Nathan Schneider joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss cooperatives, platform ownership, and the dangers of “implicit feudalism” online, arguing that many digital spaces train users to choose between powerful admins or platforms rather than practice democratic governance. He describes the unrealized potential of co-ops, from rural electric cooperatives and credit unions to newsrooms, platform co-ops, and “exit to community” models that could let successful venture-backed startups transition into stakeholder ownership. The conversation connects cooperative ownership to broader issues of generational inequality, broadband access, social media’s shift toward entertainment and AI-driven content, Section 230, interoperability, and the need for policy that empowers communities to govern the utilities and platforms they depend on.

Nathan Schneider:

There are a lot of others who’ve written about techno-feudalism, talking about the economic dimensions of the power of big tech companies. And to me, these two stories connect, but I think it’s really important to recognize that the problem, I think, began even before big tech started making a lot of money off of this stuff. It actually started with how we were designing the norms and software underpinning the earliest online spaces, and we got lulled into and gradually pulled into this situation where suddenly our civic associations — you know, the primary ways in which we meet each other — have become spaces in which we are not practicing the skills of democratic governance. We’re practicing a kind of choice among which Lord we will go to serve.