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choices on paper collected every four years. We may have to rethink and reinvent viable democratic procedures under network conditions. GL: True. Many of our generation have shied away from the challenge. Instead we have put all our cards on the indirect forms of influence—such as change in mentality, spirit, education, or other politics towards the body—with the aim to undermine power as such. New forms of decision making have been developed but they are often avoiding the formal level of decision making, such as consensus-building during the assembly. Our experience with the ‘network conditions’, as you call it, has only been indirect. We grew up with opinion polls and now live under the regime of Cambridge Analytica, in which target audiences can be influenced on the level of the individual user. At the same time, we are used to ‘striking back’ in the form of dissenting behaviours and opinions. What we know best is the creation of ‘participatory cultures’, to use the ugly term of Henry Jenkins. However, Silicon Valley carefully prevents us from turning desperate disappeared voices into decision making machines. In Germany, the cultural elite is still afraid of the ‘vox populi’. Denazification is, more than 70 years later, still an unfinished project. In the Netherlands, where bluntness is considered part of the proud national character, citizens have recently lost the right to cast a referendum. In short, we ’re going backwards. As you say, there’s no progress. Dutch hackers have been campaigning against unsafe internet voting software for at least two decades. What’s left are tiny pockets of virtual communities that experiment with internal voting apps, such as Loomio. We’re still afraid of the ‘fluctuations of our opinion’, to use a phrase of Jean Baudrillard. His analysis has proven to be wrong: we’re not fascinated by our own ‘fluctuations’. We’re afraid of our own opinions concerning the Other, and this is precisely the exploit trolls so effectively explore. So, instead of the automation of democracy, I would argue for the creation of offensive network cultures that can make hegemonic claims. This is why the development of alternative social media architectures is so urgent. Inside those social systems, we can experiment with decentralized digital decision-making and go from there. A top-down approach right now would be disastrous.