Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Deprivatization

💡 In simple words: Some websites take a big cut and keep all the power. WikiDeal helps people take those services back and run them together, like a shared garden instead of a private one.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): Deprivatization is the idea of reclaiming markets as commons owned and governed by their users, as Wikipedia did for encyclopedic knowledge. It forms one whole with Exit to Community and the Rewards mechanism: the combination of the bonding curve and Need-Driven Funding creates a self-regulation that keeps the whole non-speculative, based on the organic deployment of a community.

Summary

• What is it?
• One whole with Exit to Community and Rewards
• How it works on WikiDeal
• State of the art

Deprivatization

Innovation, WikiDeal R&D

Origin	🟢🔵 WikiDeal concept + Wikimedia Foundation
Status	Under study (July 2026, proposal)

What is it?

Deprivatization is the idea of reclaiming markets as commons owned and governed by their users, much as Wikipedia did for encyclopedic knowledge. WikiDeal targets extractive platforms in areas such as babysitting, transport, and housing, and intends to convert them into user-governed commons rather than privately owned, fee-extracting intermediaries.

One whole with Exit to Community and Rewards

Deprivatization forms one whole with Exit to Community and the Rewards mechanism. The combination of the bonding curve and Need-Driven Funding creates a self-regulation that makes the whole much less speculative: based only on real flows and real needs, and on the organic deployment of a community.

How it works on WikiDeal

WikiDeal intends to provide the shared infrastructure, governance, and legal tools that would let a community operate a service it formerly rented from a private platform. Value and decision-making shift toward the users who actually create and rely on the service. Specific transition pathways are documented progressively as the platform evolves.

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State of the art

Reclaiming extractive markets as user-governed commons connects with research and reference books on the commons, surveillance capitalism and the return of privatized services to collective control. The works below inspire this exploration.

• Shoshana Zuboff (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, PublicAffairs: book page on Wikipedia.
• David Bollier and Silke Helfrich (2019), Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons, New Society Publishers: David Bollier on Wikipedia.
• Douglas Rushkoff (2016), Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, Portfolio: Douglas Rushkoff on Wikipedia.
• Satoko Kishimoto and Olivier Petitjean, editors (2017), Reclaiming Public Services: How Cities and Citizens Are Turning Back Privatisation, Transnational Institute: [{W}Transnational_Institute Transnational Institute on Wikipedia].
• Elinor Ostrom (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press: doi:10.1017/CBO9780511807763 · author page on Wikipedia.

See also: Exit to Community · Rewards · All innovations · R&D Portal