This series of articles discusses the governance of digital public spaces and what that entails. The ultimate aim is to create digital spaces where people can exercise their rights and duties as citizens and come together, act, and interact freely. But before we can investigate how to create digital public spaces exactly, we need to understand how to establish and to govern such spaces.

Regarding governance, questions arise: who is in control and what are the processes of organising that power? Governance is considered and presented as a framework of rules, relationships, systems, and processes. However, this framework cannot fully account for the nuances of human relations. We must look at the human side of governance by investigating real-life examples of the governance models in digital spaces. With this piece, we try to map some of those considerations surrounding the governance of digital public spaces.

Because governance is messy, it is useful to approach it through defined use cases to explore how certain ideas and principles play out when applied in different situations. Thus, we have structured these articles as follows: every article discusses one aspect of governance by first defining the main concepts and concerns about the governance of digital public spaces. Consequently, these concepts will be delved into deeper by looking at one or more case studies. These use cases are aimed to make the reader think about possible governance models of digital public spaces.

This is not a comprehensive mapping; there is much more to do. Instead, we present here a format for which work about the governance of digital public spaces can be presented. By noting different topics within the governance of digital public spaces and nesting relevant case studies, we provide a backbone to which other topics and case studies may easily be added.

We hope that this format lends itself to collaboration. Ultimately, we would like to see this backbone support more than just our current research and include relevant previous work and research from our core allies.

For our efforts, we ultimately hope to democratically and co-creatively decide on the rules and culture of digital public spaces and to create ways to ensure that the rules we came to are actually followed. As seen in analog governments, this will be a process rather than a product.

Ultimately, the frameworks, systems, and technical affordances we have online are increasingly becoming the rules of our lives and our democracy. We ought to treat them as such and build technology through public processes that place democratic values at the forefront.

Human and fundamental rights are constitutive; they are the rules of the game for our democratic rule of law. This section is about constitutional and human rights as an elementary starting point from which technology should be designed and developed to form the basis for digital public spaces. This section offers insight into public values can be implemented and enforced within technology on Dutch and European territory on the basis of fundamental and human rights.

Constitutional and human rights¹ are instruments to protect our values. These rights are codified in, for instance, the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the Universal Convention on Human Rights (UDHR). They protect citizens from the power of government and generally have a vertical effect in relation to the citizen: they influence the relationship between the individual citizen and the state.²

We can use these rights when we as citizens want to embed or enforce public values in digital technology developed by governments or companies.³ The government has a large number of positive obligations under the ECHR to prevent violations of human rights. This also means that the state must take regulatory action to prevent certain rights violations by natural or legal persons (i.e., companies).

The legislative powers must, of course, evaluate its legislation with the relevant constitutional and human rights.⁴ In addition, the executive power has a wide range of instruments to assess and implement constitutional rights and human rights. However, the judiciary’s role seems to increase with respect to safeguarding human and constitutional rights, as other powers leave such issues unresolved. As the gatekeeper of the rule of law, the judiciary becomes the last resort to protect citizens.⁵

Judges, therefore, draw on European and other international treaties, as a constitutional review is forbidden. This prohibition is often subject to debate as - according to some - it reduces our constitution to ‘a dead letter’. This can be tricky at times with rapidly changing technologies that require an update of the use of various definitions and have a more far-reaching, fundamental effect on how a government relates to its citizens.

Several commissions have unsuccessfully considered revising our constitution. Fortunately, human rights in international treaties provide an answer when interpreting fundamental rights in the digital age. For example, in the Bărbulescu case, the European Court of Human Rights interpreted the decades-old concept of letter secrecy so that "Whatsapp messages" are now included. The judge here has thus anticipated a recent development and immediately managed to put it to good use for all citizens in Europe.

International treaties can, therefore, offer a solution in enforcing human and constitutional rights in technology developed by governments and companies. As a victim, you can do so by bringing your case before the European Court of Human Rights (after having first have litigated in your own country to the highest court (see the Bărbulescu case) or through a so-called collective action).

Another case against the government proceeded using a ‘strategic procedure.’ This method of litigation aims to transcend the case itself and change the system. Such cases are brought by foundations and associations that serve a public (partial) interest.

The SyRI case was about the use of surveillance technology by the government. The System Risk Indication (SyRI) was a legal instrument used by the government to combat fraud in benefits, allowances, and taxes. SyRI combined data from the tax administration, the UWV, and the social insurance bank to spot fraud cases. If the system suspected that a citizen could be a fraudster, they would end up on a list where the tax authorities could order an investigation into this person. It was not clear what made someone a potential fraudster, nor what people could do about it. The police and the prosecutor could access these analyses.

