Not only do today’s platform-based workers exist in a nascent labor category, but their participation is decentralized, making it harder for them to connect with each other. As the industry has matured, and consolidation has led to monopsony power, platform labor has reached a turning point. Platforms are increasingly governing participants’... See more

The platform economy as it is currently constituted—highly centralized, highly mediated, with critical decisions made by a select few—risks replicating the same problems that have led to widespread burnout, financial precarity, and erosion of workers’ rights in the traditional economy.

Trebor Schulz coined the term “platform cooperativism” in 2014 (perhaps not coincidentally, a year before Ethereum launched). As a movement, platform cooperativism is exploring ways we can shift the structures of the Internet so that all participants are fairly rewarded for their labor. It is in some ways a reaction to the rise of the gig economy,... See more