Andrew Yang is Pushing Big Tech To Pay Users For Data (theverge.com) 110
Andrew Yang wants people to get paid for the data they create on big tech platforms like Facebook and Google, and with a new project launching on Monday, he believes he can make it happen. From a report: Yang's Data Dividend Project is a new program tasked with establishing data-as-property rights under privacy laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) all across the country. The program hopes to mobilize over 1 million people by the end of the year, focusing primarily on Californians, and "pave the way for a future in which all Americans can claim their data as a property right and receive payment" if they choose to share their data with platforms. At the beginning of the year, the CCPA went into effect, granting consumers new control over their data online like the right to delete and opt out of the sale of their personal information. There's nothing in the law about tech companies paying for data (or, more specifically, paying them not to opt out), but Yang's new project is looking to show that the idea is popular with voters. The Data Dividend Project is betting on collective action as a means of changing the law and extending data property rights to users across the country. If this idea becomes law, Yang's team says it will work on behalf of users to help them get paid.
3..2..1 before Yang is labeled alt-right & ban (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:3..2..1 before Yang is labeled alt-right & (Score:4, Insightful)
The easiest loophole is for tech companies to say if people don't want their data to be used they also don't get to use the company's services.
It would be sort of like Henry Ford. You can have any color car you want so long as it's black.
Re:3..2..1 before Yang is labeled alt-right & (Score:4, Insightful)
The easiest loophole is for tech companies to say if people don't want their data to be used they also don't get to use the company's services.
That's not a loophole.
You either pay for the product, or you are the product.
Besides all of that, I'm still waiting for the first real harm done by all this data sharing.
Which, for the record, does not say that I'm advocating against privacy regulations. It should be informed consent, meaning that the end-user must realize and knowingly sign up for a service which uses their data for their revenue model.
Re:3..2..1 before Yang is labeled alt-right & (Score:5, Insightful)
You either pay for the product, or you are the product.
Then we should stop this pointless conversation now before we waste any more time.
The Free Generation has already spoken with their wallets. Be prepared to be labeled a racist/sexist/bigot if you dare suggest they pay for it.
Besides all of that, I'm still waiting for the first real harm done by all this data sharing.
It only takes a 15-year old gamer to call an entire SWAT team to hunt down some "terrorist" in their own doxxed home. And of course, that's never ended badly, right?
Or maybe a nice arrest record stemming from an accusation protected by the FISA courts would highlight how much fun the government has with their Data-Share-And-Not-Tell devices that doll out an appropriate amount of legal-based revenue at the expense of someone's freedom.
Floors me how ignorant you really are with "data sharing", as if it's just two little girls sharing diary stories.
Re:3..2..1 before Yang is labeled alt-right & (Score:4, Interesting)
It only takes a 15-year old gamer to call an entire SWAT team to hunt down some "terrorist" in their own doxxed home.
Doxxing can be done with a paper phone book.
Doxxing does not need nor use the tracking data collected by advertising companies.
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Just like I can wait outside your house, peering in through your windows with long lens camera and a farfoon, recording everything on reel-to-reel tape. Then I can follow you when you leave, nothing the time and location of all your stops. Also I would be filming, recording, and real time identifying many of the people you pass by and/or interact with throughout the day. Later, when you fall asleep, I would record the sounds of that sleep, its durat
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It only takes a 15-year old gamer to call an entire SWAT team to hunt down some "terrorist" in their own doxxed home. And of course, that's never ended badly, right?
If you can provide any references to indicate that this was the direct or even indirect result of Big Tech Data, I might agree with you.
Or maybe a nice arrest record stemming from an accusation protected by the FISA courts would highlight how much fun the government has with their Data-Share-And-Not-Tell devices that doll out an appropriate amount of legal-based revenue at the expense of someone's freedom.
Once again, references, please. Also, FISA courts are, you know, courts. Courts have a democratic oversight. You can vote to change that if you don't like it.