The court ruled that the legislation determining the use of SyRI violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This article protects the right to respect for private life. The right to respect for private life may be restricted as long as there is a fair balance between the infringement on private life and the social interest served by the law. The court found that SyRI had insufficient safeguards for citizens whose data ended up in the system: it is insufficiently transparent and verifiable. This infringement was not justified, and thus, the law violated the ECHR. In addition, the judge emphasised on the basis of Article 8 of the ECHR that the Netherlands as a member state has a special responsibility in the application of new technologies.

It is not only the government that is kept 'on the ball' in this way. Businesses and corporations are also increasingly placed under a magnifying glass. A well-known objection from the business community is that states are involved in human rights treaties and are responsible for respecting, protecting, and realising these human rights. Companies do not have this obligation under international law. Still, given these company’s growing size and power, the opinion that companies have a responsibility in this area is becoming increasingly widespread.

The most crucial guideline for companies in this area is the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP). The principles affirm:

• the existing obligations of states to protect and realise human rights and constitutional freedoms (State Duty to Protect);
• the responsibility of companies to respect human rights (Business Responsibility to Respect);
• the need to provide effective remedial or redress measures for violations (Access to Remedy).

At the request of the European Commission, member states have developed a plan for the elaboration of these principles. Although the UNGP are soft law (difficult or impossible to enforce), these guidelines are important for implementing various open standards, such as the unwritten standard of care. A company can be held liable for violating human rights through the principle of care, as was recently visible in the collective action by, among others, Milieudefensie⁷ against Royal Dutch Shell (RDS).

In this high-profile case, Milieudefensie and others accused RDS of having acted unlawfully towards them and claimed a reduction of CO2 emissions. The judge tested the lawfulness of the act against the unwritten ‘principle of care’ mentioned above. Based on the unwritten principle of care from article 6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code, RDS must consider the care required in society when determining the policy of the Shell group. The court interpreted this standard standard based on, among other things, international standards such as articles from the ECHR and the already cited UNGP.

The court deduced from the UNGP that the responsibility to respect human rights means that companies must refrain from violating the human rights of others, must address adverse human rights consequences in which they have a stake, and take appropriate action. This responsibility to respect human rights applies to all companies. Still, the means by which a company fulfills the responsibility is proportional to the organisation’s size, among other things. The court expects a lot from RDS in this respect, as it is at the head of the sizeable Shell group.

RDS is still considering an appeal. Additionally, there is a lot of discussion in the legal world about how this standard of care was interpreted, among other things. In the meantime, based on this outcome, collective action has also been started against the French company Total. Whether the court's considerations will have consequences for other companies and situations remains to be seen.

The case against the Dutch government and the case against the large Dutch company RDS have been revolutionary. Both cases are an example of how, through international treaties, governments and companies can be forced to respect human rights and public values. This is increasingly possible through these collective actions representing a public interest, not only a victim.

These groundbreaking verdicts ultimately pave the way for similar actions within the digital realm, which may, for example, involve the current deployment of extensive surveillance technologies by governments and businesses. For instance, dutch officials currently have far-reaching powers to monitor our conduct, varying from our parking behaviour to our visits to local museums. Thus, hopefully, these actions mark the beginning of new era of collective actions against technological superpowers. After all, the ideal of having digital public spaces is still a long way ahead of us.

Before designing or developing systems, it is important to be explicit about the values we share. For example, the systems will look very different based on whether we care about commercial or public values. In the context of designing governance systems for digital public spaces, we identified three core values that ought to underpin the design and development: open, democratic, and sustainable. Based on conversations and research, these have been identified as the ones that best capture the values others and ourselves have expressed.

Open refers to accessibility, being transparent and available for public scrutiny. It is the basis of a diverse approach: anyone interested in the system should be able to access the governance mechanisms. This does not mean that anyone should always have the ability to take part. It is about ensuring everyone has the ability to see how governance has been conducted. In addition, citizens need to have the opportunity to meaningfully participate in that governance, whether through representation or directly, as they see fit. Technically, this means that people in digital public spaces need to have functional, accessible resources (human and otherwise) for understanding and acting upon their rights in this regard.

Democratic refers to equity. Is there a way to detect the alignment of interests so that big and small interests can form a level playing field? How can we ensure the digital public spaces respect democratically embedded laws and regulations, particularly our human rights and public values? It builds on openness in the sense that transparent processes are a prerequisite for democratic governance. Society must ensure that citizens feel safe and are in control over what happens with their (personal) data. Furthermore, it should ensure that citizens are empowered to act and interact in these digital public spaces.

