Platform Co-op Governance: Deep Democracy on Scale

Summary

Why I am interested in platform governance

To me, this is a core puzzle to solve in these times. Platform cooperatives will shape our lives in the future. Platforms are our opportunity to connect and meet our basic needs (which includes our digital needs) in a way that can either extractive (platforms run by non-coooperative corporations) or it can keep ownership with the people who maintain control over their infrastructure, their money, their data, their connections.

While shared ownership seems more doable, I see cooperatives struggle with governance. The desire is for cooperatives to be democratic (whatever that means), in alignment with the cooperative principles. However, the more members a cooperative has, the more separation there will be between the member voice and the staff/stewards who run the platform. (I will refer to the people running the platform as staff/stewards; for governance questions, it does not matter whether the role is a paid role; it can even be mixed staff with volunteers in a team.)