Floors me how ignorant you really are with "data sharing"
I'm not. Few apps on my phone have location sharing etc turned on. I don't use the native apps for any Facebook service, any Google service, or anything else associated with Big Tech. The apps that I do use have minima
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Be prepared to be labeled a racist/sexist/bigot if you dare suggest they pay for it.
Nah, just be prepared to be labelled as someone who doesn't understand basic economics or the value derived from a collective, much like those people who think Insurance is something paid by chums. The reality is the "free" generation are using an array of services that would otherwise bankrupt them if they were to subscribe to them all, kind of like if you paid for all content you read online as an alternative to adverts.
As to the second part by sharing something of low value to you to join a collective a
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The Free Generation has already spoken with their wallets. Be prepared to be labeled a racist/sexist/bigot if you dare suggest they pay for it.
That... what?
I'm guessing you got called those some time and you (a) have no idea why and (b) are really sore about it. Because seriously dude, that comment makes no sense.
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You either pay for the product, or you are the product.
People pay for Windows 10 and yet it still spies on them without any means of disabling it. The average user probably doesn't even know it's spying on them while selling off their personal data and using them as unpaid QA.
Re:3..2..1 before Yang is labeled alt-right & (Score:5, Insightful)
Works for me. I don't use Facebook or Google. But they still have data on me and I wish they would stop - but opting out really means opting in and being hidden which isn't opting out at all.
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Send them a GDPR Data Subject Access request and find out what they have.
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This is great! I already refuse to visit many web sites that get all pissy if I have an adblock on, and if I have to allow through more than 2 or 3 script locations before a site becomes legible then I just close that tab and never go back. We don't need to go to those web sites, they are not mandatory and society will function even if advertisers suddenly vanish overnight.
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Many of them a built on stealing your data and selling services to other people. For example stealing your face to build a facial recognition database, or stealing your marketing data so other companies can target you with spam.
Since they don't offer you any services at all the only option left for them is to pay you.
Hard to compete with free (use of MY data) (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm... Not exactly FP abuse, but I really can't figure out what you [sinij] were trying to say there. There are a couple of possible interpretations, but I'm guessing you were rushing for FP and lost your clarity. In moderation terms (though I never get mod points anymore), I think it might well deserve a positive moderation, but I can't figure out what it would be.
Backing up to first principles, I think Yang is making sense again (and I still wish he'd become the Democratic nominee). I actually devised my first business plan along these lines about 15 years ago, but I am NOT a real businessman, just a theorist or idealist.
My version was for a fiduciary company that would hold and protect your personal information and auction access without revealing who is being accessed. In mathematical terms, my version involves auctioning off bundles of users, so advertisers would only know that they were reaching some number of highly qualified potential customers, and it would be up to each customer to decide whether or not to actually contact any advertiser.
The real-world problem that might be related to your [sinij's] comment is that the personal data is "out there" in the possession of "Big tech" companies who have "existing business model[s]" for selling your privacy, so it doesn't matter much if you manage to put a copy of the cat back into a bag that you actually control. The abuse of your personal information is going to continue. "Possession is nine points of the law" and they possess "your" data.
On first principles, the solution is obvious. Your personal information should belong to you, and unauthorized possession or use of your personal information should be a criminal offense. There are even ways to read this approach into the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution (and various other statements of human rights).
If you do accept the principle of owning your personal data, then the solution approach becomes sort of obvious. You should be able to keep your personal data. If anyone has a copy of your personal data, you should know about it and be allowed to ask for it to be erased. You should be able to specify where it is stored and what is done with it, and if anyone, especially anyone in the government, thinks otherwise, then they should be required to get a warrant based on appropriate legal standards.
I do see a next step, but I don't see how Yang's new proposal can get there. Plus this is Slashdot 2020 and I've already invested too much time... However, if you're interested I welcome your questions. Heck, I even welcome thoughtful criticism based on actual comprehension of what I actually wrote, but you so rarely see anything like that these years.