Finally, sustainability is referred to in three ways: economically, environmentally, and socially. Economic sustainability means that there is a sustainability model in place for the digital public space that does not affect power dynamics in the governance model in perverse terms: profit models for system operators must not be able to corrupt the governance mechanism. Environmental sustainability means that governance is not reliant on practices that are polluting our planet unjustly: for example bitcoin systems would be excluded. Lastly, social sustainability links economic sustainability with its democratic aspect: ensure that the governance of the system is part of the sustainable social fabric of our societies.

The Apache Software Foundation (AFS) is a US-based non-profit organisation with the mission to provide software for the public good. They do this by “providing services and support for project communities consisting of individuals who choose to participate in ASF activities.” According to their latest annual report, the ASF has 850+ individual Members and over 200 Project Management Committees who lead 350+ Apache projects and initiatives in collaboration with 8,200+ committers. The ASF fulfills its mission via well-documented governance processes, which they refer to as “The Apache Way.” Their income comes mainly from sponsors (almost $2M in 2020/2021), and they count Facebook, Google, Amason (Web Services), and Microsoft among their platinum sponsors. Despite their financial contributions, these companies cannot buy influence in the direction of the ASF because of how governance is organised. We will explore the ASF governance processes through the three core values we identified for digital public spaces.

Open

All ASF software outputs are licensed with the Apache 2 open-source software license. This commercial-friendly license allows anyone to use the software for any purpose - including commercial purposes. Alterations of the software are not required to be donated back to the ASF, making it more attractive for commercial organisations to include ASF software in their products. It also makes it more attractive for commercial organisations to contribute to these projects.

Except for security issues and matters regarding individuals, all communications within the ASF happen on open public mailing lists. In ASF projects, all decisions about the project are made on public mailing lists that anyone can subscribe to and contribute to. This is summarised in the mantra, “if it didn’t happen on the list, it didn’t happen.” As a result, even when direct colleagues work together on an ASF project, they communicate via these public mailing lists so that everyone can contribute to the discussion and decision-making.

Democratic

Anyone can join an ASF project and is welcomed to do so. Everyone can contribute to any project by submitting feature requests or bug reports, or contributing patches or other software contributions. When someone contributes more substantially to a project, one can become a committer. They will have to sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement and can directly change the source code of the respective project they are committer for. Every participant in ASF projects contributes on an individual level. Although many committers are working on ASF projects as part of their day job and therefore sponsored by their employer, their employer has no direct influence over the project. Only the individual, based on their role within the project, can help steer its direction. This also means that committers are not tasked to work on anything; everyone chooses to work on what they decide is needed. Of course, this happens in coordination with the other committers.

Sustainability

Economic sustainability in individual ASF projects arises from the model where, paradoxically, none of the committers get paid for their work. Projects sustain because individuals dedicate time to the project, without regard to how that person is being remunerated for that time or not. It works surprisingly well if you consider the success of the foundation. The ASF has a turnover of $2-$3 million a year on an organisational level. About 2/3 of this comes from the sponsors; the bulk of the rest comes traditionally from Apache conferences. This money is mainly used to pay for the infrastructure that facilitates the projects, where other central cost units are conferences and fundraising.

Definitions:

system, technical system: The complex of a technology or platform, the people and other actors involved, and the cultural context in which it exists. value: A desirable good, outcome. Sometimes quantifiable, sometimes not. liability: The opposite of value.

Interest (stake) can loosely be defined as the value (in an abstract sense) that can be derived, for a stakeholder, from a smooth, optimally running technical system. This value can either be explicit or hard to operationalise formally but is generally understood by the participants in the system. Value can be positive as well as negative. A significant interest may offer large rewards or constitute a large liability.

Think of a technical support platform. Here the value is quite clear: support is requested, support is given, and users are happy. On the other hand, value in a civic participation platform is much harder to define: Is value the number of people engaged, topics discussed, local policy support, or something else? Consider an electric vehicle charging infrastructure: stakeholders value plentiful charging points with enough capacity, but regular car owners will not be happy with the loss of ‘regular’ parking. Under this lens, value is similar to the outcome, effect, and consequence and depends on which stakeholders we consider.

Although there are socio-technical systems where the total value is zero-sum, this generally is not the case; the value added for one does not necessarily equate to the value lost for another. Even in the above example of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the equation is not as simple as ‘parking spot gained, parking spot lost’ because electrification of transport contributes to a healthier living environment for everybody.

We can distinguish three mechanisms that limit the total value.

• The resource that defines the value can be finite. Think of Bitcoin with its hard cap on the number of coins that can be mined or the number of residents participating in a neighbourhood platform (if that is your measure of value).
• The second is best described as 'diminishing return': the effort needed to engage the last, increasingly reluctant people in your platform does not warrant the extra value their participation would bring.
• More fundamental is the limit through externalities, as no real-world system is entirely closed. These externalities can be 'external' stakeholders, limited resources, or other constraints.

