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Let's make them pay for using our personal data

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Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#41

Post by ummonk »

Igor_Wiwi wrote: post #7
danpalmer wrote: post #3

Arguably, 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…

I bet for 90% of users of Facebook(or Google) it is not clear how actually Facebook makes money

Really? The ads are annoyingly obvious.

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#42

Post by netwanderer3 »

Under the spirit of capitalism, if privacy is such a popular product that so many consumers want, then why not make it available for them to purchase?

For Google users example, free-tier will allow each user account 5 searches per month that will not be tracked and recorded, so essentially users will have an option to specify right before the moment of each search to indicate whether this specific search is going to be “cognito” or “invisible” (perhaps by just ticking a checkbox).

Higher tiers offering greater amounts of private searches per month will simply cost more to purchase shall those consumers desire. Ran out of private searches? Top it up just like prepaid phone credit! This way those users who are extremely privacy conscious will have a solution to protect their own privacy while Google has invented a new revenue stream and can even increase profits from their valuable services.

The next generation Capitalism 2.0 will now enjoy privacy becoming a new cash cow industry overnight. The question then will be how much are people willing to pay for an unlimited account?

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#44

Post by martinshen »

rootusrootus wrote: post #36
martinshen wrote: post #32

Why would they pay you for your data? How much is it worth? If you click on 0 ads per year, you generate $0 for Facebook and therefore your data is worth $0. For a personally targeted (using your data) ad click on FB, you're looking at ~$3.25. For a web targeted ad click on a niche website, you're probably looking $0.50-$2.50. In other words, your "data" is worth $0.75-$2.75 per click of revenue FB spends 17% of reve…

> On the flip side, FB should offer a paid ad-free version of their services but who honestly would pay $10/mo for FB + Instagram etc.? IIRC they don't make anywhere near $10/user/month. If you gave me the option to pay, say, $25/year for ad-free, tracking-free, and it was implemented in some way that I could trust , then I might be willing to participate with FB again. I'm hoping, actually, that someone will come al…

They generate ~$100 ARPU on US users.

https://digiday.com/marketing/facebooks-making-money-per-use...

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#45

Post by PhasmaFelis »

umvi wrote: post #22
BonesJustice wrote: post #16

Earlier 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 feel like your first and third paragraphs directly contradict each other. What am I missing?

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#46

Post by jakelazaroff »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #42

Under the spirit of capitalism, if privacy is such a popular product that so many consumers want, then why not make it available for them to purchase? For Google users example, free-tier will allow each user account 5 searches per month that will not be tracked and recorded, so essentially users will have an option to specify right before the moment of each search to indicate whether this specific search is going to…

This seems… very dystopian. Would we be okay with e.g. landlords placing cameras in the bathrooms of apartments for rent unless the tenant paid an extra fee? What if it were framed as a discount and targeted low-income housing?

Why should we allow our privacy to be commoditized, instead of enshrining it as a basic human right?

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#47

Post by neilv »

Be careful, as you legitimize a practice that has been very secretive and dishonest in tech, and in many cases should be considered criminal.

I suggest that we're tremendously outclassed in understanding how this all works, and how to find angles or "evil" in it.

Also, it could be somewhat similar to what we get with class-action settlements that are just a minor cost of doing business to let the wrongdoer off the hook, while paying some middleperson to facilitate that.

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#48

Post by nexuist »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #42

Under the spirit of capitalism, if privacy is such a popular product that so many consumers want, then why not make it available for them to purchase? For Google users example, free-tier will allow each user account 5 searches per month that will not be tracked and recorded, so essentially users will have an option to specify right before the moment of each search to indicate whether this specific search is going to…

I think the hard truth is that offering privacy at a premium will still detract total net revenue. Nobody really cares about a single person's search history. It's the conclusions you can extract from hundreds of millions of peoples' histories that makes data collection so powerful. The more people you allow to opt out from that collection, the less powerful your ad network becomes and the less big money spenders you will catch as a result. One big money spender can easily spend as much as ten thousand individuals with a single campaign. It's just not likely that there will be enough people willing to pay compared to giving them the services for free in exchange for their data.

Re: Let's make them pay for using our personal data

#49

Post by nostrademons »

Pretty sure the mechanics as detailed in the article are factually wrong. Google does not sell personal data. It collects all the personal data it can and then stockpiles it, where it becomes an asset that the company can use to build products and charge rent (largely from advertisers, but also from consumers). Selling an extremely valuable proprietary asset to competitors would be a really dumb move - the money in today's economy is in owning monopoly assets and charging rent for them.

The actual mechanism behind the behavior the author observed is that the user went to Google, searched for a product, and then visited the product's website. The product's website contains a tracking beacon that associates a unique cookie for the user with the visit. The website's owner can then choose to run ads on Facebook or Twitter that are shown only to people who previously visited the website. This program is well-known among Facebook advertisers (it's apparently quite profitable to them), but Facebook understandably doesn't publicize it much to the general public.

Agree that it'd be cool if the person involved could actually control who and where it went to and was compensated for the use of it, but that'd likely require a fundamental change in how the web works.

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