Coop Exchange | Data Co-ops – 4 Examples and New Ideas (Apr 2020)

Summary

In 2017, the Economist published an article claiming that oil had been replaced as the world’s most valuable resource by data. However, the people producing the data, internet users, are not the ones who own and reap the benefits. It is captured by tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, enabling them to grow into the most powerful and valuable companies in the world.

Cooperative ownership of data might provide an alternative, and unlike many other proposed solutions, has already been proven to work. Below are four examples of data cooperatives in action.