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California governor proposes data dividend

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41–46 of 46 posts

Re: California governor proposes data dividend

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of discussion, lets focus on the idea itself, whatever the motiviations of the politician who's saying it. >> Users are already getting value for their data - the product showing the ads. People have a choice in whether they want to use gmail and get a free best-in-class email client, backend storage, and worldwide access to their email. The trade is that they're participating in an ad platform that FB a…

That's an incredible selective way to look at it. Google search has almost no competition. Social media has Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, and there's really not a huge bar to entry. New social media apps rise all the time. It's also your opinion that their product hasn't improved over time, and your conjecture that that's where the money is going. Also in television there is much less competition. The TelCos are the wor…

> really not a huge bar to entry

Critical mass is a huge bar to entry.

Re: California governor proposes data dividend

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> much like paying a dividend to victims of a polluting chemical factory to offset their deleterious health effects Out of curiosity, why would this be morally wrong? To avoid reasoning-by-connotation, replace the word dividend with a word that connotes something positive (eg reparations): would you say that the functionally-identical ongoing payment of reparations to victims of pollution would be wrong?

Not OP, but this is how I see it. It's a bit like the daycare late fines experiment: https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine... Here's a digestible Freakonomics bit which discusses the same: http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what... When there was not a price on being late, the price paid was actually moral. That is, being late was a bad thing to do and so you should feel ba…

> I would guess that that is what OP meant. If you introduce a price, you can actually remove even stronger restrictions that are in place based on morality. Because as long as you're being charged, you can assume the price is inclusive of your moral hazard.

This, but also that a dividend gives a mandate to continue.

I'd say that dividends and fines are distinct, in that a fine typically comes with the understanding that wilfully continuing what you got fined for will result in an even larger fine. Conversely, accepting money in return for some wrong committed against you would typically make it harder to get an injunction against that activity.

Re: California governor proposes data dividend

#43
post #8

bing pays you rewards, which for me adds up to like $20/yr. I'd hope there would be more competition between search engines so they compete with benefits for users. For most queries google isn't that much better, use DuckDuckGo for privacy or other engines.

People who see me work invariably ask: Why do you use bing?

And I invariably answer, in my best Idiocracy: 'Cause they pay me every time I do!

Re: California governor proposes data dividend

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> post-GDPR As pervasive as the GDPR is, a Californian in California isn't subject to it, and outside of people interested in tech, would make an assumption they probably know little about it?

I think you misunderstood my point, which was that we're clearly seeing a massive global trend towards privacy and rights thereto. The GDPR is a manifestation of this trend, and has further sensitized consumers. Cambridge Analytics happened at a time when neither processors nor consumers were yet very sensitive to the topic of privacy. This has changed dramatically, and the GDPR is not the cause thereof, but a conseq…

Double entendre on processors.

Re: California governor proposes data dividend

#45
post #23

Paying us for our data won't nearly compensate us for the loss of our democracy. Quite the opposite: it puts an exact price on how cheap that comes about.

People who are using hyperbolic untruths like "Facebook is stealing our democracy" or "your data is being sold" should be warned: non-analytical politicians may introduce regulation framed by these falsehoods. For example, a law regulating that Facebook not tamper in elections or sell user data would be a home run for Facebook, because they have done neither. Speaking the truth in this instance is both more productiv…

Mining peoples' data to shape political discourse is not a falsehood.

Nonetheless, you are elsewise correct: mining user data to sell products to measurably alter human behavior is an unregulated industry and likely should be.

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