wears, because putting his badge code in through their cellphones is isn't enough.

He soon gets arrested by police, and is faced with a crime against the state for receiving over 1,000,000 downvotes. He has to begin an apology tour, and if he keeps his downvotes under 10,000,000 he will be free to go. If the public doesn't believe he is sincere in his apology, he will undergo "social correction" to prevent future transgressions. Social correction is a series of neurological treatments to pacify any and all potentially negative impulses. Essentially, it's a lobotomy.

He appears on TV, but he really sucks and meaning his fake apology, and poeple see through it, making his downvote count rise higher:

They eventually find out what happened to the two missing members of their space federation: they were downvoted and lobotomized. One was killed in the process,while the other only has bare thinking where he repeats how happy he is about various things people talk to him about.

Lemar is about to be lobotomized as hos downvotes approach 10,000,000, when the Orville comes to his rescue by hackign into the master feed to influence public opinion to like Lemar. This is thanks to the cashier at the coffee shop who was told about the crew being aliens and decided to help save Lemar. They inject false info about Lemar helping people in order to get peopel to like him and stop the onslaught of downvotes.

They also manipulate a childhood photo to make him fat in order to gain sympathy and drop the downvoting.

One crew member worries people will try to corroborate and verify the false info, but the cashier tells her to not worry, no one does.

They kept adding more fake info to get people to like him. In a suspenseful climax to the episode, the downvote ended at 9,999,996.

Lemar was free to go since his downvote count didn't reach 10,000,000.

At the end of the episode, we see the cashier wake up, gets a coffee in her apartment, and look at a screen with "the master feed" showing another man about to be sentenced. She approaches the screen and is about to click downvote for no other reason that the habit of popular opinion which is already downvoting him. There is no honest evaluation, just habit to send a man to be lobotomized based on a whim. But, since she learned something from her past experience with Lemar, she stops short of touching the monitor to cast her downvote, and walks away. The episode ends.

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This fiction shows the reality of 100% pure direct democracy and opinion voting on matters through online social media interaction.

Anyone can be tried in real-time by public opinion for things that aren't even real crimes. Crimes are determined by the opinion of people not liking something.

There doesn't need to be any real justification for finding someone guilty. If someone is accused, there is no need to verify what they did, as was seen at the end of the episode with the coffee shop woman. There is no need to verify claims on the feed, as was seen by saving Lemar.

People are so easily influenced into making decisions. All it takes is opinion to take away someone's life or give it back to them in this model of direct democracy with downvotes and upvotes through social media interaction.

Is this how we would want our own society to function? I don't see it as a good thing, honestly. Imagine being convicted for imagind crimes based on people's dislike of you doing somehting making it a crime. The sentence could be prison, lobotomy, or death, who knows what people could choose to do to you based on their opinion and emotional state at the time.

We have a constant pull in human history between two poles of centralized authority vs. the authority of all people. Can we succeed in removing centralized authority and successfully live as a decentralized "anarchistic" society where there is no ruler or a small group of rulers?

It's interesting to think of the way Steem operates in relation to this episode, or other sites like Reddit that have downvotes along with upvotes, while Facebook doesn't. Dowvotes change the dynamic a lot. On Steem, 1 SP = 1 vote, so the power is concentrated in the hands of a few compared to the whole population, meaning a small group of people still hold most of the power.

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What do you think? Have your say!

• Does the episode of Orville 'Majority Rule' trouble you?
• What do you think of pure democracy, i.e. pure direct democracy majority rule?
• Would you like to see direct democracy implemented in real life society?
• What do you think of online social media upvoting and downvoting methods (such as Steem)?
• Will the direct democracy of 1 STEEM POWER = 1 Vote work out for the Steem experimental online society, or will it reach a limit of acceptance and usability?

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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

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