External stakeholders can be defined as parties affected by the system but not participating in the system. These external interests can indeed suffer when internal interests are maximised. Consider the environmental impact of Bitcoin, the effect of Airbnb on cities’ housing market, or delivery or taxi platforms ignoring fundamental employment rights. Stakeholders (shareholders) benefit, others pay. These external effects limit the value that can be created.

When considering governance models for any system, one works towards optimising stakeholder value within the constraints mentioned above, however the value is defined. We can approach this in various ways, but in general, there are two approaches:

1. Everybody works towards maximising the value for themselves (possibly competing with other stakeholders).
2. A common interest is defined (identified), and everybody collaboratively works towards that goal.

We need to carefully define what 'optimising value' means, especially in approach 1. When the value proposition is not zero-sum, we need to develop a sensible metric to be able to define and execute the right strategies.

In any real-world scenario, some external stakeholders do not participate but are affected, and the more general 'public interest' is affected but again does not participate.

A realistic open, democratic and sustainable system's governance model needs to allow for representation of the specific external stakeholders as well as the public interest. The model needs to reserve a seat at the table, as it were, to represent these interests. Sometimes the public interest can represent all external interests; sometimes, the representation will need to be more explicitly organised.

There is also the question of the 'size' of interest and how this affects decision-making and representation. One of the most important aspects of democratic governance is not that the majority decides but that the minority is heard. But what does it mean, 'to be heard,' when you are subsequently ignored?

Whole papers can and have been written on decision-making processes and voting rules in particular. When we relate voting power to the ‘size’ of the stake, we see two major mechanisms that might help to address issues of unequal power: the first is a means of facilitating the discovery of like interests, and the formation of alliances, possibly supported and effectuated through technological means. Second, one can think of an intrinsic limit to power growth, setting a cap on voting rights or affecting diminishing voting power the more significant the stake, akin to quadratic voting, or even ‘exponential’ voting.

In many cases, though, voting may not be the best way to reach conclusions. Deliberation tools can, for instance, help present all positions equally prominently, irrespective of the size and share of support; minority positions are then as discoverable as the majority ones and can continuously challenge these. The Icelandic participation platform Your Priorities is an excellent example of where this is implemented.

Stakeholdership and stakeholder interest are not always the transparent and straightforward notions that they seem to be. Interests can be hidden or not even present in the system. It becomes evident that we cannot ignore technical systems' effect on the environment or society. Regarding industry and commerce, the idea of fair pricing gains support; likewise, in governance, the idea of ‘fair representation’ should be considered, where all interests need to be considered and represented, not only those of the direct stakeholders.

It would be of great value if we designed our tools and procedures (for the governance of any technical system) to explicitly and regularly challenge our notions of stakeholdership so that these systems are run fairly and beneficially.

A fascinating developing ‘technical system’ is that of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Stakeholdership and interests in this system are complex, interesting, and very challenging. We briefly analyse these without attempting to answer the questions of representation and governance mechanisms.

We can identify various scarce resources, differences in the scale of interest, and both internal and external interests, sometimes in direct competition for scarce resources.

First, the need to reduce emissions, also from private vehicle use, is global. That makes for a considerable interest that is only implicitly recognised through the very existence of EVs and their charging infrastructure. We shall not discuss the earth and its climate as a stakeholder for now. However, it is indicative of a multitude of systems that use or exploit natural resources to ‘forget’ this interest and thus arrive at unfair pricing and practices. This is better discussed under the heading ‘moral governance and business practices’ than under stakeholdership.

Stakeholders we recognise, their interests, and resources needed are:

• national grid (which in reality is the European grid, since it is all interconnected)
  • need to keep the grid stable, have enough capacity and robustness to transport the energy, also during exceptionally high or low demand
  • guarantee households, commerce, and industry enough power
  • the need to do this long-term, sustainably, both financially as well as environmentally
  • physical space for infrastructure
• power companies (those exploiting power stations and windmill parks)
  • need for a sustainable business model, with enough margin for innovation and responsible management
  • enough information to predict demand on various timescales
  • reliable grid
• energy companies (those trading in energy)
  • need for information, and energy to sell, to effectively manage supply and demand
• EV charging hardware suppliers and EV charging service providers
  • again, a sustainable business model and information
  • energy needs to be available at the locations themselves (physically)
• energy collectives (community - organised production & consumption, usually geographically localised)
  • coherent community
  • somewhat predictable usage needs and production capacity (information)
  • backup links to the grid, both for supply and demand
• households, possibly with power generation and or storage facilities
  • stable, reliable grid and energy supply
  • fair pricing for both supplied energy and possibly offered storage capacity
• EV owners (possibly with vehicle-to-grid capabilities)
  • stable, reliable grid and energy supply
  • highest possible charging capacity
  • enough charging locations, in the local neighbourhood on the freeways and ‘in the country’
  • high availability of these charging locations
• ICE (normal) vehicle owners (need parking spaces which are scarce)
  • parking availability in the local neighbourhood (in competition with EV-only parking spots)

