Abstract
In recent years, particularly since the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, broader discussions around platform economies, ‘platform’ or ‘surveillance capitalism,’ ‘technofeudalism,’ etc., have received significant and increased attention by politicians and policymakers, as well as by academics and the general public, with volumes like that by Ness et al. (2023) emerging recently and discussions in the pages of this journal. For instance, Fleming’s (2017, p. 13) call for a ‘return to solidarity’ in the platform economy; Newlands’s (2021) emphasis on ‘conceived space’ in the discussion of platforms; and Hannigan’s (2023) call for ‘a set of values and a way that we organize and connect with each other’ have framed problems around the intersection of the ethics, transparency, design, and organizational governance of online platforms, suggesting these as dimensions of interest in the governance of these resources. According to these discussions, the very nature of platforms necessitates an integrated approach to dealing with these and related thorny issues.
Such discussions were anticipated in 2014 when, together with Nathan Schneider, New School professor Trebor Scholz coined the term ‘platform cooperative’ (Scholz, p. 17). Scholz defines a platform cooperative as ‘a project or business that primarily uses a website, mobile app or protocol to sell goods (e.g., data) or services and relies on democratic decision-making and shared community ownership of the platform by workers and users’ (p. 8). The movement around platform cooperatives has been described as ‘scrappy,’ ‘a bit cyberpunk,’ and as ‘an unfinished experiment,’ referring to a loosely organized movement at the edges of open source, the gig economy, and the traditional cooperative movement (p. 19).
Own This!: How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet primarily provides a panorama of the varied experiences of the growing movement (‘more than 543’ [p. 8]) of platform cooperatives globally and seeks to orient general readers to the concept. It does this by harnessing concepts like the commons, unions, and social movements, and by contrasting the model with venture capital (VC)–funded tech platforms typically associated with the ‘sharing economy.’
Firstly, drawing on a tradition of studying commons going as far back as Elinor Ostrom and that recently includes Yochai Benkler and Vassili Kostakis, Scholz critiques both the ambivalence of the economic ‘scale’ concept (he speaks of ‘scaling up,’ ‘out,’ and ‘deep’) and E. F. Schumacher’s notion that ‘small is beautiful’ (pp. 47ff.). For Scholz, platform cooperatives instead demonstrate that ‘medium is nice, too’ (p. 53). Interpreting them as problem-solvers, Scholz argues that platform cooperatives are ‘like an IKEA wench, designed to fit specific screws and bolts’ (p. 78).
Secondly, Scholz also engages in a discussion of the shared historical legacy of trade unions and cooperatives (p. 102ff.), recounting the inspirational role of the Knights of Labor (p. 115) and their concept of a ‘cooperative commonwealth’ (p. 117). Juggling between such historical episodes and contemporary challenges, he connects so-called data cooperatives (p. 133) to the larger history of ‘mutual societies’ (p. 135). In fact, one of the most interesting provocations of the book is the observation that platform cooperatives are driving traditional actors in the worker movement, such as cooperative federations (pp. 24ff.) and unions (pp. 95ff.), to rethink their strategies and tactics in the face of a changing economy. Another interesting discussion in the book is that between ‘data portability’, referring to a user’s ability to exit an online network with modular data; ‘data ownership,’ a broader term asking who owns personal data; and ‘data sovereignty,’ referring to communities’ self-management of data-driven services like e-scooters (p. 143ff.). This conceptual mélange is a testament to fundamental socio-economic changes that will surely impact traditional social movements, labor unions, and cooperative federations worldwide.
Finally, Scholz argues that a future-proof solution to the problems presented by platforms lies in ‘a bricolage of organizational models’ beyond the VC-backed ‘sharing economy’ (p. 7). According to this view, the relative benefits of platform cooperatives include keeping tax revenues local, as opposed to leeching them off to tax havens (p. 11), in addition to contributing to a general ‘reimagining of our economic system that prioritizes equity, justice, and sustainability as a matter of urgency.’ (p. 28). Platform cooperatives facilitate this by moving away from the model of ‘crowd fleecing’ (p. 140) that is so ubiquitous in the classical ‘sharing economy.’ With Meta’s Threads juxtaposing one oligopoly against another (Musk’s Twitter), Scholz’s discussion of decentralized alternatives like Mastodon and social.coop (p. 148) is timely.
The book is richest in its detailed descriptions of real-life platform cooperatives. The panorama includes Bologna’s Consegno Etiche, a prosocial alternative to gig economy courier services delivered in dialogue with the city’s citizens (p. 62); SEWA, a women’s cooperative founded in Gujarat, India, in the 1970s (pp. 67ff.); Eva (p. 64) and Drivers Cooperative (pp. 14ff.), two ride-sharing platform cooperatives in Montreal and New York City, respectively, which have both since failed (though Drivers Cooperative is currently relaunching); Obran, a cooperatively owned holding company (p. 84); and Italian social cooperatives (pp. 89ff.).
