Many technology companies would be more benign if they were owned and governed by their users.

Users have the most to lose from tech-driven addiction and automation,
and their data generate most of the companies’ value.

️User-owners would share in this value and have an incentive to keep companies from causing harm.

How might users come together to start and run more technology companies?

Bringing together a disparate and dispersed group of people is difficult;
-- economists call this the #collective #action #problem.

Influential nonprofits such as the
Center for Humane Technology and
Project Liberty can play an organizing role,
incubating a new generation of user-owned social media businesses.

While it’s a competitive field with entrenched players,
social media technology is not complex,
and there is a real hunger for more benign versions.

Existing firms can also be redesigned.

Instead of raising capital from profit-seeking corporations,
OpenAI could seek funding from users and give them representation on its board.

And with users on the board, the company might take more care to launch products safely
and dedicate resources to maintaining employment.

Most important, more of the financial gains of the AI revolution would flow to the people creating the value.

If #Keith #Gill,
also known as #Roaring #Kitty,
could organize retail investors to drive up the market value of #GameStop by $10 billion,
could a similar approach have been employed to acquire Twitter for users in 2022?

Given the millions of defections from the platform since Musk purchased it,
it may not be too late.

The government can also help if it’s not headed off by Big Tech political contributions.

The Small Business Administration,
the Department of Energy and
the National Science Foundation
should encourage user ownership of the companies they fund.

The venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road will of course scream that this is #socialism,
but they will be wrong.

It’s just business.

The root of the problem is that the United States and Silicon Valley in particular are dominated by what we call an
“investor monoculture.”

Modern corporations are designed to serve investors and no one else.

About 80% of public company stock in the United States is owned by institutional investors,
most of which have one objective:
to maximize profits,
largely in the short term and without regard to the costs for society.

In 1980, their share of stocks was just 29%.

Venture capital firms,
the biggest funders of Silicon Valley startups,
have grown from under $400 billion in assets in 2010
to nearly $4 trillion today.

Their performance is measured by
“multiples on invested capital,” or “#MOIC,” as insiders call it.

Suicide rates among young people are up more than 60% since 2007,
and U.S. democracy is in danger.
-- But these are not investors’ concerns.

Regulation and advocacy can certainly make a difference.

But Big Tech is cash-rich, lawyered up and capable of running circles around regulators.

It’s time for a different approach.

When businesses are owned and governed by employees, customers, suppliers or communities, they become less predatory
and more benign.

️And as it turns out, corporations have been designed in such ways across time and cultures.

Capitalism comes in many forms.

Farmers, employees or customers own and govern some of the world’s most respected companies,
including
Ocean Spray,
Publix Super Markets,
Organic Valley,
New York Life Insurance Co. and
Vanguard.

Corporations such as Patagonia,
Rolex,
Novo Nordisk and
Ikea
are owned or controlled by nonprofits, trusts or foundations,
which have no investors
and thus face less pressure to boost profits.

Silicon Valley has examples too.

Mozilla, which operates the web browser Firefox,
is owned by a nonprofit.

It has no incentive to maximize profits,
which explains why it does not sell user data to advertisers.

Wikipedia, among the world’s most visited websites, is also run by a nonprofit,
which shows that scale and impact don’t always depend on investor capital.

A nonprofit owns a majority of ChatGPT maker OpenAI,
a design it chose to “ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

But its minority investors, such as Microsoft, are profit-driven,
which has led to concerns that it’s releasing products at an irresponsible pace.