We have ordered these roughly in order of impact of failure. From top to bottom, an outage has less and less impact or is less likely to be total. At the bottom, the poor housefather and his family are (moderately) impacted when their car has to be parked a bit further away; the rest of the ‘system’ is not affected. Going up the ladder, failure becomes more impactful.

It seems natural, in this case, to define the size of the interest along these lines. It is, however, good to note that numbers may make up for size, especially when organised in the context of governance and policy rules.

We see both common and conflicting interests. A stable grid is a common interest, as is good information exchange. Local parking conflicts of interest are currently actual; land and space are scarce resources. As is storage, and the energy itself, of course.

This is by no means an exhaustive analysis but serves to illustrate the potential complexity in dealing with designing governance of technical systems. We do believe, however, that developing technologies can help to make the challenge more manageable. We need not name the current technology buzzwords, and indeed will not, but there is a definite opportunity to help manage this complexity.

What resources do we deal with in the digital realm, and how are they distributed? When we talk about digital resources, we talk about the digital items and objects that can be created, bought, traded, mined, or gathered. There are different kinds of digital resources. For example, one type of resource is the internet’s physical infrastructure; think of servers, computers, cables, satellites, and smaller elements such as lithium and gold. A more virtual type of resource is knowledge-based resources; these are the articles and information available through (academic) journals, online newspapers, or public research. Non-fungible tokens are another kind of resource: digital stamps that are not copyable and can be used to track digital ownership. We can also think of digital resources that make use of blockchain technology, such as cryptocurrencies. But perhaps the most crucial resources in this digital age are attention and findability. The abundance of information and content online makes capturing the attention of users, clients, and investors a challenge.

While some of these digital resources might seem abundant and infinite, certain limitations create scarcity in these resources. These can be physical in the sense that computers, screens, and servers are limited in their size, memory capacity, and bandwidth. However, there are also digital limitations that create scarcity: think of newspaper content that is hidden behind paywalls or the limited amount of information that can be displayed on Google’s first page. Essentially, digital scarcity is created through the limitations that people encounter when accessing data and information. For virtual goods, these limitations are often artificial. Web developers have created paywalls and the graphic design of Google's front page to create order in the available information and uphold a business model. Mike Masnik argues in his blogpost on TechDirt that digital resources are not scarce by nature but scarce by design.

Scarcity is a subjective and abstract concept that is difficult to compare across cases. We can distinguish between absolute and relative scarcity. Absolute scarcity tracks the exact amount that exists of a specific resource. For example, gold is an absolute scarce product as the amount of gold in the world is limited. However, the scarcity of a resource is not distributed evenly across geographical locations and social groups; where some people have access to a lot of water - or even regularly face floods - other people experience droughts and have to conserve their water use. Thus, while there might be enough water absolutely, the uneven distribution of drink water creates relative scarcity. In short, people experience a different kind or amount of scarcity of a resource based on their geographical location and socio-economic position.

For this project, we chose to investigate the relative scarcity people might experience in each use case. It makes power relations and hierarchies between stakeholders clear and helps to compare the different cases to each other. An example of how the relative scarcity you might experience largely depends on power is the Waag project Laadpaalinfrastrutuur (English: Charging Station Infrastructure). Here, the primary resource is access to charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Access to charging infrastructure and electricity depends on one’s position in society and wealth. We will further investigate this case study below.

We have spoken about power as a determinant in the distribution of resources. However, we can also see power as a resource in itself. This also means you can experience a scarcity of power. For example, think of the digital, largely open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Some pages on Wikipedia can only be edited by people who have already proven their expertise and trustworthiness by successfully authoring or editing other pages. The “Wikipedia:About” page is an example of this. Through asserting your expertise and aiding the community, you can gain more power. This, in turn, gives you access to unique responsibilities and allowances. Thus, while the amount of power you have can determine the number of resources you have access to, we can also think of power as a resource in itself.

As the discussion above clarifies, there is no clear definition of a digital resource or scarcity; there are many different types of digital resources and scarcities. We have investigated different use cases to discover what kinds of digital resources and scarcities we encounter daily. While we hope to have found a representative selection of resources and scarcities, this collection is not exhaustive. Thus, we invite our readers to think critically and add or expand where they see fit.

