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Comment by jacquesm

3 days ago

That's nonsense. Shareholders have an incentive to violate privacy much stronger than any one employee: they can sell their shares to the highest bidder and walk away with 'clean hands' (or so they'll argue) whereas co-op partners violating your privacy would have to do so on their own title with immediate liability for their person.

> Shareholders have an incentive to violate privacy much stronger than any one employee

Exactly what I said. We need lower shareholder interference not more, and in co-operative it's the opposite.

> with immediate liability for their person.

What do you mean?

  • The only shareholders in a co-op are the owners/operators ("employees"), or the owners/operators + customers (for example REI I believe). There's nobody seeking to extract value at the expense of the employees or the customers.

    If, as a shareholder operator, a co-op member pressured themselves to exploit user data to turn a quick buck, I guess that's possible, but likely they'd be vetoed by other members who would get sucked into the shitstorm.

    In my experience, co-op members and customers are more value-oriented than profit-motivated, within reason.

    • > but likely they'd be vetoed by other members who would get sucked into the shitstorm.

      Why are shareholders less likely to veto a evil person in a company vs in a co-operative? I think in most cases, the evil person is likely to get vetoed but sometimes greed takes over, specially over period of years and decades.