One subtly important aspect of Civic/Public norms is that they may only be “open” inside the context of a larger group. For instance, a public library in a US city is only accessible by people who can get to it, which outsources some access filtering to the US Government, and borrowing privileges may only be open to people who can afford a permanent address nearby. There are often less legible class filters going on too, e.g. a coffee shop might kick out someone who looks like they’re in the underclass.
This is a good point. I was wondering why civic/public is much more functional in meatspace than cyber, whereas a lot of internet communities that seem good are more gated—and I think this is due to the civic/public being sort of superficial, because the actual gatekeepers are in all sorts of transaction costs and social barriers one doesn’t normally notice (or are deliberately obscured).
the other thing to consider is that the internet offers the possibility of less acountability
when meeting in person it is harder to disguise yourself as someone else
also, since there is a big transport cost of frequenting a different place (a different library, coffee shop, etc), causing people not to like you means you are increasing your chances of conflict every future time you will frequent that place
online if you cause someone not to like you in an online space, you can more easily find or create another similar online space where that person is not there, or create a new account and join the same space, or ignore/block them
even if they seek conflict, their impact on you might be less: you can’t really physically hurt someone online and disrupting their actions/discussions can be more difficult
One subtly important aspect of Civic/Public norms is that they may only be “open” inside the context of a larger group. For instance, a public library in a US city is only accessible by people who can get to it, which outsources some access filtering to the US Government, and borrowing privileges may only be open to people who can afford a permanent address nearby. There are often less legible class filters going on too, e.g. a coffee shop might kick out someone who looks like they’re in the underclass.
This is a good point. I was wondering why civic/public is much more functional in meatspace than cyber, whereas a lot of internet communities that seem good are more gated—and I think this is due to the civic/public being sort of superficial, because the actual gatekeepers are in all sorts of transaction costs and social barriers one doesn’t normally notice (or are deliberately obscured).
the other thing to consider is that the internet offers the possibility of less acountability
when meeting in person it is harder to disguise yourself as someone else
also, since there is a big transport cost of frequenting a different place (a different library, coffee shop, etc), causing people not to like you means you are increasing your chances of conflict every future time you will frequent that place
online if you cause someone not to like you in an online space, you can more easily find or create another similar online space where that person is not there, or create a new account and join the same space, or ignore/block them even if they seek conflict, their impact on you might be less: you can’t really physically hurt someone online and disrupting their actions/discussions can be more difficult