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Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

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Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#21

Post by grawprog »

viraptor wrote: post #20
grawprog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, until that information is used to give individualized prices and other things. Or used to hide things or show you only things the algorithms decide you like....or should have according to them. Already i've read things about hotel websites and stuff altering prices based on which device you're using to browse their site. In a world where your personal shopping information is bought and sold and things become in…

It's much easier to do that for hotels than for groceries since comparison is harder. It will be quite widely known and sightly abused if your grocery chain starts doing that. The shops will always have the reference price in public after all. The pricing difference that actually matters (moving old stock) is already mostly done without personalised data. Sales are a standard.

For now, with brick and mortor businesses because it's hard to do that in a physical place. With people increasingly ordering things online it becomes easier and more profitable to do that.

If someone has your spending history, sees you buy something frequently, they have no incentive to put it on sale. Likewise, if they see something you've maybe looked at but not bought, they can put it in sale and tempt you.

This is just one example. I'm sure marketers can come up with all sorts.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#22

Post by backtoyoujim »

awinter-py wrote: post #16

Have never understood EFF's objection to 'pay for privacy' (covered in the middle of this article). Being able to pay for privacy is better than not being able to. It creates the beginning of accountability for cos and optionality for users.

How can that kind of inequality look like justice to anyone other than someone very economically privileged ?

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#23

Post by titzer »

viraptor wrote: post #4

I was thinking about a related idea recently - how much is my grocery information privacy worth for me? Summed up, I'm currently saving just over 11% on all the groceries + ~7% on fuel cost by sharing that information with 5 companies. (car insurance, CC, shop card, honey, airline) I'm not attached to this, I'd rather the programs like this get destroyed. But also by stacking the offers, I believe I'm getting more va…

> I believe I'm getting more value here than they do.

Well, these huge chains have bean counters that do exactly these kind of calculations, and in general, no. They are making more money in aggregate by doing this data collection than they are losing to discounts. Otherwise they would not do it.

The real mystery is the shadow economy behind the scenes of how this data gets packaged, sold, analyzed, and monetized. You should be more curious. In fact, we all should.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#24

Post by titzer »

jfoster wrote: post #7
LatteLazy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I'll pay you a dollar for your data is that I'll make 2 dollars selling you shit you wouldn't have bought otherwise using it. And for me to make 2 dollars, you need to buy 20 dollars worth of shit. Shit you didn't actually want or need.

If I sell my data for a dollar and subsequently ensure I only buy what I need, am I ahead?

The entire reason advertising exists is to subvert your conscious assessment of what you need, and when you do buy something you "need", you buy the right brand.

It's just stochastic brainwashing.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#25

Post by furyofantares »

asciident wrote: post #8
LatteLazy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I'll pay you a dollar for your data is that I'll make 2 dollars selling you shit you wouldn't have bought otherwise using it. And for me to make 2 dollars, you need to buy 20 dollars worth of shit. Shit you didn't actually want or need.

Very cynical take assuming retail is zero-sum. It could also be helping you find the products you need at an opportune time, increasing the value for all parties. Or based on purchase patterns, they're able to stock inventory more accurately based on predicted purchases, and save on storage and transport.

Except all the multibillion dollar advertising mega corporations happen to sell directly to the people who want to affect your behavior to their benefit.

You could argue that it just happens to also be to your benefit by chance, but that's certainly not where the incentives lie.

By comparison, companies like consumer reports, which instead directly sell you information to influence your behavior to your benefit are tiny. The advertising industry is nearly a trillion dollar industry -- if a large amount of that value is going to the consumer why hasn't there been massive innovation in selling to it directly to the consumer?

GP's comment about selling us shit we don't want/need is a hard pill to swallow. It's highly counterintuitive and demeaning to our sense of agency -- just like so many results in modern psychology.

But I think that view also misses the bigger picture twice. First, because while the consumer-producer relationship is positive sum and that's the whole reason it exists, pricing is not. If advertising makes it easier to connect with a product you want, then the price can be raised. We should think about how advertising makes the things we want more expensive.

But second, I think we should also think about how the relationship of advertiser to producer may not be positive sum. Producers compete with each other in a fashion that isn't positive sum, and advertisers sell to all producers. That's an arms race. I can't effectively start a business without using advertising because all my competitors use advertising. Advertising doesn't account for a trillion dollars in demand per year -- it just siphons it from producers by selling them the same arms they sell to their competitors.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#26

Post by viraptor »

titzer wrote: post #23
viraptor wrote: post #4

I was thinking about a related idea recently - how much is my grocery information privacy worth for me? Summed up, I'm currently saving just over 11% on all the groceries + ~7% on fuel cost by sharing that information with 5 companies. (car insurance, CC, shop card, honey, airline) I'm not attached to this, I'd rather the programs like this get destroyed. But also by stacking the offers, I believe I'm getting more va…

> I believe I'm getting more value here than they do. Well, these huge chains have bean counters that do exactly these kind of calculations, and in general, no. They are making more money in aggregate by doing this data collection than they are losing to discounts. Otherwise they would not do it. The real mystery is the shadow economy behind the scenes of how this data gets packaged, sold, analyzed, and monetized. Yo…

> Well, these huge chains have bean counters that do exactly these kind of calculations, and in general, no.

That's why I mentioned selling the same information to 5 companies. I get each of them separately maybe paying a few bucks. I'm assuming that a few of them resell the information to the same market making that information less useful and giving me more value.

But at $70+ a month for the very repetitive shopping lists from a single location? My guess is they don't plan for people actually using the offers efficiently. If they did, the rewards would plummet.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#27

Post by hatmatrix »

pm90 wrote: post #2

TLDR: companies will likely shaft you as the market value for your individual dataset isn't that much, companies derive value by aggregating data over a large number of consumers.

By why is our data valued or priced at the individual level rather than the profit it generates the company in aggregate?

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#28

Post by bradbot »

backtoyoujim wrote: post #22
awinter-py wrote: post #16

Have never understood EFF's objection to 'pay for privacy' (covered in the middle of this article). Being able to pay for privacy is better than not being able to. It creates the beginning of accountability for cos and optionality for users.

How can that kind of inequality look like justice to anyone other than someone very economically privileged ?

Why the downvotes? The point is legitimate. Not everyone would be able to afford to pay for something like this.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#29

Post by google234123 »

backtoyoujim wrote: post #22
awinter-py wrote: post #16

Have never understood EFF's objection to 'pay for privacy' (covered in the middle of this article). Being able to pay for privacy is better than not being able to. It creates the beginning of accountability for cos and optionality for users.

How can that kind of inequality look like justice to anyone other than someone very economically privileged ?

The alternative is that they dont have access to these services.

Re: Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal

#30

Post by google234123 »

bradbot wrote: post #28
backtoyoujim wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can that kind of inequality look like justice to anyone other than someone very economically privileged ?

Why the downvotes? The point is legitimate. Not everyone would be able to afford to pay for something like this.

Not everyone can afford a BMW. Is that fair?
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