#benevolentdictators — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

"Dictators aren't necessarily any more prone to these lapses in judgment than anyone else. Benevolent dictators actually exist, people who only retain power because they genuinely want to use that power for good. Those people aren't more likely to fly off the handle or talk themselves into bad places than you or me – but to be a dictator (benevolent or otherwise) is to exist without the consequences that prevent you from giving in to those impulses. Worse: if you are the dictator – again, benevolent or otherwise – of a big, structurally important company or nonprofit that millions of people rely on, the consequences of these lapses are extremely consequential.

This is how BDFL arrangements turn sour: by removing themselves from formal constraint, the people whose screwups matter the most end up with the fewest guardrails to prevent themselves from screwing up.

No wonder people who set out to do good, to help others find safe and satisfying digital homes online, find themselves feeling furious and beset. Given those feelings, can we really be surprised when "benevolent" dictators discover that they have sympathy for real-world autocrats whose core ethos is, "I know what needs to be done and I could do it, if only the rest of you would stop nagging me about petty bullshit that you just made up 10 minutes ago but now insist is the most important thing in the world?"

That all said, it's interesting to look at the process by which some BDFLs transitioned to community-run projects with checks and balances. I often think about how Wikipedia's BDFL, the self-avowed libertarian Jimmy Wales, decided (correctly, and to his everlasting credit), that the project he raised from a weird idea into a world-historic phenomenon should not be ruled over by one guy, not even him.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/10/bdfl/#high-on-your-own-supply

#Startups #SiliconValley #BenevolentDictators #Democracy