People love to claim that once an Internet forum or message board gets big enough, it morally “belongs” to the users. That’s a comforting illusion—but it falls apart the second you look at who actually pays the bills and holds the keys.
Because unless those users are actually paying the bills, all this supposed moral obligation really does is dump the burden onto the one footing the costs. That doesn’t strike me as moral at all.
And message boards are transient by nature. People show up, feel invested for a while, then drift away. To claim that their fleeting sense of ownership creates a lasting obligation on the admin is unrealistic.
Ortega y Gasset warned about this in The Revolt of the Masses. When something is said to be “owned by the people,” it rarely means real stewardship. It means the mass asserts itself and the loudest voices dictate terms. That isn’t democracy—it’s populism sitting on top of a hierarchy.
Because if the software itself is hierarchical but claims to be “for the masses,” that isn’t democracy either. It’s just a pyramid structure dressed up in populist rhetoric. The admin still has the keys. The mods still enforce. The users still depend on both.
That’s why I insist on running my own server. I’d rather be upfront: I curate and maintain a space I’m willing to take responsibility for. That’s not authoritarian and it’s not populist.
It’s just owning what I host instead of pretending the power structure doesn’t exist.