A fully decentralized solution is definitely possible. And desirable. Not just the App Store, but all sorts of questions and decisions. Many of them, including the App Store, boil down to the tools that we use to communicate with each other: what are those tools and more importantly who is in charge of deciding how they work.
The question is not whether we want moderation and curation, yes or no. Bc the answer to that question is yes. The real question is who decides, and how does the moderation and curation take place. Saying it should be done in a decentralized fashion does not equal let’s have zero moderation or curation, although it understandably might seem that way without having a clear vision of how it is even possible, or without even believing that it is possible.
But it is possible. Consider the English language, a tool for communication in the analog world. Who’s in charge of deciding what words mean what? Answer: nobody is in charge. No centralized bodies at all. And yet we — seemingly magically — somehow manage to agree to call a pencil a pencil. No committees, no standards bodies, yet we agree on most of these tools of communication. That is an example of loose consensus, in the non-digital world.
In the digital world, I think loose consensus is very much possible. We just haven’t implemented it yet. What would happen to the English language if websters dictionary shut down, and no one took their place? Basically nothing. Old words would still work, new ones would still churn into existence. But what would happen if the w3c stopped issuing standards, and no one took their place? Chaos, relatively speaking. No one would be able to agree on new standards for anything. Just like the cartoon, every attempt at fixing the problem of “too many standards” would just mean adding one more standard to the pile. Without centralized standards bodies, it would be a digital Tower of Babel.
But the thing is, I think loose consensus is actually not that complex to implement digitally. It’s just that we haven’t done it yet. 🤷🏻♂️
