Although the idea sounds nice, I think it's impractical. Large companies don't care about you, they care about profit...
Let's make them pay for using our personal data
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#22Arguably, 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?
You are not the IRS - you don't have a right to compensation every time your data changes hands, just for each unique copy.
That's like me paying an author for a book, and then the author demanding I pay if I give (or sell) the book to my friend.
I know what you are thinking: "but in this case copies of your data are being resold" in which case I would agree that each party has to buy their own copy from me, or, if they resell to each other, they have to delete the copy they previously bought from me.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#23I've been thinking instead of paying individuals, gov't should levy a tax on PII that is stored. A $/person identified/fingerprinted would be interesting.
This would allow ethical companies like Firefox and Signal to operate at much lower margins than Chrome and Messenger.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#24This page sends your data to:- Google
- Facebook
- Disqus
Maybe the author should practice what they preach.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#25Why not sell our data and for that money buy non - free services? In that sense we can at least control what to give and services will compete not only for a good service but also for a good price.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#26I've been thinking instead of paying individuals, gov't should levy a tax on PII that is stored. A $/person identified/fingerprinted would be interesting. This would allow ethical companies like Firefox and Signal to operate at much lower margins than Chrome and Messenger.
I like this. One worry I have with paying individuals is that it becomes predatory for poorer people. If you struggle come back-to-school season, it might be tempting to let companies vacuum up your data for a quick buck.
Sundar Pichai touched on this recently, criticizing Apple for making privacy a "luxury good" (of course, Google doesn't give you privacy at any price). We should make companies value our privacy in the first place, not commoditize it.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Or change the law.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#28Good points, I will trade money for privacy myself if there is an option, but the product quality has to be good.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#29I have said this for the longest time
ECHO, GOOGLE HOME etc...
DNA tests, Ancestry et al. should pay the users and not the other way around.
Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You are not the IRS - you don't have a right to compensation every time your data changes hands, just for each unique copy. That's like me paying an author for a book, and then the author demanding I pay if I give (or sell) the book to my friend. I know what you are thinking: "but in this case copies of your data are being resold" in which case I would agree that each party has to buy their own copy from me, or, if t…
I haven't thought it through much, but on the face of it I like the idea of receiving some compensation whenever my data is _resold_, plus a way for me to see _where_ my data has been resold, maybe even a notification.
It's a bit like a songwriter receiving a royalty whenever their song is played on the radio or in public (see https://www.prsformusic.com/).
Obviously this would be a challenging thing to implement.