Your community decides who governs each category of cultural knowledge — and how. Not the platform.
Not all knowledge inside a community is the same. A family photograph from a reunion is different from a recording of a ceremony that only certain people are meant to hear. A language term for a kinship role is different from a sacred word that belongs only to the initiated. A migration story shared openly is different from a healing practice restricted to practitioners.
Most platforms treat all content identically — a single access control that either everyone can see or no one can. ECO's Cultural Protocols feature recognises that communities have always governed their own knowledge, in their own categories, with their own rules about who decides. The platform provides the mechanism; the community provides the authority.
Each category of cultural knowledge — oral histories, ceremonial recordings, language archives, land memory, healing practices, restricted traditions — gets its own named owners and its own authority mode. Owners can be individuals, roles, or collectives. Authority can be independent (any single owner can act) or consensus (all owners must agree).
Not an access control setting. A governance framework your community writes for itself.
What categories of knowledge does your community hold? Oral histories. Ceremonial recordings. Language archives. Land and water memory. Healing practices. Restricted traditions. The Historian and the Conductor name the categories that matter for this community — the platform doesn't presume to know them in advance.
For each category, the community names the people who hold authority over it. An elder council. A language keeper. A ceremonial leader. A family of practitioners. Owners can be individuals or roles — the community decides. Named owners are network members, so they are already inside the network's private structure.
Independent authority means any single named owner can grant or withdraw access on their own — faster, suitable for less sensitive categories. Consensus authority means all named owners must agree before access changes — slower, appropriate for sacred or restricted knowledge. The community chooses the mode for each category separately.
When access to a cultural category is granted or withdrawn, that decision is recorded inside the network. No external party is notified. No government agency, researcher, university, or institution receives a report. The governance record is the community's own document.
The Cultural Protocols feature is presented explicitly as a starting point for community conversation — not a finished document the platform imposes. Every category, every owner, every rule is editable. The authority the community holds over this framework is the same authority it holds over the knowledge itself: permanent, unconditional, and not subject to platform approval.
Most platforms enforce their own rules about what content can exist. ECO's Cultural Protocols feature inverts that: the community writes the rules, and the platform enforces them. A restricted recording stays restricted. A consensus-governed archive cannot be accessed without all owners agreeing. The platform is infrastructure for the community's own governance — not an authority above it.