Users Council for breaking up web giants?

One day thinking about privacy issues lead me to the idea applying of works councils, but just for users.

What is a Works Council? #

In some countries, a works council can be formed if a company has reached a certain amount of employees. These employees then get to vote for representatives that get stake within the company for representing worker rights. This was needed to counteract company interest over their employees basic needs.

How could this work for users? #

Well, why shouldn’t we extend something like this for users?

The idea is basically, if a web company reaches a certain size (by users/countries/…) - users somehow magically get to initialize the process for electing a users council.

This council would then become more included within organizational structure, would get special insights/space within the organization (including seeing more what happens behind the curtains, …) and get to decide certain decisions within that company that would then hopefully lead to more user oriented needs over profits and data mining.

Why? #

So that’s it. Very simple idea, which will most likely never work out. Yet, I do believe we really have to keep thinking about how we can get back control over the web giants.