[randomgyatwork]

Facebook, Twitter, Snap should be co-operatives of some sort, the users are creating the value, at least the popular ones, so they should be rewarded within the system for their continued support and audience development.

[patrickaljord]

Why do you think users of these services create value for free? Maybe it's because the value created for free is less than the value they get out of using these services they create free value for. It is true that these services get money thanks to the aggregated value that is created by all their users but let's take facebook for example, they only make $48.76 per user per year as of 2015 [1]. If they were to pay their users, they could not pay them more than that per year. Not such an interesting deal for anyone involved, even if Facebook was turned into a cooperative with 0 profit. Users would only get $48.76 at best per year and as a non profit, Facebook would probably be way less efficient and therefor only offer half or maybe less than that.

Now Facebook could turn into a paid service and pay its users more but then it would have much fewer users and then way less money to offer and now we're back to paying users little.

Seems like the current deal isn't such a bad one, Facebook connects a massive amount of people around the world including poor immigrants with their family (I know a few) and in exchange these users create value for Facebook. It's a voluntary win-win situation for both parties. Adults entering mutually beneficial deals with each others and enjoying it, what's wrong with that?

1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11891353/How-...

[ABCLAW]

I believe you may have some fatal unstated assumptions in there.

The co-op concept doesn't require equal distribution of proceeds to participants. Nor does it require that the net distribution of proceeds equal the total value per user. Nor is incentivizing value creation on your platform a zero-sum game between facebook and content creators.