The w3c seems to be run by people who make money on the web, not people who use the web.
For example, no amount of contribution would have stopped Netflix et al from pushing through EME as a web standard.
Or, perhaps more likely, browser vendors would continue to not kill Flash until 2020 (at the earliest) when Adobe ends support, and then browsers would drop support for the insecure plugin and then Netflix would go the native apps route.
If everyone is a "peer" and an enormous number of those peers make a succinct, persuasive argument that EME is incompatible with W3C's mission statement of "Web for All" and "Web for Rich Interaction"[1], one would think that would make a difference in the direction the W3C takes.
Instead I'm eating popcorn watching players with deep pockets choose tactics in their battle to control an industry. And that battle is what shapes this web API.
So the claim of, "your peers are listening and they value your feedback," is about as convincing as a hold message from Comcast.
They just seem to continuously standardize things that are very user hostile and only serve content distributors.
Example Nr 1 you are going to quote is the DRM stuff (understandably, it's the most controversial for good reasons, both inside and outside W3C). What other very user hostile examples are there?
Not really. Anyone can join the W3C, and anyone can participate in a working group / contribute to a standard.
However, most people would agree that the balance of power effectively lies with the browser vendors. You can propose a standard all you like, but if you can't get a browser to adopt it then it's not going to get any traction. And although it's true that some browser vendors make their money off the web (Google) others very much don't (Apple).
It lies with two groups: the implementers (as nothing can become a standard without implementations, though there's plenty of precedent for using obscure ones!) and the W3C Members (i.e., the paying organisations who pay to get a seat; not those who contribute on mailing lists/GitHub/whatever, not those who are officially on the working groups as "invited experts") who ultimately vote on the proposed standard (and there Google has as much say as the BBC and Boeing and the University of Edinburgh.
Starting at ~10 000 USD per year, sure