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My version was for a fiduciary company that would hold and protect your personal information and auction access without revealing who is being accessed. In mathematical terms, my version involves auctioning off bundles of users, so advertisers would only know that they were reaching some number of highly qualified potential customers, and it would be up to each customer to decide whether or not to actually contact any advertiser.
This is basically exactly how the big tech companies work today. They hold information. Advertisers bid for a number of potential customer-eyeballs ("impressions"). I don't understand what is the difference you're suggesting? (1) if you're suggesting that the current companies might actually sell customer data, rather than just selling impressions, that's like selling the cow rather than the milk. I don't know what you mean by "auctioning off bundles of users". (2) I don't understand what you envision with
Re:Hard to compete with free (use of MY data) (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no transaction in any big tech company's ledger where money is exchanged for anything that we'd understand as privacy. They're selling something, sure, but calling that thing "privacy" feels misleading.
Yeah, it totally makes sense that they know you've been looking at lots of those [insert socially unacceptable kink here] sites lately and could sell that information to whoever they want without your blessing, unless you've opted out of ten gazillion different services, with no real benefit to you. (Next month they decide it's profitable to sell that data as a resource for background checks, so your next boss will see it. Yay.)
Or you could find your secret kink or political position ends up leaked to your family because they start seeing ads related to your search history. That's fun, too.
And what if they're selling info about you that's wrong for some reason? You don't even have any direct way of knowing.
Definitely no privacy issues there. [/sarcasm]
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[There's no transaction in any big tech company's ledger where money is exchanged for anything that we'd understand as privacy. They're selling something, sure, but calling that thing "privacy" feels misleading.]
Or you could find your secret kink or political position ends up leaked to your family because they start seeing ads related to your search history. That's fun, too. And what if they're selling info about you that's wrong for some reason? You don't even have any direct way of knowing. Definitely no privacy issues there. [/sarcasm]
Oh, I fully agree that there are privacy-related issues. I'm just saying that the thing they're selling isn't "your privacy", and it harms the conversation when people call it that.
(1) You gave examples of them selling your search history. Is your search history identical to your privacy? No. They weren't selling "your privacy". They were selling your search history, which has a significant privacy implication.
(2) In reality they don't sell your search history. Instead they mine your search history to gathe
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Okay, that's fair. I think it's a bit of a pedantic distinction, but see your argument now.
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Okay, that's fair. I think it's a bit of a pedantic distinction, but see your argument now.
I agree it's pedantic, but I also think it's important. If we the people complain that companies are "selling our privacy", and they respond with audits or government oversight which proves that they don't leak personally identifiable information, then they will have successfully defended themselves that they're not selling our privacy. And indeed they already strive hard not to leak the data -- they're following the "sell the milk not the cow" model, and it's in Google's interests that the data remain secr
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Note that back in the pre-internet days, you could buy "socially inacceptable kink" magazines (or movies), and there was NO WAY to prevent the seller from knowing who you were....
So, what's really changed? Othe
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This is basically exactly how the big tech companies work today.
This is basically exactly NOT how big tech companies work to day.
I don't understand what is the difference you're suggesting?
It's pretty simple though - the difference is customer choice, and returning control over the data to the data owner. It's one thing to have a single fiduciary company that holds your info and provides auditable guarantees that it's not shared (I assume the customer would be able to choose which fiduciary company he trusts, and the amount of information they're willing to provide to the fiduciary as well). It's completely another thing for Goo
Gotta be more specific (Score:1)
I absolutely understand that you FEEL different when you use the word "fiduciary" than when you use the word "Google". I do think you need to be more specific if you're proposing something ...
> It's one thing to have a single fiduciary company that holds your info and provides auditable guarantees that it's not shared. It's completely another thing for Google or FB to take all of your info without giving you any guarantee of privacy
Google and FB ARE the two companies. Do you think merging them into a s
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I do think you need to be more specific if you're proposing something ...
