Many technology companies would be more benign if they were owned and governed by their users.

Users have the most to lose from tech-driven addiction and automation,
and their data generate most of the companies’ value.

️User-owners would share in this value and have an incentive to keep companies from causing harm.

How might users come together to start and run more technology companies?

Bringing together a disparate and dispersed group of people is difficult;
-- economists call this the #collective #action #problem.

Influential nonprofits such as the
Center for Humane Technology and
Project Liberty can play an organizing role,
incubating a new generation of user-owned social media businesses.

While it’s a competitive field with entrenched players,
social media technology is not complex,
and there is a real hunger for more benign versions.

Existing firms can also be redesigned.

Instead of raising capital from profit-seeking corporations,
OpenAI could seek funding from users and give them representation on its board.

And with users on the board, the company might take more care to launch products safely
and dedicate resources to maintaining employment.

Most important, more of the financial gains of the AI revolution would flow to the people creating the value.

If #Keith #Gill,
also known as #Roaring #Kitty,
could organize retail investors to drive up the market value of #GameStop by $10 billion,
could a similar approach have been employed to acquire Twitter for users in 2022?

Given the millions of defections from the platform since Musk purchased it,
it may not be too late.

The government can also help if it’s not headed off by Big Tech political contributions.

The Small Business Administration,
the Department of Energy and
the National Science Foundation
should encourage user ownership of the companies they fund.

The venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road will of course scream that this is #socialism,
but they will be wrong.

It’s just business.

The root of the problem is that the United States and Silicon Valley in particular are dominated by what we call an
“investor monoculture.”

Modern corporations are designed to serve investors and no one else.

About 80% of public company stock in the United States is owned by institutional investors,
most of which have one objective:
to maximize profits,
largely in the short term and without regard to the costs for society.

In 1980, their share of stocks was just 29%.

Venture capital firms,
the biggest funders of Silicon Valley startups,
have grown from under $400 billion in assets in 2010
to nearly $4 trillion today.

Their performance is measured by
“multiples on invested capital,” or “#MOIC,” as insiders call it.

Suicide rates among young people are up more than 60% since 2007,
and U.S. democracy is in danger.
-- But these are not investors’ concerns.

Regulation and advocacy can certainly make a difference.

But Big Tech is cash-rich, lawyered up and capable of running circles around regulators.

It’s time for a different approach.

When businesses are owned and governed by employees, customers, suppliers or communities, they become less predatory
and more benign.

️And as it turns out, corporations have been designed in such ways across time and cultures.

Capitalism comes in many forms.

Farmers, employees or customers own and govern some of the world’s most respected companies,
including
Ocean Spray,
Publix Super Markets,
Organic Valley,
New York Life Insurance Co. and
Vanguard.

Corporations such as Patagonia,
Rolex,
Novo Nordisk and
Ikea
are owned or controlled by nonprofits, trusts or foundations,
which have no investors
and thus face less pressure to boost profits.

Silicon Valley has examples too.

Mozilla, which operates the web browser Firefox,
is owned by a nonprofit.

It has no incentive to maximize profits,
which explains why it does not sell user data to advertisers.

Wikipedia, among the world’s most visited websites, is also run by a nonprofit,
which shows that scale and impact don’t always depend on investor capital.

A nonprofit owns a majority of ChatGPT maker OpenAI,
a design it chose to “ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

But its minority investors, such as Microsoft, are profit-driven,
which has led to concerns that it’s releasing products at an irresponsible pace.

Tech executives and investors said they were invigorated by Harris

“It’s democracy time, people,” Roy #Bahat, an investor at Bloomberg Beta, posted on LinkedIn.
Aaron #Levie, the chief executive of Box, a cloud storage company, wrote on X that Mr. Biden had shown “amazing leadership,” adding, “Now let’s go!”

The energy was a far cry from the dismay felt in tech circles recently as some of the industry’s most influential voices declared they were for Mr. Trump.
The rejuvenation could blunt the momentum of pro-Trump conservatives in Silicon Valley and entice more wealthy tech executives to throw their support — and money — behind the Democratic ticket.

Just last week, the political winds in Silicon Valley appeared to be blowing to the right.
On Tuesday, Mr. #Andreessen and Mr. #Horowitz, founders of the influential investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, argued in a 90-minute podcast that Mr. Trump was the best candidate for start-ups, with plans to donate millions to his campaign. Days earlier, Mr. #Musk had also endorsed Mr. Trump.
They had been preceded by David #Sacks and Chamath #Palihapitiya, two tech investors who had hosteda $12 million fund-raiser for Mr. Trump in June. Doug #Leone and Shaun #Maguire of Sequoia Capital, a top investment firm, had also said that they would vote for Mr. Trump.

Yet despite the growing sense of a MAGA takeover, not everyone in tech moved toward Mr. Trump.
“You have people with the loudest voices claiming to speak for the broader community, and the views don’t match,” said Katie Jacobs #Stanton, founder of Moxxie Ventures, a venture capital firm.
“By no means do they line up with the thousands of founders and employees and investors who live and work in Silicon Valley.”
John #Coogan, a start-up founder, wrote in a blog post in June that media coverage of Silicon Valley’s support for Mr. Trump was “at odds with reality.”
Top venture capitalists had given four times more money to Democrats than Republicans in the first part of the year, he argued.

“Trump is very unpopular in Silicon Valley in general,” Mr. #Khosla said, adding that those who were pro-Trump were “only a small constituency.”
Now liberals in tech are rejuvenated.
Mr. #Mehta said that some of his WhatsApp chats, particularly those that included Indian people in tech, exploded with excitement for Kamala Harris, whose mother is from India.
To show support for the vice president, some implored people to make small donations, while others discussed potential fund-raisers, he said.
Mr. #Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn and a prominent Democratic donor, emphasized in essays, videos and social media posts that Mr. Trump was a danger to the rule of law and democracy.
“You can’t use business justification as your cloak, as your rationalization, for being supportive of Trump,” he said.

Mr. #Levie of Box said he had spoken to a dozen other tech and business people on Sunday who were now optimistic about the election in November.
He said he was hopeful that Democrats could deliver a positive message on issues that the tech industry cared about, including A.I., entrepreneurship and immigration reform for high-skilled workers.
“We have a chance to get excited and rally around someone,” he said.

On Sunday, Mr. #Hoffman endorsed Ms. Harris, while Mr. #Khosla called for an open process at the Democratic convention.
Mr. #Suster said his phone blew up with a collective message of “thank god.”
He estimated that three-quarters of the people he interacted with in tech were happy about Mr. Biden’s withdrawal and would not support Mr. Trump.