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While news has perhaps the most immediate potential to co-operatize against the giants, co-ops in other culture industries are also managing to carve out niches in the gaps left by Big Business in ways that hint at a different kind of future. Scholar-activist Trebor Scholz argues that platform coop…

The point of radical interoperability isn’t merely to provide “choice” or “competition” or “innovation,” or any other empty Silicon Valley buzzword: it’s to let people decide for themselves how to live their lives. It’s to clear the way for the exercise of self-determination. You, the user of a pro…

These limitations are why even antitrust specialists look toward other forms of regulation, especially for reining in abusive buyer power. We should absolutely be using antitrust and its remedies to their full capacity, but we shouldn’t rely on them to do all the heavy lifting. And we don’t need to…

Systemic problems can’t be solved with individual actions alone. Your individual purchase decisions, which services you do or don’t create accounts on, whether you recycle, and whether you drive or take the bus make almost no difference to our social outcomes. If we want to change the world, we hav…

And, of course, if all that isn’t enough and a new player is somehow able to enter their kill zone, these behemoths know exactly what to do. Venture capitalists know that too, making them cautious about where they invest, and thus making it even more difficult for nascent competitors to get a toeho…