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Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

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Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#61

Post by diebeforei485 »

mc32 wrote: post #13
Calvin02 wrote: post #11

I foresee tech companies creating paid and non-paid versions of their products. If you don't want your data monetized, please pay $50/month for Google Search, GMail, Maps, and YouTube. If you are okay with the value exchange of ads and free services, then you are opting into a mutually agreed upon arrangement with no compensation.

This would create a weird paradox: Advertisers want people with disposable income. People without much disposable income get really targeted ads (they won’t pay for the privacy). People with disposable income pay for the privacy service and don’t get ads or get poorly targeted ads. It then becomes more like traditional ads that get broadcast to everyone. So the policy shoots itself in the foot.

Podcasts already have premium versions without ads.

Video streaming (and music streaming though not as much anymore) also have premium versions without ads.

I think people are willing to pay for an "ad-free" experience on some services and still see ads elsewhere.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#62

Post by sidhanthp »

jerf wrote: post #26

It doesn't work. There isn't enough money in the data for anyone to care. Your entire data load might be worth $100 a year . The only reason it funds massive industries is cost-effective aggregation by dirt-cheap computer power. I ran the numbers on Facebook a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462402 It comes out that they're making roughly $17/yr in annual revenue per user. Revenue , not profit . Cr…

The people on HN, especially those who use Facebook regularly, are worth on average _significanty_ more than $17 to the company per year.

It’s hard to remember, the average person makes $X,000 globally and Facebook has a huge % of the planet on their platform.

HN users make in the upper echelon of wages, and are comfortable with their computers and online shopping.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#63

Post by tootie »

gnulinux wrote: post #15
kumarm wrote: post #10

Aren't companies already paying indirectly by providing free service? I am no fan of Facebook but I am using the service free of cost and in return company collects data for targeted advertising. Shouldn't this be more targeted at cable companies which collect a monthly fee and again sell your data? And may be forcing Big Tech to provide a paid alternative which doesn't use data collected?

Facebook is also making money off of you by showing you ads. It's a question of how much is enough. Facebook is charging nothing, sure, but what if the value they take from us (our data, our ad attention+clicks) is more valuable than the value they give us (a free social media)?

If there is a nationwide push to disincentive all rent-seeking then I'd be all for it. Google selling customer behavior data seems like it's far less deleterious to society than running your business with a goal of generating short-term investor value.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#64

Post by dannyw »

hansvm wrote: post #59
dannyw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really true? There are "customer research" apps that will offer you small, but non-trivial amounts of money for basically selling your personal information.

It's partially true. You can't sell most of your personal information. E.g., when your name, face, and weight end up in somebody's dataset it'll be because of the "free" social fitness app you used rather than because you were able to directly connect with anyone who cared about that data and work out a reasonable price.

So you're saying a marketplace hasn't been built yet. That's like saying your car had no value until Uber was built (only taxis have value), or short term rental homes had no value until Airbnb was built (only hotels have value).

Your data today has value. It's how you get access to Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc, for the monetary cost of $0.00. That is value, and yes, you can't cash that out to $ _yet_. That's because a marketplace hasn't been built yet, but maybe legislation could create such a market and give consumers a fair shake.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#65

Post by ceo_tim_crook »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #49

I know this is well–meaning but I think it's ultimately misguided. The root issue isn't that people aren't getting paid for their data — it's that their data is commodified in the first place.

There is an easy solution to these problems, just flood the social networks with more and more garbage until they become unusable we're making strides to that anyway

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#66

Post by spaced-out »

waon wrote: post #53
bilal4hmed wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my friend got a kidney transplant because they found a donor off facebook. Random stranger saw his plea and decided to help. Put a value on that

It's already bad enough that the surveillance economy is threatening our civil liberties in more ways than one. It's outright dystopian when you need to organize a social media campaign to get medical treatment. Considering the sheer number of people who desperately need medical help, the chances of succeeding is very very low.

