Take Back the App!

Summary

Take Back the App! We need platform co-ops now more than ever. If the 19th and 20th centuries were about storming the factory and taking back the means of production, then the 21st century is about storming the online platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and the apps that increasingly control our economy and our lives. Increasingly, we’re living online, controlled and manipulated by secretive, for-profit companies, but there are alternatives. This week, Laura talks with coders, activists and tech entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of the platform cooperative movement. If we take the cooperative route, they argue that tomorrow’s online world could distribute rather than concentrate power—but will we? Recorded before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this conversation about the companies that mediate our lives is more relevant now than ever.