While examining scarcity, we considered the limitations that might stand in the way of people accessing and interacting with online information - how power comes into play in the distribution of the resources and how the power is distributed itself. The sources we have used are mainly self-documented: this is the information that the organisations put forth themselves. While this information is reliable, it might not give the complete picture. Moreover, the discussion of these cases is not exhaustive: there are more resources and different kinds of scarcity that are not discussed here. Nevertheless, these cases can serve as a starting point for the investigation into digital resources and scarcity.

Decidim is a free and open-source platform that facilitates participatory democracy between cities, organisations, and citizens. People can use Dedicim to meet, facilitate decision-making procedures, write grant proposals, and monitor voting procedures. The primary resource of participatory democracy is the attention of the public and the traction of the community’s political agenda. A limited number of social issues can be in the center of attention simultaneously. Take, for example, the complementary political agendas of anti-racism groups and feminist groups. While both are fighting against the oppression of certain social groups, many people think that one has priority over and merely focus on fighting one of the two oppressions. They assume that one needs to be solved before they can work on the solution for the other. The public eye can only focus on a limited number of issues at the same time; the attention of a social group is finite and needs to be distributed over the issues.

An essential resource in digital technologies is electricity and access to electricity - this becomes apparent in the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. While electricity might seem abundant and ubiquitous due to its intangible nature, the current electricity network and charging infrastructure has certain physical limitations. In its current state, the Dutch electricity network does not have the capacity to charge all future electric cars. There are only a limited number of charging stations spread around cities and highways. Moreover, these charging stations can be occupied for a long time when cars are parked in public spots. Additionally, there are also private charging stations that come into the equation. Some of these are placed in front of private properties by the municipality and seem private but are, in fact, publicly available.

An interesting phenomenon here is that the perceived abundance of energy and electricity can actually lead to an increase in its scarcity. Vasilis Kostakis and Andreas Roos wrote for the Harvard Business Review:

“When more efficient machines use less energy, they cost less, which often encourages us to use them more—resulting in a net increase in energy consumption. Therefore, efficiency is better understood as a rearranging of resources expenditures, such that efficiency improvements in one end of the world economy increase resource expenditures in the other end.”

This can also be translated into the case of charging infrastructure, as electricity is seen as abundant and ever prevalent. As private and public institutions invest in the growing charging infrastructure network, citizens might be compelled to invest in an electric car. However, this will only increase the demand for electricity and charging stations. The perceived abundance actually increases the scarcity of the charging stations.

Another interesting point is that the people who are not strictly shareholders might still have an opinion and interest regarding the matter. For example, many charging stations are constructed next to parking spots. These spaces used to be available for everyone but are now limited to the people who own electric cars and want to charge them. Thus, with an increase in charging stations also comes an increase in scarcity regarding available public parking spaces. This is an example of relative scarcity: the kind and amount of scarcity someone experiences is specific to their socio-economic and geographical position.

Wikipedia is a digital, largely open-source, and free encyclopedia. Users can contribute and edit all the content on the open Wikipedia pages, such as text, images, and references. There are rules and regulations to ensure the quality and legitimacy of the content; for example, all contributions must be verifiable and reviewed. Wikipedia is designed so that the contributions can be reversed and older texts can be recovered in case of mistakes or vandalism. Experienced editors are always keeping an eye out to verify whether the contributions fit with the community guidelines.

Wikipedia is an example of wanting to limit the scarcity of knowledge and power because everyone has access to the information, and everyone can make edits. One way the power on Wikipedia is unevenly distributed is that some people have more edit rights than other people. The more experienced you are in editing, the higher up you come in the hierarchy of editors. Editors in higher positions are trusted and allowed to edit and author any page, while newcomers might encounter restrictions on established pages. Moreover, the edits of the newcomers need to be checked and vetted before they are published. This is not the case for experienced editors.

The resources on Wikipedia are the pages themselves as well as the attention of the reader. Wikipedia is known for its wide range of content; you can find everything from the history of political disputes to in-depth knowledge of astrophysics and music genres. Moreover, a significant amount of the pages on Wikipedia are available in multiple languages to increase accessibility. Nevertheless, Wikipedia has technological scarcity as there can only be one page per subject per language. This means that the contributors must cooperate and compromise on their subjective opinions to make room for information that is as objective as possible. Interestingly, contributors do not receive credit for their contributions as the content is more important than its ownership. Additionally, the content on the pages is organised hierarchically. This often means that the reader merely reads the first couple of paragraphs to get a short overview of the topic. This nudges the contributors to concentrate the most important content in the first couple of paragraphs. However, due to the graphic design of Wikipedia, these first paragraphs are limited in space. This creates artificial scarcity in the amount of information that can be shared at the top of the hierarchy.

