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Andrew Yang is pushing Big Tech to pay users for their data
by
Maaike
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/21298919/andrew-yang-big-tech-data-dividend-project-facebook-google-ubi
Not for their data - pay them for their content. The data trail is passive and not some kind of IP. Content on the other hand is given freely without consideration because there is no easy way for users to pay other users. In fact companies have probably sabotaged such attempts in order to capture a cut of the process, be it through subscriptions or 3rd parties. Brave browser's BAT however seems to be moving to the right direction
If you go down the road of trying to place a monetary value on digital data trails it s going to be very problematic to define it and probably legally shaky. E.g. photographers don't pay random people that happen to be in frame in public places.
Im probably one of the few developers out there who thinks data privacy is fine. Consumers dont care or complain too much about giving up their data, plus it allows big tech companies to monetize and offer their services for free. And they are pretty much responsible stewards of the data. There arent many big breaches at Google, Amazon, Facebook. I dont see what we gain from putting more limits on this stuff.
What do you call a big breach? 5 million? 50 million? 500 million? All these have happened.
Yes. and nothing terrible happened. Data privacy scare stories are being used by certain marketing departments to make privacy a marketable product, but it seems people are just not interested. There's certainly a value to privacy, but being targeted for ads purposes is probably one of the less impactful ways to invade someone's privacy
Likely it was terrible for someone included in those hauls - e.g. people still getting phishing emails from old Yahoo breach so it must work. As you say privacy reaches beyond ads with more impactful consequences possible.
Yes yes, this exactly. When you invent the ship you invent the shipwreck. Cars have accidents, planes crash, rockets explode, servers fail, kids get into trouble, oil spills, countries go to war, companies get hacked, data gets breached. But the world moves on. We still have all these things despite the imperfections because the benefits are worth the costs.
I dont understand the freakout over ads and data and privacy when everything seems okay.
All the examples you give have things in place to try and avoid the bad stuff.
I think the question is more political and philosophical.
I don't think we fully understand how much we're being tracked (even me as a dev, as a normal person I can't imagine). I think Yang is more of the idea that they're making so much money off of the data, they should pay some amount back.
On the flip side, I agree with you on the free services part - imagine how much good is contributed worldwide when people have access to something that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to them. Like an Android phone being subsidized to make Internet access available, or even making educational content accessible.
There is definitely a ton of tracking and data out there, an insane amount, but Im not afraid of that. Most companies are struggling to even figure out how to use the data they have to make better business decisions, and they rarely care about doing any more than that. Im not afraid of some dystopian future where the data gets abused by companies and they start blackmailing all of us or something weird, just because the people wont stand for it and its not a good business decision. Its a PR nightmare.
Im more worried about the idea of people owning their data. The ever expanding footprint of ownership of information, of copyright, intellectual property. That feels like the more realistic dystopia to worry about. A world where everyone is squatting on everything, saying you cant use this song or sing these notes or say this phrase or draw this picture or make this video or whatever, because they own the rights. A world full of rent seekers who think ideas should be property and who expect to get paid for value that other people are creating. It sounds far-fetched but I think were already heading down this road when you see some of the egregious copyright takedown notices on YouTube, dumb lawsuits in the music industry, and terrible laws that Congress keeps trying to draft.
Facebook knows all sorts of data about me, yes. I know all sorts of data about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and plenty of other people and things. I think thats fine! Learn as much as you can about the world and use your information to your advantage, but lets keep that information free and open and not start making a ton of laws about what were allowed to know and not know.
NO this horribly dystopian and scary the answer is to keep people anonymous NOT to make them sell their data? people who are marginalized will have no option except giving up their privacy but if you can afford you will probably opt-in to the paid service and keep your privacy I hate this suggestion