6 Ideas on How Millions of Users Can Own and Govern Twitter

Summary

Next month, Twitter’s shareholders will vote on a proposal to explore the possibility of the company turning into a partial or full user-owned platform cooperative. A platform cooperative is a website or mobile app, which provides a service or sells a product, that is collectively owned and governed by the users and members who depend on the platform — instead of shareholders. You may have heard about the stock photo site Stocksy — the organization is a platform co-op that’s owned and governed by its member-photographers. But how would a platform as large as Twitter be governed by its users? To gain some insight on how it may operate, we co-hosted a Google Hangout last week.

The discussion centered on the importance of collaborative decision-making of tech platforms: What are the unique challenges — and potential solutions — when it comes to governance for platform co-ops, especially when their users are massive and remote? What are the foundations, pre-conditions, and key elements that enable collaborative deliberation? What are some real-world examples of how this can play out?