Ela KagelJoin us for our second edition of the #PlatformCoops Open Research Forum on March 24, this time dedicated to exploring market opportunities and business models for platform coops! The team of #NeedsMap in Turkey will share their story.
Sign up here and get in touch with platform coop founders, researchers, students & activists!
Strypey#TIL about Other Tech Worlds are Possible, a comic about technological empowerment among radical workers in Brazils' MTST (English translation: Homeless Workers Movement);
Taxi + ride-hailing app services, run as platform co-ops in some places. But maybe councils could supply apps which aggregate rides from a range of vetted services? Including those that specialise in transporting the disabled?
It's akin to the way a competent council can supply public shopping areas, with a range of independently run food places All of which are inspected for anything that might poison you.
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VicaConcluding my week on Friday with an online international event by @cecop_coops on how coop federals can support innovative coop startups. I’ll be talking about @cooperativesuk #Hackathons and our work on #platformcoops via #unfound.
Hostsharing eGNächste Woche Samstag feuern wir im Millerntor-Stadion beim FC St. Pauli mit vielen anderen Genossenschaften unseren Lieblingsclub an: die bessere Welt des kooperativen Wirtschaftens
Wir freuen uns riesig auf das #coopfest
https://www.hostsharing.net/genossenschaft/
Kommt vorbei! Infos und Tickets unter https://fcspeg.com/14genossenschaften-bauen-eine-bessere-welt-coop-fest-2025-noch-mehr-ermaessigte-tickets/
Grassroots Economic Organizing
Local, Multi-Stakeholder, Cooperative Food Delivery with Radish. #Coops #PlatformCoops
Skip the doordash w/ Mansib Rahman
There's a lot of interesting stuff in this interview with Mansib Rahman and Dru Oja Jay! Radish is a local, multi-stakeholder food delivery #cooperative in Montreal, Canada that has been exploring supply-chain logistics for restaurants. #PlatformCoops
Skip the doordash w/ Mansib Rahman
The sudden and unexpected shuttering of mtrx.nz and peertube.nz in the last couple of weeks is a stark reminder of how ephemeral community-hosted services can be. In the absence of third options, people are stuck with technical infrastructure offered either by corporations, or by informal group of volunteers. Who have every right to walk away at any time, leaving the people hosted on their servers scrambling for a replacement.
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Jzero Great interview here with Simon from @mirlo. Musicians, platform nerds, and co-op appreciators will find much to pique their interest (and the #Fedi gets a shoutout).#PlatformCoops #Music #Streaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvL9TFJRZwU
Simon Vansintjan of Mirlo - A Cooperative Music Marketplace - Lorenzo's Music Podcast
Shaked SpierMy paper “The Politics of Platform Technologies: A Critical Conceptualization of the Platform and Sharing Economy” is now published in Philosophy & Technology!
And it's #openaccess, so give it a read!
#PhD #phdlife #platformcoops #platformeconomy
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-025-00840-5
The Politics of Platform Technologies: A Critical Conceptualization of the Platform and Sharing Economy - Philosophy & Technology
This paper offers a political analysis of the platform and sharing economy—an economic model in which digital platforms facilitate social and economic interactions. Its two central models, mainstream and cooperative platforms, offer similar applications and services (e.g., home-sharing, food delivery), but fundamentally differ in their ownership and governance structures, economic models, and technical designs. Building on literature from the politics of technology (PoT), the paper develops an approach for the political analysis of platform technologies, combining central components from the works of Winner, Feenberg, and Pfaffenberger. This approach is then applied to analyze the platform and sharing economy, highlighting the political significance of platform technologies. The analysis reveals three key insights. First, when incorporated into particular social arrangements, digital platforms become means for shaping social realities rather than mere tools for specific uses. Second, mainstream platforms perpetuate capitalist conditions in the digital sphere and therefore necessitate platform capitalism to function, whereas cooperative platforms resist and undermine it. Third, the dynamics between the platform models embody a struggle over the question of the good life in the digital economy. Additionally, the paper uncovers a philosophical weakness in Winner’s definition of “inherently political technologies” that warrants further attention in PoT literature.