I thought I made the difference between Google/FB and that hypothetical fiduciary company very clear in my post: the difference is customer choice. The latter one is explicitly entrusted by the customer with his data, and manages it in good faith for his benefit. GoogleFB are NOT entrusted by the customer with their data. They grab it via all kinds of dirty plays, and manage it exclusively for their benefit, not the customer's. That they have a privacy policy is totally irrelevant, and that you even believe
That's more specific (Score:2)
Now that's a lot more specific than:
--
company that would hold and protect your personal information and auction access without revealing who is being accessed. In mathematical terms, my version involves auctioning off bundles of users, so advertisers would only know that they were reaching some number of highly qualified potential customers
--
That post, the original "fiduciary" post, describes Google.
The same post says "a single company ... choose which of the companies", so it sounded like the writer change
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Okay, you do seem to have understood part of what I wrote. I'll attempt to clear up a misunderstanding and address your questions.
I think the key misunderstanding involves the legal term "fiduciary". A fiduciary responsibility means acting in the best interests of someone else rather than putting your own interests first. If you think that the companies are putting my best interests ahead of theirs, then we must not be dealing with any of the same companies. At least I can't think of an example. Do you have
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Hence, I suggested that if the idea takes off, the big tech will fight this dirty - namely by smearing this in "the usual" way. As alt-right this or that.
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Thank you for your clarification of your position. I don't know if they would need to resort to a smear campaign. Bribing politicians to rig the game usually works well enough to sustain the corporate cancers. Never satisfies their greed, but that's a fake problem since it's not solvable.
I can clarify my position a bit, because I did leave something out. Much of your personal information involves other people, and in that case, the ownership does become shared. Therefore I think a more accurate description
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I think I basically agree with you, but I also see huge problems with trying to reconcile the situation. It's kind of a problem from vastly improved memory. Imagine someone is investigating a crime and a witness thinks they saw you at the scene. The accuracy of the memory of the witness may become a key factor in your trial. But if the witness is a photo, the situation gets much worse, especially if you were in a public place and even more so when you knew that photos were being taken. As in every convenien
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Sometimes I wonder if maybe the future belongs only to the people who can withstand total loss of privacy?
I wonder that myself. However, I think it is likely that privacy will become ultra-luxury achieved by a combination of poisoning the data and countermeasures to commonplace surveillance tech.
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Mostly the ACK on the old discussion. (Sorry, I was kind of busy for a couple of days there.) I'm interpreting your comment as something along the lines of "privacy as a luxury good".
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Shannon, while I understand your desire to have "privacy", let me ask you a question about that.
Based on what you've posted here, I know you like Japan, you don't George W Bush, you tinker with programming, etc.
You probably know I'm a security professional, I'm not fond of AOC, and I'm arrogant.
Do you think I should be able to demand that you stop knowing that?
Should that AKP guy or whatever his name was be able to demand that nobody ever again mentions his hosts file spam when they talk about Slashdot? Ho
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I don't have time right now to respond properly to your questions and each of your examples, but I can relatively quickly say three general things that would underlie most of my more specific answers.
(1) Possession involves control of the location, which means that I think I should be able to store my personal information where I want it.
(2) Shared information is joint property and the only clear case is when all the parties agree against disclosure.
(3) Before we got all these cameras and databases, our per
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I appreciate your reply.
I'm not sure the point of the question was clear.
> (1) Possession involves control of the location, which means that I think I should be able to store my personal information where I want it.
Well whatever you know about you, you can put wherever you want it. Whatever I known about me, I can store that wherever. I don't think that's an issue or anything anyone would disagree with.
I think when the issue comes up is that YOU know some things about ME. You know that *I* am a securi
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Sorry for my delayed response, but I don't have too much time for Slashdot these days. Also the motivation is lacking, given the typical caliber of the conversations. I think this could have been a good one, but the Slashdot clock runs faster than I do?
