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Twitter is up for sale. Big companies are circling around looking to buy. But what about us, Twitter users? This proposal to turn one of the world’s most important platform utilities into a platform co-op has started spreading from a mere idea to an organizing campaign. Read, spread, and organize!
Read + Spread
- “Here’s my plan to save Twitter: let’s buy it” (The Guardian, 2016.09.30)
- “Twitter should huddle with the Green Bay Packers while weighing M&A options” (MarketWatch, 2016.09.30)
- “Proposal: turn Twitter into a user-owned co-op” (Boing Boing, 2016.10.04)
- “#BuyTwitter: Could Twitter Become A Co-Operative Business?” (#now, 2016.10.04)
- “The Twitter we <3 is never going to make Wall Street happy. It’s a public service & should be a non-profit!” (@AnonyOps, 2016.10.05)
- “Was wäre, wenn Twitter uns gehören würde?” (Wired.de, 2016.10.10)
- “Nutzer träumen von Twitter-Übernahme” (Spiegel Online, 2016.12.10)
Organize
- Loomio group – Loomio is an open-source decision-making platform created by a New Zealand-based worker cooperative. Since the Guardian article, this is where discussions have started to form around certain action items, and where decisions are being made about the initial directions of the effort. It’s an open group that anyone can sign up for.
- Slack team – We’re using this for some more in-depth discussions and projects. Invite yourself here:
- Separately, Johnny Haeusler called for starting a Google Doc on “If we owned Twitter,” where people are gathering ideas focused on how Twitter could be organized once under the control of its participants.
One of the most hopeful things about this campaign, in my view, is that it’s a chance to flex our thinking and organizing around the ambitious idea of co-owning a major platform utility. Whatever becomes of Twitter, I hope we can work in a way so that we’re better equipped for this kind of possibility in the future.
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This is a great campaign. If it doesn’t work out, and Twitter gets bought by corporate investors (again), maybe all the people involved in #BuyTwitter could still carry out your plans using the free code GNU Social (formerly StatusNet) as the platform?
Absolutely. There has been a commitment made in the organizing so far that “parallel builds” like GNU Social should be part of the longer term strategy.
I love this idea. I just started on Loomio with Democracy at Work and am fired up about the potentials of direct democracy. If Twitter was bought by the users, which is totally possible, it would really make a huge stride forward into the direct democracy space becoming more accepted and feasible. Then pressure would mount and then more top-level companies would fall in line or die. I think this will be inevitable seeing how the “millennial” mindset will be the clincher.
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