The workers who drive, clean, and deliver own the platforms they work through.
In 2014, Trebor Scholz, a professor at The New School in New York City, coined the term "platform cooperativism" to describe digital platforms owned and governed by the people who use them to work.1 The concept emerged as a direct response to the "gig economy" model, in which companies like Uber and TaskRabbit classified workers as independent contractors, avoiding obligations around benefits, minimum wages, and collective bargaining.
Scholz argued that the technology behind ride-hailing, delivery, and freelance platforms was not inherently exploitative. The ownership structure was the problem. If the same software were operated as a cooperative, the value it generated would flow to the workers rather than to venture capital investors.2
The first major platform co-ops appeared soon after. Stocksy United, a stock photography cooperative founded in 2013 in Victoria, Canada, offered photographers a 50 percent commission on standard sales and a 75 percent commission on extended licenses.3
In 2015, Scholz and Nathan Schneider organized the first Platform Cooperativism conference at The New School, drawing more than 1,000 attendees.4 The movement spread globally. Up & Go, a cooperative cleaning platform in New York, gave worker-owners 95 percent of the rate paid by clients. Green Taxi Cooperative in Denver, Colorado, was founded by immigrant taxi drivers who pooled resources to build their own ride-hailing app.5
By the early 2020s, platform co-ops operated in at least thirty countries, spanning industries from home care to freelance software development.4 The model remains small relative to venture-funded competitors, in part because cooperatives cannot offer investors the equity returns that drive Silicon Valley funding cycles. The Mondragón cooperatives in Spain, which have operated for nearly seventy years, provide the closest historical precedent for scaling worker ownership across industries.6