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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

#221

Post by Zaskoda »

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…

I would gladly pay $17 a year for a non-ad driven version of Facebook.

If this were the limit of the value per user, they would have offered a subscription service long ago. Something is missing from your model.

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

#222

Post by adventured »

neilparikh wrote: post #190
erentz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see these breakdowns I think I’d pay $17 per year for Facebook without all of the ads and tracking and data mining and knowing I was just getting a good service optimized for its customers. Why not ban tracking and ad targeting and selling personal data, and force that business model to go extinct, and now they have to start charging for service and their users become actual customers.

$17 is the global average. If you live in a country like the US, you probably generate way more revenue per year, since you have more spending power (and thus are more valuable to advertise to). I think the general problem is that those who can afford to pay for Facebook are those who are the most valuable to advertisers. So if you gave users the choice to pay or not, the users who draw the advertising revenue would…

For reference it's approximately $143 per year for the US market, per user ($11.92 per month).

~220-230 million monthly active US users, $31.4 billion in sales (projected 2020 figure) for that market.

That's of course not adjusting for hours of use for a given user, data contribution, and so on.

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

#223

Post by iooi »

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…

You don’t have to guess these numbers, Facebook publishes them in their quarterly and annual reports. IIRC, users in North America generate around $85 a year. Other geos are now where close, with Europe a distant second.

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

#224

Post by qeternity »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #214
qeternity wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has revenues of $70b where are you getting $3/yr??

Poster above me, reusing their number to keep the thought cogent. The point is if the revenue per user is low enough some (many?) would want to opt out of data/privacy infringement and pay for the service directly, maybe even at a greater cost than revenue share. Also keep in mind that some percent of that revenue is from other things (ads for example). They could still make ad revenue on paid users, just marginally…

The ads are only valuable because Facebook have lots of data to target you accurately. This is mostly what people mean when they selling your data...it's less that Facebook is handing it over, it's that Facebook are providing a platform for advertisers to target you based on this data.

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

#226

Post by minkzilla »

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…

I don’t think this is the problem it is trying to solve but interestingly this could be really beneficial to some very poor countries were the dollar is extremely strong.

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

#227

Post by danenania »

Zaskoda wrote: post #221
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…

I would gladly pay $17 a year for a non-ad driven version of Facebook. If this were the limit of the value per user, they would have offered a subscription service long ago. Something is missing from your model.

It’s likely that averages are very misleading for this kind of thing. People who are willing/able to pay FB not to see ads probably tend to have a lot more disposable income, and therefore are worth more to advertisers—potentially many times more than the average.

There should be roughly as much variation in FB users’ value to FB as there is variation in disposable income across their whole userbase.

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

#228

Post by papeda »

minkzilla wrote: post #226
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…

I don’t think this is the problem it is trying to solve but interestingly this could be really beneficial to some very poor countries were the dollar is extremely strong.

It depends on how the money gets allotted. The people to whom $5 is most useful are also the people that most advertisers are not interested in targeting in the first place. So if people are compensated according to their value as advertising targets, this seems like it'll be a rich-get-very- slightly-richer program.

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

#229

Post by Mirioron »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #37
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…

If the only reason people collect all of that information about me is that it's cheap to do so, would making it a bit more expensive lead to nobody bothering to collect all my information? That sounds like a win as well.

Somebody will still collect all of that information. They will simply be outside of the jurisdiction of your laws.

The only way to stop others from collecting data on you is to not give it out in the first place. We need our computers, particularly browsers, to stop leaking so much information.

Edit: this is also the downfall of GDPR. An enterprising Chinese company could collect whatever data they want and then simply sell it to someone else who can use it to sell something to Europeans.

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

#230

Post by metrokoi »

joshuamorton wrote: post #164
erentz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see these breakdowns I think I’d pay $17 per year for Facebook without all of the ads and tracking and data mining and knowing I was just getting a good service optimized for its customers. Why not ban tracking and ad targeting and selling personal data, and force that business model to go extinct, and now they have to start charging for service and their users become actual customers.

Many of the features users find useful (let's ignore for the moment whether these are good things) like content recommendations and search result recommendations rely on the same understanding of user interests that allow these companies to target advertisements. So they need to understand your interests anyway to provide the services that people find useful. So they still need forms of tracking to do the things that…

They could just collect your data and not monetize it. If a paid user can decide whether or not they want those features. Facebook could easily monetize it anyway, but they could also monetize a paid user and day they aren't. Everything we are discussing is hypothetical anyway.
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