Mostly I'm going to focus on the celebrity issue you have raised. I do think that represents a special situation. From a philosophic perspective, if someone derives profit from being a public figure, then that person also acquires a kind of liability as a pub
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> Why couldn't my banking records be stored on a server of my choice? The bank can (and of course would) sign those records to prevent my tampering with them, but why shouldn't I be able to sit on them if I choose to? Okay, if I want to make a payment, then I would need to agree to access by all of the parties involved
That's essentially what I proposed in one of my papers.
Except going a little further in one way and not quite as far in another way.
I was looking at the Equifax breach and pointing out that
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Ps as you say OJ or any public figure is a "special situation", obviously trying to write a good law about this gets more complicated with each "special situation".
I'm not a public figure. If I start stalking you at your job over an argument that starts on Slashdot, should be be illegal for you to warn other Slashdot users that I'm crazy? That's information about me that I don't want you to share. How about if I demand that you delete your home security video, because it shows me in your house?
Then you th
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Several interesting points raised, but I've been kind of busy and now the discussion feels kind of morbid, or at least elderly. Also loss of motivation for Slashdot? Many times it comes down to priorities, and Slashdot used to have a higher one for me. I'll try to respond briefly.
Regarding the banking stuff, for a lot of that internal accounting the bank could use anonymized identifiers to track the status at their end without needing the rest of it most of the time. Also you are raising an important point
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I understand the "other priorities than Slashdot" thing.
I'll mostly dissappear from Slashdot when school starts up again (I'm getting my masters).
> My initial thinking is that the camera images should still be under your control. That means you should have control over their storage, but I also think it should be relatively easy for the store to demonstrate probable cause to see the images
So before looking at their security footage, shop owners must first identify all of the customers in the store and as
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Mostly the ACK, but I do think it's something of a can of worms. What's bothering me about these cameras is that combined with facial recognition the videos can tag us and routinely track our movements, and there is no legitimate reason for our movements to be routinely tracked. However if the store owner discovers that merchandise has disappeared, then he does have a legitimate reason to see who's been in his store, and if he had a photographic memory, then he wouldn't need the camera...
Maybe we just need
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That makes sense. The use it is put to makes a difference, doesn't it. There is a a somewhat bright-line distinction between somebody having records of their own store (online and off) vs sharing those records with third parties in a large aggregated database, I'd say.
Many years ago, the standard "template" or formula used by most web pages included a "splash" page, which was really nothing more than a link to actual main page, plus a much smaller link to go somewhere else. (Most sites at the time were po
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I like how you write, you should do it more. I agree with all of what you said. But the fact remains:
A $BigTech holding $Data on $Users births, well, almost any truth it wants. What can $AnyoneElse do about it? You haven't got the $Data on the $Users, nor the $BigTech.
Do you remember back when Facebook first came out, and they got straight up busted for manipulating the things that their users posted? Whatever users posted would be re-worded to others, depending on certain aspects of each user account.
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I had this idea earlier, and so had many others. Partially this comes from the idea that I am worth hundreds or thousands of dollars just from advertising, and yet I never see a penny of that. If I get paid, then I'll turn off the adblock and noscript (well, maybe I'll keep the noscript to help against malware). I don't need much money here, just enough to compensate me for the loss in bandwidth and reduced performance when I try to visit a web site only to find it infested with ads. Otherwise I'll stick
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I won't turn off script blocking, period, full stop. Visiting your URL does not give you any rights over the code running on my computer. And I agreed to visit a particular URL, not run tracking 'pixels' and code for advertisers.
If there were people following us around town keeping track of everything we do so that they could advertise the right products to us, we'd call them stalkers, we'd call them creepy, we'd want something done about these weirdos. I've never understood why we ignore the same behavi
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if you're Andrew yang
Agreed. (Score:2)
Any website a developer makes is copyright-able by the developer just by putting a copyright notice at the bottom of the page, all original content is now secured by copyright law (photos, blog posts, articles, etc).
