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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

The Internet of Ownership Archive

After the first platform cooperativism conference in 2015, I started the Internet of Ownership website (first internetofownership.net, then ioo.coop) in order to map and keep track of the rapidly growing platform co-op global community. The website included a directory of projects and a library of resources, and it also began hosting blog posts that reflected on the meaning and ends of the platform co-op movement. The project was always sort of a stop-gap, maintained by volunteers, including Devin Balkind and Danny Spitzberg, in addition to me. By 2021, our friends at the Platform Cooperativism Consortium had created a replacement directory and resources archive poised to be more accessible and institutionally sustainable than the Internet of Ownership. So, embracing the art of obsolescence, we decided to close the Internet of Ownership down. We are grateful that GEO has stepped forward to host our blog posts, which shed light on the development of platform cooperativism and related efforts. Indeed, this evolution reflects the respects in which platform cooperativism has become less a phenomenon requiring dedicated spaces and more an aspect of the broader cooperative movement.

—Nathan Schneider (University of Colorado Boulder)

 

Investor Owned vs. User Owned Platforms

The Very First Oakland Co-op DiscoTech

Platform Cooperativism as a Critique of Open-Source

Disaster Cooperativism

Cooperative Organizing for an Inclusive Economy: The campaign to #BuyTwitter

One Person, One Vote or One Dollar, One Vote and Blockchain

15 Ideas For Cooperative Platforms

An Internet of ownership: democratic design for the online economy

Business Can Do More: Leadership and Ownership in the 21st Century

Equity-Free Fundraising: Here are our Revenue-Share Term Sheets

Hypothesis: ESOPs for the Online Economy

Living, Breathing Platforms

Maybe It’s Time for Readers of Real News to Band Together

Next, the Internet: Building a Cooperative Digital Space

Pools: A Proposal for One-Click Co-ops in Online Groups

Prospectus: IoOCloud, a Cloud-Services Cooperative

Reading Elinor Ostrom in Silicon Valley

Reciproka: Facilitating Open Cooperativism

Savvy Cooperative: What’s in a Name?

Social.coop: A Cooperative Decentralized Social Network

Starting A Cooperative Platform: 10 Questions We Answered

Startups Need a New Option: Exit to Community

A Letter to My Mutual Insurance Company

Taking Joint Control: Trade Union and Co-operative Solutions for Decent Work

The Case For #WeAreTwitter: Why Twitter-as-a-co-op might actually be a smart business idea

The Curafied Co-op Story: A Prequel

The Limits of Idealism

Two Proposals Regarding Mark Zuckerberg’s Stock

Update from Resonate, a Music Streaming Co-op

#WeAreTwitter and the FairShares Model—a match made in heaven?

We’re Converting Our Startup To A Cooperative. Here’s Why.

When Platform Coops are Seen, What Goes Unseen?

Why Is It So Hard to Pay for Contributions?