How to Make Real Online Communities

Jon Garfunkel
February 2025

What do we need to make online civic communities work? It’s been many over 30 years since Howard Rheingold wrote the book The Virtual Community, and we’re still searching for the formula.

Eli Pariser, a co-founder of civic the research group New_ Public who I much admire, had this to say recently:

“I think we need to think beyond the commercial platforms and start thinking about, how do we build community in other ways online and in ways that foreground civic virtue rather than just commerce?”

This echoes a common concern being made by social media observers in academia and collectives as the new “Free Our Feeds” initiative (“Save Social Media From Billionaire Capture.”)

My dissent is that the problem of the platform being a “commercial” entity isn’t actually germane. Most of the companies providing organizing platforms, from the big names like SalesForce and LinkedIn, to smaller players like Heartbeat and Clickup, are for-profit entities.

Why the suspicion about commercial services? Two answers: Facebook and Twitter. The latter, of course, has gone a curious route through its rebirth as “X”; as a fully open space, it was never really practical for communities, which often work best when members-only. But Facebook, at least, still enjoys popular reach, and supports groups. 68% of American adults, and, as long ago as 2011, 2/3 of users participated in groups. Facebook is large enough that it is perceived as a common carrier, and as such they have to be involved in speech moderation, and thus has had to bend to the larger political winds in the last decade.

The problem is not really that Facebook is “commercial.” The acute problem is that they are largely funded by commercial advertising. They don’t offer a paid package to groups (as all the other-mentioned vendors). Any group wishing to organize its members on Facebook has the curious problem that they’re not actually paying for it. If they’re not paying customers, they have little sway over what the software does; the salespeople represent only the advertisers, not the users. There are certainly things that Facebook could do to improve the group experience, as I have shared previously -- how to actually get them to do it is another matter.

It may seem extraordinary for any group to pay since many of them are only virtual and have no existence in the real world -- no paying members, no budget, no officers. Nathan Schneider of the University of Colorado looked at online groups and compared them to his mother’s community garden club: “Few online groups I had been part of could hold a candle to the simple and effective set of rules that had governed the garden club since the 1960s, rules unremarkable among countless similar organizations with a vast range of purposes. Few online groups will last so long.” 

And thus, the folly might be thinking that the main connection to a virtual world ought to be a general discussion group. In my own town, we have 3 large general Facebook groups with thousands of members: a “Community Discussions”, “Neighbors and Policy”, and “Moms 2.0” (named such after some dispute with the “original” Moms group). The first leans left; the second is more comfortable to the moderate-right; the latter is nominatively for Moms, though it appears to have some men as members as well. They handle whatever miscellaneous conversations arise. Some members of the Community Discussions post as if it were an adjunct of the town Democratic committee, as the membership has a high degree of overlap, but, at the same time, it isn’t.

There is nothing really in the way of the town Democrats organizing their own group or any other free-forming associations: the Rotary Club, a League of Woman Voters, a Chamber of Commerce, a Parent-Teachers Association, municipal advisory boards, and county advisory boards, and yes, garden clubs. The 18th Century observer of America, Alexis De Tocqueville, whom Schneider cites approvingly in his recent book Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, would be quite proud.

Almost none of these groups are digital -- for the simple reason that many are comfortable meeting in person. If you want to be involved, show up at a meeting; they are all local. But this walls off any casual engagement. 

The average citizen may not even be aware of a given group, or if they do, only know it as some abstract group of people they don’t know. And then they need to find out who is on the board, and if they know any of them, and how to reach them, and how they might bring up something for the agenda. It may simply be easiest to float the question on a local group and simply hope that somebody reading has the sense and sensibility to give a decent and informed answer.

Here’s an example: take the train, literally. Being in a New York suburb, transit service is quite popular, a quarter of the commuters in the county rely on mass transit. With the embrace of congestion pricing, more people are now riding the trains, and more than a few are wondering how to advocate for more service. A train conductor suggested that commuters “tweet about it” to raise awareness, though that seems to be a very primitive way to collect public opinion by an agency with a $20 billion annual budget. There’s a Facebook group of Metro North Friends, but these appear to be mostly retired employees and railfans, not actual rider advocates. On the other hand there is the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council (PCAC)  to the MTA, the official state-authorized committee. This council has only a marginal online presence. There is a website, the meetings are listed, with Zoom access numbers. The council members are listed; but do not provide their email addresses. I only happen to have found them because I’d posted once on the unofficial railroad group and one of the board members answered and explained to me that the PCAC in fact existed. 

I’ve wondered if a digital community were organized somewhat like the multinational companies I’ve worked at: these days every project is online and findable. You can see who is on a project, and connect with them; you can ask a question or request a feature of that team. You’re effectively a “corporate citizen” without very much effort.

You could have the school PTA organize on a paid online platform with all of its subcommittees. I am working with environmental groups in the county and state to join a federated platform together. 

And, to put all the worries about “billionaire-owned” platforms aside -- we don’t need Facebook; we don’t need to wait for a yet-to-be-created replacement for Facebook. The tools exist today, though there are varying prices and features. I have been defining a standard called the 

Participatory Governance Framework; to provide the framework of features for what software platforms should provide, and how they could do it at prices suitable for volunteer groups. The Slack multi-channel discussion platform is a decent product, free for up to 250 users in a nonprofit. 

What’s stopping us from using it more? My rough sense is that people still like synchronous meetings: they like to be physically present; they may not want to spend more than 1-2 hours a month on a volunteer project; they may be done with screens following their workday. And yet, they still ought to consider the benefits of being open to casual members who can’t make every meeting, having a system for tracking ideas and discussions outside of meetings, and being able to collaborate across different groups who meet at different times.

We can start to get our associations committed to fully embracing digital technology, today. Or we could remain flailing around on old technology and systems and wondering why it hasn't our civic democracy more engaged, more responsive, &more impactful.