excited to share the new report by @Cmmonwealth and @DemocracyCollab I’ve been working on w/ @ThomasMHanna @DantonsHead @peters_nils.
some thoughts on the urgency of this intervention in the big tech debate: https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/reports/common-platform-tech-utility-antitrust

the two ascendant fields that should perk up to this: antitrust and platform co-ops. both on their own are insufficient to deal with the Goliaths of the platform economy. we need comprehensive top down and bottom up policy solutions toward democratic ownership.

top down means pursuing democratic public ownership as a tool in the antitrust strategies by Congress, DOJ, and the FTC. natural monopolies (Google’s search engine, Amazon’s marketplace, Facebook’s social network) by definition cant be resolved by markets/competition.

bottom up means changing the political economy of venture capital backed start ups toward the incubation, financing, and public adoption of democratic platforms via a pluralism of new institutions at various levels of government.

and this isn’t hypothetical. if we are going to have a Green New Deal, reparations, etc, we need spaces for genuine democratic deliberation & participation. both require every person to see themselves as an active part of the larger movement, including the currently unconvinced.

if the design of the new economy happens via the current media ecosystem, we’re stuck with chomsky/herrmann’s propaganda model and all the evils on discourse caused by “audience engagement” incentives. we dont have time to get stuck in these thought loops with crisis everywhere.

this work sits on the shoulders of many brilliant people who’ve engaged with these questions for decades. I hope this contributes to providing the left and movements with a vision of a genuinely democratic internet and what policies can get us there.