Technical protocols can sneakily implement social rules by determining the options for how a conversation is organised, how people vote, and what other ‘affordances’ people have when using a piece of technology. Online, the options presented to us (for example, to like or comment) define the possibilities of our interactions with others and steer them in a particular direction. As Lawrence Lessig observed, ‘Code is law.’

Consider the binaries inherent in ‘upvote and downvote’ or ‘support or against’ functions. These options require that one be for or against an idea. But where are the options for ‘This is interesting, but...’ or ‘I have a 3rd opinion’? In many cases, the options presented online limit the potential for moderate, nuanced interaction in favor of more polarising interactions.

Even when a course of action is technically possible, certain technical options lead to phenomena like nudging and self-censorship. If a platform requires you to use your Facebook account to log in, you might be less likely to share your honest political opinions because they could be tied back to you. On the other hand, platforms that require no authentication make it more likely that you’ll run into trolls, robots, or other unsavory web dwellers.

All of this is to say that even banal technical options have profound consequences for our freedom when using technology. Perhaps most important are the options not presented to us: Where is the option on Facebook to delete multiple friends at once? To start a petition to change the privacy standards? To remove all of the information that they have about you? Those options do not exist, so we do not have the power to do these things.

For a technology to be governed democratically, it must have the mechanisms or technical affordances that allow for democratic interaction. For example, suppose a web service wants to implement a representative democratic structure. In that case, people using that service must play a part in designing it and have technical options that allow for democratic interaction (for example, to contact their representatives). If a city wants to host a forum for residents, it may want to both verify a person’s residency and maintain that person’s privacy and confidentiality (perhaps using attribute-based credentials). And if that city wants to promote collaboration rather than opposition, they will have to openly (with involvement of the community) explore which technical options for interaction are possible - perhaps shying away from those tricky ‘up down, yes no’ binaries.

It should not be up to developers and tech companies to decide which options we have for interacting with one another. It should be up to us, the people, enforced by legislation and made iteratively possible through the co-creation of digital public spaces which explore and present the possibilities for more democratic technology.

So how can we make technology democratic? How do we best translate our ideals into code? What technical affordances do we want to allow ourselves? There are no perfect answers, but the resources and case studies below offer insight into people's challenges and opportunities when human interaction and governance collide with technology.

When I mention that I’m working on ‘digital public spaces,’ people often bring up two examples: Reddit and digital tools for participatory democracy like Decidim, Consul, and Your Priorities. Are these digital public spaces? My answer is ‘no,’ although admittedly, this is opinion more than fact. In many respects, these examples do indeed resemble digital public spaces in certain ways and can inform choices that we might make in developing them.

Let’s take the subreddit Ask Historians and the participatory democracy platform Decidim as examples to consider this comparison more closely. Importantly, neither space aims nor claims to be a digital public space. It is not their goal. They can, however, inform the development of digital public spaces; AskHistorians and Decidim are both thriving online communities fostering constructive bottom-up collaboration from behind separate computer screens.

Reddit is a formerly-but-no-longer open source forum that majority shareholder Advance Publications now owns. This poses an immediate distinction between Reddit and Decidim: Reddit is ‘for profit’ and controlled by a fully private group that has a market-based (for profit) aim.

The basic technical functions of Reddit allow people to create original text, link, or image (and in some cases now video) posts; upvote or downvote; and respond in conversational text threads. There are also site-wide rules banning, for example, child pornography or doxxing. Subreddits - sub-communities dedicated to a particular subject within the larger Reddit platform - are tied to the technical affordances of the site as a whole. However, individual subreddits can and often do set their own rules and standards for content submission, discussion, and moderation.

AskHistorians is a ‘subreddit’ notable for its high-quality historical content, large audience, and strict rules on moderation. Its rules have been developed (and enforced) by volunteer moderators who also ‘model normative behavior’ (Gilbert). AskHistorians’ placement within Reddit impacts its autonomy as a community, such as setting its own rules for voting and visibility of posts. Sarah Gilbert explains how the rules and culture of Reddit as a whole permeate the Ask Historians subreddit:

‘...technological features, such as distributed moderation, and a culture of free speech contribute to overarching values and norms that pose challenges to volunteer moderators of subreddits, like r/AskHistorians, that operate under different values.’

Gilbert also writes:

‘Reddit’s largely white and masculine culture, combined with technical features that visualise moderation in ways largely interpreted as censorship make the work of public history emotionally laborious and may discourage participation by those with knowledge or interests outside of Western men’s history, thus creating a vicious cycle.’

