If the descentralization of social networks continue, we will have to prepare for the eventual rise of the instances wars, where people will start to fight about which instance is better and which one is weird to be in and so on, but that’s for the future of us all.
You may also be interested in this wiki page about direct democracy. Notably, the framers of the US Constitution were very concerned about the tyranny of the majority. All the institutions and checks and balances in the system are there precisely because you can’t always trust large groups of people. Direct democracy is highly problematic, at least as much so as a system with intermediaries.
I mean, I get the concept of democracy vs republic.
The key point is that in a republic the few who hold more power are elected by the many to rule them. Moderators don’t work like that.
If we do mod elections, I’m all for it. Sometimes (as they would say in ancient Rome) you just can’t get it done without a dictator.
If we want to elect some temporary mods to deal with temporary existence of problems that can’t be solved without absolute power, that’s a lot more reasonable than having permanent mods that aren’t elected.