This should extend to any organic user created data as well.
Then we can license said data to these tech companies.
The legal framework for this model is already in place. It just needs that tiny fine tuning to have copyright apply automatically for user content with a fair and easy to use/underst
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Any website a developer makes is copyright-able by the developer just by putting a copyright notice at the bottom of the page, all original content is now secured by copyright law (photos, blog posts, articles, etc).
No. Any creative content is automatically copyrighted - it doesn't need a notice.
This should extend to any organic user created data as well.
It does. It's automatically copyrighted.
Then we can license said data to these tech companies.
Correct. You can. Instead of choosing to submit your comment to Slashdot for free with the full knowledge that they would publish it, you could have written to them asking them to pay for it. Which they wouldn't be interested in doing - but you chose to publish it anyway. What did you get out of this? You got your content published, which you obviously wanted.
The legal framework for this model is already in place. It just needs that tiny fine tuning to have copyright apply automatically for user content with a fair and easy to use/understand payment system.
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Like a broken pencil (Score:1)
The amounts per person are tiny. They only add up to a lot for Google and Facebook due to the sheer volume of users they have. Nobody is going to accumulate anything significant by being paid to watch ads.
Herea are some concrete numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
2018 FaceBook revenue [investopedia.com] is $55.8 billion, with a net income of $22.1 billion. Maybe it's not really that expensive to operate the company and there are some accounting tricks in there; but we're looking for ballpark figures here.
Other sources indicate FaceBook crossed the 2 billion user mark around the same time. Once again, let's not worry too much about precision here and just call it an even 2 billion.
So. That means that they could have given everybody a little more than $25 for all of 2018 if they gave out all their revenue, which they can't do. Even if their expenses are over-state, they still have to run a huge server farm with lots of developers and technicians who make good money, as well as pay managers, building maintenance, and all the other stuff that comes with running a huge global corporation.
Going with the net income figure, where FaceBook operates as a non-profit according to their books and you get a little more than $11/user for that year.
Of course shareholders would be livid, so it would tank right off the market, which can actually cause financial hardship for the operation of a company, as the value of shares is often used to make secondary offerings to fund expansion and other things..
A more sustainable way to kick something back to users would be by issuing them shares, which would dilute the stock heavily but not kill it. FaceBook currently pays no dividends so it would be a one-time payment rather than a flow.
OK, so what if you pay *half* the profit to the users, and let the company book the rest? A FaceBook trading at half its share price is still tanked hard, but once Wall Street got over that it would be OK. So now we're down to about $5.50/user for 2018.
So. Basically a lame coupon good for a value meal at some fast food place, for every user, for one entire year of wasting a lot of time on FaceBook.
Of course this is all based on the faulty assumption that each user is worth the same amount. If FaceBook built an incentive platform of some kind based on how much each customer was worth, then you'd get the typical power user vs. small fry curve that we've seen in incentive networks that have been out there. A few power-users would actually be able to make a good living off FaceBooking. Most would make considerably less than $5/yr and not even bother. You'd have an account with $0.01 a lot of times and not reach any reasonable redemption threshold. I had something like that with LinkExchange back in they day--never got enough page views to get meaningful ad revenue, because I'm not an "influencer". Very few people are.
Evaluating the impact of such a scheme on a company is more difficult. The people who pay FaceBook currently do so on the premise that they're mining casual social networking. Data from an incentive platform might not be considered as valuable.
If FaceBook wanted to be YouTube, it would already be.
