- Marginalized communities and creators are forming data cooperatives to claw back control from Big Tech’s scraping practices.
- These grassroots collectives ensure that local communities — not Silicon Valley — dictate how their data are used.
- By leveraging collective bargaining, these groups are successfully forcing tech giants to negotiate for data rather than exploit it.
A growing pushback against big tech companies, and greater awareness of the value of data, is spurring interest in data collectives and cooperatives, which give communities control over the collection, management, and distribution of their data. This alternative allows creators to benefit from data sets that may otherwise be ignored or misused.
