Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Democracy is not a Facebook focus group
&gt; In a country with functioning democracy, citizens vote responsibly because they know they will own the consequences if they don’t.<p>I never heard gerrymandering until after the 2016 election. It is scary how minority can still win the district election. So first fix that hole, and even getting rid of Electoral College, then we can talk about vote&#x27;s value.<p>Cooperative platform seems to be a thing for this journalist. My reading is some socialism in this writing.<p>&gt; would be to distribute that stock among the people who made it valuable in the first place: Facebook’s users. Like the British retailer John Lewis Partnership did for its employees, the stock could be held in a trust that users directly control and have the opportunity to benefit from.<p>I am going to say this is tough to do. Employee != users. Granted, there are fake accounts, how do you deal with that? You can&#x27;t have a fake employee because that&#x27;s a fraud.<p>&gt; On the other hand, users might then have at least a seat in the boardroom when decisions are being made about what to do with their valuable, personal data now locked up in the platform.<p>Same argument above. Users can actually participate if they purchase stocks, but sure the entry cost is high.<p>I completely agree users should have influence in how a company runs and creates product, i.e. this is how a successful business should be, listen to users and take in the good advice. Let us supposed FB allows users to vote on features and how Facebook should run, then some malicious organization could create a lot of fake accounts to influence the outcome. Are we going to now required everyone to give out passport &#x2F; proper government ID and verify our online status? Otherwise, how can you take these voting seriously? This is exactly what driving people away from Facebook the fact so many people are paranoid about their online privacy and identity. This is different from taking a user survey and asking WOULD YOU LIKE. Internet is fighting against fake news.<p>Until there is a solid solution, sorry, it&#x27;s just idealism. The ideas are exciting but please give me a concrete implementation.