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Let's say there is an ad in my feed every 10 posts. Those posts are the content that someone created to bring me to the platform so FB can display ads to me. Whatever revenue displaying the ad to me brings to FB, they can afford to pay 25% (or some other number similar to TV networks) of the revenue to content creators. Let's say that it is split evenly between the posts or split based on how I engage with the posts, how fast I scroll, whatever. If you share pictures of your kids with your family and member
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The TV networks don't give some percentage to content creators. The content creators SELL their work to the networks. So do that. If you think your post is worth 'at least $100', sell it for $100 - don't give it away for free then expect to be paid later. Can't find anybody to pay $100 for your post? Then I guess it wasn't worth $100.
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Thank you. It seems Andrew Yang fails at math.
Re:Here are some concrete numbers (Score:2)
Came here to post a similar analysis, but you've done it better than I would have. I think most people would be rather disappointed to learn how little their private information is actually *worth*, economically speaking.
We should also remember that we're talking about Andrew Yang here... so of course his proposal is going to dissolve into nonsense as soon as you start looking at the actual numbers. This is the same guy that advocates giving $1000/month (or whatever it was) to every adult in the United St
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kind based on how much each customer was worth, then you'd get the typical power user vs. small fry curve that we've seen in incentive networks that have been out there.
I remember hearing several years ago that the going rate for an google ad impression (not even a click-through) on searches for "mesothelioma" was about $100/impression.
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That seems dubious, but maybe it's worthwhile to buy Google puts, set up a distributed network of mesothelioma searches, and see what happens.
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In most places nowadays they require you to cover your face.
Can't see any upside (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would suppose the money being generated will be given to the users in the form of a micropayment account, that the user can then spend on content from any website, not just the big ones who sold the adverts from their data.
That might be a benefit in that the money currently hoarded by a few giants will be spread around the web. The knock-on effect would be that many services would stop being free, but then knock-knock-on effect of that could be that many users stop using them.
Google would still be taking
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not necessarily, you connect it to a paypal-like account (run by Google or whoever) and the money is just bits transferred between accounts. Sure, you could link your bank to it, but most wouln't as the payments wouldn't be that big - only those runing websites that received donations (eg newspapers who get a 1c per click type microdonation),
Google etc run far more complex systems for users already just to ensure the eyeballs looking at ads are accounted for correctly, so they can bill the advertisers.
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In most cases the users already benefit off of the data they generate by getting "free" products, e.g., Google search, gmail, etc. Getting paid for the data directly in cash (?) means those products won't be free anymore. What's the difference then besides making the user experience more complicated?
Some of us would like the choice. I'd pay to use Gmail if I had credible assurances that my data wasn't being mined; as it is, I simply don't use Gmail, and I tend to limit the amount of email I exchange with other Gmail users. I use Google search, but only because it sucks the least, and the privacy-focused SE's are usually useless for my purposes. So I'd pay for a non-privacy-raping version of Google search, and might even pay more if they got rid of some of the suckage they've inroduced over the last dec
Re:Can't see any upside (Score:5, Informative)
At some point, people realized how stupid all this was and how much extra work it was causing. And they came up with the idea of Money - a common currency which was guaranteed to have a certain value and so could be exchanged for anything (used to be it was made of gold, or was guaranteed by a central authority to be convertible to gold). The above trading mess then became simply: you sell your grain for money, you use the money to buy eggs, and you go home and do something else with all the time you saved by not having to find a dozen trades to accomplish the one trade you really wanted.
So allowing people to pay for these services (in exchange for Google not collecting user data) doesn't make things more complicated. It gives people more flexibility. They can opt for the free version and "pay" for it with their user data. Or they can pay for it with money they can make in a million different ways. The people who want the service "for free" are happy. The people who want to preserve their privacy are happy. Everyone is happy. Well, maybe not the marketers who no longer have data on every person on the planet, but they didn't have a right to that data in the first place so nobody is going to shed a tear for them.
