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Let's make them pay for using our personal data

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11–20 of 122 posts

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#11

Arguably, they already do. They pay us in services such as communications software, social software, search, etc. Also, this is very common in some countries/industries. In the U.K. if you want to buy insurance or open a bank account etc, you’ll often use a comparison website, and they will likely give you an incentive (such as free cinema tickets) for choosing a service through them. This is paid for directly by the…

This. Your data is already a currency. By visiting and consuming content you’re effectively paying for that content with whatever data they’re collecting. Maybe this transaction needs to be somehow more explicit?

this is the point, if you are already paying (implicitly) for using the different services, make me the one who can control it and give me the choice to opt out if I don't want to do it

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Your data is already a currency. By visiting and consuming content you’re effectively paying for that content with whatever data they’re collecting. Maybe this transaction needs to be somehow more explicit?

this is the point, if you are already paying (implicitly) for using the different services, make me the one who can control it and give me the choice to opt out if I don't want to do it

You do have that control. Find an alternative service provider. Don’t like gmail? Choose fastmail.

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#15
I used to support this point on view, but after the Facebook VPN scandal [0][1] I think using this approach will do more harm than good. It's a good way to make sure only poor people lose their privacy, since those that can afford it will use other platforms that charge a fee in exchange for a private experience (say no ads, or better privacy defaults).

Arguably, this is already happening with Apple, positioning themselves as privacy-aware, but charging a huge markup for it.

[0]: Facebook has been paying teens $20 a month for access to all of their personal data https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/30/18203803/facebook-re...

[1]: Discussion on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19031055

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#16

Arguably, they already do. They pay us in services such as communications software, social software, search, etc. Also, this is very common in some countries/industries. In the U.K. if you want to buy insurance or open a bank account etc, you’ll often use a comparison website, and they will likely give you an incentive (such as free cinema tickets) for choosing a service through them. This is paid for directly by the…

First parties might compensate me by providing a service in exchange.

What of the third parties with whom they share my personal data? When those parties profit off my data, what compensation do I receive?

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#17

Arguably, they already do. They pay us in services such as communications software, social software, search, etc. Also, this is very common in some countries/industries. In the U.K. if you want to buy insurance or open a bank account etc, you’ll often use a comparison website, and they will likely give you an incentive (such as free cinema tickets) for choosing a service through them. This is paid for directly by the…

I bet for 90% of users of Facebook(or Google) it is not clear how actually Facebook makes money

Facebook sells your attention. Look at your news feed, every second post is an ad.

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#19
> Do you remember when you were looking for good pair of hiking boots on Google and almost imminently you start seeing promoted posts about nice shoes discounts on Facebook and Twitter.

I don't think this happens?

> Basically what happens is that Google without your (explicit) confirmation collects all history of you search requests and sell it to another company.

This definitely does not happen. Google doesn't sell search history to anyone else. It may be the case that Google itself remarkets things to you. But I don't think so, since how would they get paid in that transaction? Through affiliate links? Doubtful.

Instead, I think what actually happens is that people make a search, they click a link, and target of that link (be it Amazon or some other store) associates their profile with interest in a particular product, then remarkets to that profile on Facebook.

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#20
This is not a new movement, and Tim Berners-Lee's SOLID is good but not the first attempt to address this.

The first I heard of something like this was in the Berkman Identity Group, which grew into the Identity Commons. At the time the movement was called Vendor-Relationship-Management (VRM), an inversion of the CRM practice where customers controlled the information and could be incentivized in various ways (discounts, paid, etc.) to share that information for agreed upon durations.

https://www.idcommons.org/working-groups/vendor-relationship...

This movement was one of the drivers for the link contract work done as part of the Extensible Data Interchange (XDI) OASIS technical committee.

I don't know if this is the first instance of this kind of movement, but it was the first I heard of it.

Doc Searls reports another recent development: VRM is alive and well, under a new acronym that plays on B2B, Me2B. Source: http://blogs.harvard.edu/vrm/

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