>It's outright dystopian when you need to organize a social media campaign to get medical treatment.

The above comment wasn't an example of that, though. His friend was getting medical treatment, the issue is that you can't just buy a kidney (at least not in the US), you need to find a donor.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#67

Post by lordgrenville »

dannyw wrote: post #52
lordgrenville wrote: post #8

In terms of assessing the value of one individual's data, shouldn't there be some consideration for the fact that it's worth nothing to that person on their own? I can't sell my data on the free market. It's a transaction over an object that has value in only one direction.

Is that really true? There are "customer research" apps that will offer you small, but non-trivial amounts of money for basically selling your personal information.

Fair. Although it's also non-rival. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#68

Post by hansvm »

lordgrenville wrote: post #8

In terms of assessing the value of one individual's data, shouldn't there be some consideration for the fact that it's worth nothing to that person on their own? I can't sell my data on the free market. It's a transaction over an object that has value in only one direction.

That depends on how much you value the free market as a means to an end versus an end in itself. Machine learning meta-models aren't very valuable by themselves, and raw personal data isn't valuable by itself, but their union creates a huge surplus of value. If you value the free market then any allocation of that surplus that happens in practice is a good allocation. If you don't, then it makes sense to look at properties you would like such an allocation to have and try to find a way to distribute the profits to meet your criteria.

As an example, the Shapley value in simpler, similar scenarios would allocate half the profits to whomever trained the model and distribute the other half equally among those individuals whose data was used (or equivalently, it would treat every interaction between the model-maker and a data-provider as splitting the profits 50/50). Actually calculating the Shapley value for something as nonlinear as the hypothetical profits from a trained model on various data subsets seems...problematic...but splitting some percentage of the profits equally among the participants won't be too far off the mark.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#69

Post by acituan »

jerf wrote: post #26

It doesn't work. There isn't enough money in the data for anyone to care. Your entire data load might be worth $100 a year . The only reason it funds massive industries is cost-effective aggregation by dirt-cheap computer power. I ran the numbers on Facebook a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462402 It comes out that they're making roughly $17/yr in annual revenue per user. Revenue , not profit . Cr…

> $17/yr in annual revenue per user

Revenue per user is a very misleading way to evaluate the value when talking about a hyper-global operation. It is as useful as averaging the global price of a loaf of bread, which would be priced as $2-3 in the US but a few cents in a third world country. This is very applicable to ad revenue because ultimately ads are capturing the pricing levels of real economy, and bulk of the facebook users are not from high GDP nations.

> Your entire data load might be worth $100 a year

This is a very simplistic way to think about data. In fact, calling it data itself is misleading. Because it all boils down to how the data is operationalized and made into information and knowledge about you when the business is interacting with you. Same demographic data is worth separately for selling you ads, driving product development to increase usage, price discriminating against you while buying airplane tickets, selling you insurance, influencing your vote etc.

Another way data is not a static, lifeless entity is something people often forget, it is the power of an SQL join. Joining table-a and table-b yields information neither of the tables had alone. So there will always be more a potential of rendering the existing data more valuable (more information yielding) by joining it with a marginal amount of new data.

In sum, data doesn't have a static value, and I don't think we have seen the end of ways it could be utilized against users yet.

> It doesn't work.

To my knowledge, we don't have empirical data that shows it doesn't yet.

Re: Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

#70

Post by manigandham »

gnulinux wrote: post #15
kumarm wrote: post #10

Aren't companies already paying indirectly by providing free service? I am no fan of Facebook but I am using the service free of cost and in return company collects data for targeted advertising. Shouldn't this be more targeted at cable companies which collect a monthly fee and again sell your data? And may be forcing Big Tech to provide a paid alternative which doesn't use data collected?

Facebook is also making money off of you by showing you ads. It's a question of how much is enough. Facebook is charging nothing, sure, but what if the value they take from us (our data, our ad attention+clicks) is more valuable than the value they give us (a free social media)?

That’s called profitability.
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