[YetAnotherNick]

Co-operative will have significantly worse privacy guarantee compared to shareholder based model. In the no one company wants to sacrifice on privacy standard just for the sake of it. They do it for money. And in shareholder based model, the employees are more likely to go against the shareholder when user privacy is involved, because they are not directly benefiting from it.

[jacquesm]

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.

[YetAnotherNick]

> 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?

[komali2]

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.

[YetAnotherNick]

> 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.

[komali2]

Evil in a co-op means something different than evil in a corporation.

The corporation at the end of the day will lean back on profit motive as the core underlying value. This value , to a co-op, isn't inherently evil, but is often evil.

The co-op will happily sacrifice the co-op for the good of the members if push comes to shove. Whereas corporate shareholders constantly vote for things that result in e.g. layoffs, downsizing, restriction of benefits, salary freezes.

[jacquesm]

A cooperative does not have shareholders in your sense of the word.

[YetAnotherNick]

Yes it does. In the purest sense, shareholder means "profit share" holders.

[jacquesm]

No, it does not mean that. In the purest sense it means 'fractional ownership', which can or may lead to profits.