The point is that AskHistorians moderators, users, and readers of the platform cannot change Reddit’s technological affordances (and, to a certain extent, its culture). There is no guarantee to access, no route for representation, and, in essence, no way for people to challenge or propose changes to the way the site works. Moreover, much of how the site functions is proprietary - for example, its visibility algorithm (that determines what content people see) is secret. This lack of public transparency, accountability, and representation is the fundamental reason why any space on Reddit cannot be a digital public space.

Decidim is an open-source online platform that facilitates participatory democracy. It was developed with public funds, upon democratic values (rather than for profit). It can be modified and deployed in local settings so long the changes align with the platform’s social contract. As described by the Barcelona municipality, ‘“The logic behind Decidim is that you can create a participatory space and combine different components to design a customised democracy.”

Code changes are governed through Metadecidim, which is both open (anyone can participate) and transparent (discussions and decisions are presented in the open). The site also presents a basic overview of the governance process:

1. Suggest your change in Metadecidim
2. Wait until the Product Team reviews and accept the feature, as it’s important to be consistent with the rest of the software, comply with the Social Contract, etc.
3. Then you can make the Pull Request.
4. The Pull Request will get reviewed by:
5. The Product Team will review the functionality
6. Maintainers will review the code quality

Some things that you need to take into account about this process:

• If you make the Pull Request without Product Team approval, you could get rejected (after investing lots of time developing).
• Proposals can receive endorsements, although these are not decisive for a proposal to be included on the roadmap. The endorsements serve as indicators of the interest of the proposal or the need it covers. The comments to the proposals are also enabled to collectively elaborate the initial idea and bring it to a productive result.
• Every Thursday, the Product team reviews all new proposals that have been published the previous week.
• If no funding is available, it is included in the backlog of the corresponding component or module.

Considering all of the above, is Decidim a digital public space? I am not sure, and I am not sure whether it is intended to be one. Nonetheless, it provides a great starting point for us to consider how a digital public space might work.

We need to account for the difference between Decidim the platform and Decidim as a local implementation facilitated by a municipality. In some ways, the latter may resemble digital public spaces more than the former. For example, imagine a city that maintains all citizens have a right to use or refuse Decidim; or that the decisions made there were legally binding; or that citizens can meet with developers to propose and develop their own functionalities or technical affordances for voting and deliberation. There are many ways in which a particular implementation of Decidim can (and has) become increasingly public as the public is given more mandate over how the technology is utilised.

This interaction between Decidim as infrastructure or technology and Decidim as a local digital participatory platform can also inform digital public spaces. How can we develop technology and infrastructure for digital public spaces that are themselves public while also allowing for the localised deployment of these digital public spaces, which are locally public and, to the extent possible, autonomous? Where should we draw the lines of representation when not everyone can, should, or will want a say in every matter? Decidim presents one way to answer these questions through code, design processes, and governance based on democratic values.

There is more to digital public spaces than online deliberation. Digital public spaces will not resemble Reddit or Decidim. Instead, they will be more of an ecosystem - a network of infrastructure, technology, and services built upon shared principles and developed through a thorough public deliberation process. But within digital public spaces, there may indeed be ‘subspaces’ where deliberation occurs in a way that does look like Reddit and Decidim. So what would be different in the digital public spaces version of a forum or participatory platform?

Most fundamentally, in digital public spaces, people’s rights ought to be guaranteed by rules and design. People have a right to be there, a right to representation, a right to know how the code is being used and a right to propose changes. Like Decidim, digital public spaces will need to be backed by a social contract. In contrast, however, the social contract that is the foundation of digital public spaces must be subject to the accountability mechanisms that we demand of any democratic public process and backed with the same societal mandate.

Ultimately, the technical affordances that we have online - to like or dislike, to vote up or down, to be (or not to be) subjected to surveillance while interacting - are increasingly the rules of our lives and our democracy. We ought to treat them as such and build technology through public processes that place democratic values at the forefront.

With the advent of the internet, everyone has also been given a digital identity to show the provider of information or services who we are. Most simply because if a (digital) system has regulations, people are subject to those regulations and must be addressable. We often do that without thinking about it. We create a profile with an online shopping provider, with a social media platform, or with another new app. That way, the providers can know who we are and what we do. A digital identity is also required to communicate digitally with the government. However, this need for digital identity is at odds with the values of digital privacy and anonymity. It should be possible for citizens to chose to not share, or to retract and delete their (personal) data, without losing access to important services. In other words, citizens should to be in control over their own data. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, as services and business models are built on the assumption that the citizens are willing to relinquish their data. Thus, digital identity and its regulation are central aspects of digital public spaces. To learn more about these issues and the ensuing tension fields, have a look at this set of resources on digital identity.