Herein lies the book’s double-edged sword: Trebor Scholz has an astute talent for taking readers on a journey and framing urgent discussions in a way that Gujarati farmers and Brazilian public administrators find accessible, and one should commend the ability of getting the ear of such a diverse stakeholder pool as Scholz has done with his various initiatives. Yet, in a year marked by the election of a socialist candidate as New York’s mayor on a campaign laser-focused on a handful of tangible issues, the book could similarly have benefited from a bit more focus. Scholz presents a ‘bricolage’ of examples from current and past movements, including Allende’s Cybersyn, Maori efforts at data rights, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), data commons, ‘Buddhist economics,’ etc. In this reviewer’s opinion, this survey could have been more powerful by focusing on one or two of these examples and homing in on what lessons it/they provide(s) for the platform cooperative phenomenon—perhaps again with reference to the themes of commons, unions, and social movements, and contrasts—with the traditional ‘sharing economy,’ since doing justice to all of the mentioned narratives would have required a much larger volume. For example, Chile’s Cybersyn was inspired and advised by organizational scholar and cybernetician Stafford Beer, indicating the central importance of scholarship in accompanying visionaries in designing and implementing radical departures from the status quo, and so on.
Clearly, the book’s aim is to open space for broader discussions and ideation on organizational alternatives for online platforms and not to win an election. Still, as written, readers are at times left in the dark about what actually demarcates a platform cooperative, especially since many organizations profiled in the book are arguably not platform cooperatives in the sense that their business models are not primarily based on an app or website. Therefore, the book might have emphasized how platform cooperatives functionally differ from other multistakeholder cooperatives, such as service, social, or community cooperatives. 1
Finally, the book could have included more detailed policy implications, such as how countries or regions can and have legally recognized or embedded platform cooperatives in their legal architecture. This is not to say these things are entirely absent in the book. For instance, Scholz’s critical discussion of the EU’s GDPR data protection policy (p. 143ff.) is insightful, if short. More than anything, a more detailed exposition (including a summarizing table) of how a municipality like Barcelona promotes platform cooperatives could have pointed to best practices and given policymakers elsewhere a model to emulate.
This is not to say that the development of metrics and the analysis of processes and dynamics of interest involved are nonexistent or must be created from scratch. For instance, recent contributions like Biggiero (2024) outline an approach to the measurement of organizational democracy and could, with suitable amendment, connect the value added by platform cooperatives to their discrete ability to decentralize ownership, control, and governance of data. Similarly, De Filippi et al. (2024) present discourse around governance and transparency on blockchain technology, underscoring the transformative implications of technology on both regulatory and governance dimensions. The broader platform cooperative community should draw on these and related efforts.
Clearly, the cases presented in the book are compelling, and the discussion around the concept has put a point on the empty signifier that was ‘the sharing economy.’ Members of the general public looking not only for criticisms of the existing ‘gig economy,’ but beyond this for a cosmopolitan array of inspiring accounts of individuals and groups, including municipalities around the world, organizing themselves in ‘platform cooperatives,’ are well-served with this book. From drawing out the movement’s roots in Italian workerism (p. 139) to the final ‘letter from the future’ (pp. 160ff.), Trebor Scholz provides the general reader with a broad portrait of a growing global movement in under 200 pages.
Ultimately, this book serves as a quite dense invitation or conversation starter, a ‘bricolage’ of contemporary woes and ongoing struggles that can inspire further reflection on relevant contemporary issues. Interpreting the book thusly as a broad invitation, it should also be seen as a provocation to scholars to respond to the challenge posed by these new social entrepreneurs. Indeed, a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review 2 and the recent Cooperative AI (artificial intelligence) conference in Istanbul present opportunities and point to more concrete developments between platform cooperatives and AI. Yet, while promising, these initiatives run the risk of extending a movement that has yet to clearly define its value-added and unique features even more broadly. It is hoped that upcoming special editions of journals like Business and Society and the Journal for Cooperative Organization and Management (JCOM), dedicated respectively to AI and ‘solidarity tech,’ can begin to close some of those gaps, particularly the analytical ones.
Beyond these initiatives, more research by organizational scholars could help understand how and in what ways platform cooperatives embody ‘a set of values and a way that we organize and connect with each other’ (Hannigan, 2023) and how they move the ‘conceived space’ beyond the risks implied by algorithmic surveillance (Newlands, 2021)—that is, addressing the distinct organizational questions platform cooperatives imply. As existing management and organizational scholarship makes clear, these questions are often derivative of overall discussions around the role of power and information flow within organizations and connect organizational governance and leadership to the evolution of organizations and the societies they serve. 3 Own This! should therefore challenge organization scholars to more deeply investigate the phenomenon of platform cooperatives. If the book has increased the likelihood of this outcome, then it should be seen as a triumph.
