Some information about the #BuyTwitter campaign in the blog of RWGV, my employer (in German):
https://www.rwgv.de/rwgv-blog/auf-dem-weg-zur-twitter-eg/
(We are not involved in the campaign, but we are following it with interest.)
@stefanieschulte is eG in this context "Emanzipatorische Gemeinschaften"? some good info about Mastodon there. From reading what I can from the rest of your employers website the cooperative movement seems to be very advanced in DE and quite entrenched into "normal" society!
@vfrmedia @mattcropp Haha, no, "eG" means "eingetragene Genossenschaft" (= registered co-op). Very German legalese 😉
Yes, #coops are quite "normal" here. The Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken make up an important part of the German banking sector. The organisations behind the EDEKA and Rewe supermarkets are #cooperatives as well. And there are many others... Together, cooperatives in Germany have about 22 million members (among 81 million Germans).
@stefanieschulte I thought it was only in tech that you ended up with the same abbreviation having 2/3 different meanings!
co-op supermarkets are a big player in this region, although the UK co-op bank suffered from bad management and has been sold off to a private hedge fund.
Our co-ops website isn't quite as advanced as EDEKA, which seems to have near real time links to stock levels in stores!
@vfrmedia Yes, but it's important to note that the Co-Op Bank in UK was never a true cooperative (it was a plc, as far as I know). It was never directly owned by its customers, unlike e. g. the local cooperative banks in Germany. This seems to matter a lot in banking. Customers usually don't want their bank to take outsize risk.
@stefanieschulte @vfrmedia @mattcropp a related development is Tridos offering a current account now. https://www.triodos.co.uk/en/personal/current-account-registration/?gclid=CjwKEAjwjPXIBRDhwICRg-DbgHISJADP6QXp60N5MNgYrbagSwmCPg5Dh8sBvvjONMcj7dWjeQAYOBoCHW3w_wcB
Personally I have used credit unions as these have more democratic ownership than the 'co-op' bank did
@NOiDEa @vfrmedia @mattcropp To my knowledge, Triodos is not organised as a cooperative. German GLS Bank, which has a very similar business model, is a coop, though:
@stefanieschulte @vfrmedia @mattcropp no I don't think so - they are an 'ethical' bank. The problem with the credit unions although I prefer their structure is they are quite inconvenient (separate account for your 'debit' card, long way to branch and less developed online). Therefore am tempted by Tridos - wonder if they would consider a #socialcoop model
@NOiDEa @stefanieschulte @mattcropp
there is a well established credit union in my region which has even survived a theft from customers accounts of around €100 000 by a senior manager (he was caught and sent to prison, customers money was protected by security/insurance guarantees). There does seem to be a lower level of online access though (since the decline in use of cheques in UK I've not visited a bank branch in person for years!)
@vfrmedia @NOiDEa @mattcropp Local cooperative banks (and credit unions too, I think) need to collaborate in order to provide good online and mobile banking. This is something German coop. banks have been doing for decades. As a small credit institution, it's usually impossible to do this on your own.
@stefanieschulte @vfrmedia @NOiDEa
Definitely; in the US we have a shared ATM network, etc., among credit unions. A quirk is that #creditunions didn't really get going in the #UK until the 1960s and 70s, so the sector is much younger there than in other places...
@mattcropp @stefanieschulte @NOiDEa TBH mainstream banking tech in the UK lags well behind rest of EU and USA. We even didn't get ATMs that weren't locked to single banks until well into the 1990s, and paper cheques linger on here (unlike in mainland Europe)
@stefanieschulte @vfrmedia @mattcropp I'd interested to know whether you think this qualifies as 'co-op' ownership; relative strengths/weaknesses: https://www.wikitribune.com/
@NOiDEa @vfrmedia @mattcropp In a co-op (according to our definition in Germany), "one member, one vote" always applies (democratic principle). Furthermore, a #cooperative has to create "member value" (instead of maximising "shareholder value"). In this respect, #Wikitribune is not a cooperative.
@mattcropp @vfrmedia @NOiDEa
There are media cooperatives, though, e. g. "Die Tageszeitung" in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Tageszeitung
Last year, German project "Krautreporter" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krautreporter)
has become a cooperative, too.
@NOiDEa @vfrmedia @mattcropp Here is a new media project in Switzerland, which is partly organised as a cooperative:
https://www.cjr.org/innovations/news-startup-crowdfunding-switzerland.php
@mattcropp @vfrmedia @stefanieschulte Germany leads the way again! I'm not sure which is more critical -reformed media or reformed financial services. Without the the former, fighting a relentless, loosing battle against corporate PRopaganda
@qwerty FYI -see previous post in thread
@stefanieschulte@mastodon.cloudTH/Dankeschön - will bookmark these. TAZ is a decent site: I don't see too many nags for € and reporting is fairly easy for me to follow (with DE not being first language) w/o content being dumbed down. main page is also not filled with "good news" stories which aren't fake as such but even the leftwing UK news puts in as filler material nor moans about use of adblockers..
@stefanieschulte @NOiDEa @mattcropp there is also a perception in UK by mainstream that "left" aligned businesses have lower levels of customer service/responsiveness. I think this is falsehood and the level of customer service has declined in *all* sectors as part of the "hidden costs" of 24/7 online society" but progressive orgs may be less likely to use outsourcing in low wage countries to compete on responsveness?