This is short post, because I've already made most of my arguments in other places. But in light of recent... events (cough) I thought this idea had become particularly salient.

I'm going to be lazy and just make my point in the form of bullet points, feel free to ask clarifying questions.

• Private for-profit ownership of social media networks has clearly demonstrated it isn't naturally aligned with the interests of users (opens new window). Monopolizable networks are pretty obviously more shaped like public goods than private goods (opens new window).
• Cooperative organization models (opens new window), where companies are owned by their users such as is done with credit unions (opens new window), are pretty obviously the best possible match for this situation. We could make many more industries into cooperatives, such as news media.
• A cooperative social media network could obviously organize itself however members wish, but using systems such as Polis-like consensus surveys (opens new window) or moderation and recommendation driven by some form of resource voting (opens new window) could make internet spaces genuinely useful and civil. Remember that an advertising supported network has an incentive to drive engagement by any means, so we shouldn't simply assume internet spaces must always simply tolerate trolls and spam and bots.
• A cooperative social media network could experiment with possibly more efficient and fair forms of democratic organization, such as Adaptive Democracy (opens new window). Of course even more "traditional" modes of governance could work just fine if someone spent the time to hammer out all the details.
• We don't need blockchain technologies or true decentralization to fix this problem (opens new window). Normal boring cooperative ownership can make it happen. It's similarly silly to pretend users are like workers in a "data factory" and merely allowing them to collectively bargain with data brokers (opens new window) would be an improvement. I think users would much prefer to simply own the platform and all the data democratically and keep advertisers out of the deal entirely, thank you very much!

Despite this solution being obvious, it's still quite difficult. In the above linked chapter about cooperatives I detail how the biggest roadblock to their success is lack of access to startup capital, and how we need to improve our governmental systems for supporting public goods so things like cooperatives can thrive more generally.

Nevertheless, cooperatives get started all the time! The startup capital problem is definitely solvable and could be addressed for a cooperative social media network, but I personally am not very good at building crowdfunding campaigns or applying for grants. But I'm happy to get on board if someone capable wants to lead the way.

We could totally build a functional internet town square! The market isn't going to fix this one, at least not in an acceptable way. We shouldn't wait around for profit-seekers, their solutions will never be truly aligned with our needs.