Re: (Score:3)
...So allowing people to pay for these services (in exchange for Google not collecting user data) doesn't make things more complicated. It gives people more flexibility. They can opt for the free version and "pay" for it with their user data. Or they can pay for it with money they can make in a million different ways. The people who want the service "for free" are happy. The people who want to preserve their privacy are happy. Everyone is happy. Well, maybe not the marketers who no longer have data on every person on the planet, but they didn't have a right to that data in the first place so nobody is going to shed a tear for them.
Those supposedly "powerless" marketers you're so quick to dismiss here, are members of the Donor Class.
Those that demand the service for free because they're cheap, will have their data collected and abused.
Those that pay for the service, will also have their data collected and abused, but it will happen behind their backs.
See Human History for more evidence of what Greed always does, and stop trying to sell this bullshit. You know damn well what Google will do, and so do I.
Re: (Score:3)
Your analogy falls down when you realise that the common currency is also the product being traded and the ubiquity of said product is the core value for which you are trying to exchange a currency in the first place. Confusing? Let's try and example.
Google Maps with all it's killer features like traffic prediction. You can get the free version and pay for it with your data, or you can pay for it.
Suppose 100% of people pay for it, and no data comes into Google. Now what happens? Maps ceases to be able to of
Re: (Score:2)
In most cases the users already benefit off of the data they generate by getting "free" products, e.g., Google search, gmail, etc. Getting paid for the data directly in cash (?) means those products won't be free anymore. What's the difference then besides making the user experience more complicated?
There'd be a dollar value to data breaches, and the ones who suffer would be able to say to the company "you lost $XYZ of my property". That can't be done now.
There would be more information, hence producing a more perfect free-market system. All parties would be informed of the value of the asset they're trading. As it is, we have asymmetric information, which always results in a less efficient free market.
The value of data would be fungible. Currently I give my data to Google and the consideration I get b
depends on service price versus money paid (Score:2)
Control Competition (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree this isn't a good idea. Not sure what a good alternative would be other than stricter privacy laws. There are some interesting startups not based on ads like arc.io, will be interesting to see where they end up.
The solution is simple.... (Score:2)
The solution is simple....
For Hey users wishing to sign up of their iPhone the cost is $130.00 /year.
For Hey users wishing to sign up on the web it is $100.00/year or ($130 year with a $30 off web signup code, whatever structure is app store compliant).
This give Apple customers the freedom to decide.
Hey, Just play the game.
Users already get paid (Score:2)
I wouldn't do that if I were you (Score:3)
I think more transparency is more realistic and more helpful. The average website visitor is not aware their data is being collected and sold without their knowledge or consent. And no, a link with 8pt size font that just says 'Legal' is not enough. Nor are the annoying popups that say we use cookies to make the site better y/n? The car analogy would be if some stranger comes and takes your car out every night while you're sleeping because there's a sticker under the dash that says by owning this car I agree to let someone else drive it when I'm not using it.
If after visiting your site, the user is not aware you are collecting and selling their data, then, no, you haven't done enough to communicate that.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm more interested to know that when everyone pays for navigation where the companies will get navigation data from. Data is not just a currency, it provides a collective benefit in a anonimised large quantity.
Re: (Score:1)
You think that Youtube is going to write a big fat check to people watching its videos and not reduce the money going to creators? Yeah right. Also how much money do you think your data is worth? If the CPM for Youtube videos is about $5, and someone watches 10 videos a day, that's $1.50 of ad revenue over the entire month. And since the lion's share would go to the creators and Youtube that would leave you with like $0.25 per month. Makes fuck-all difference to you but to a creator that could represent a massive pay cut. And those figures are on the advertising, not the data itself. The data is worth even less than that, except in rare cases like Cars.com (auto intenders are a very valuable audience). I'm glad Yang exists as an independent voice but this is another of his solomonic ideas that don't address the underlying issues (massive concentration in the tech sector, a lack of meaningful regulation) at all.
You haven't explained here why you think people have a right to get paid for posting videos on YouTube, nor why these same people can not charge up front for their videos. Is there an amendment in the Constitution about the right to get paid for posting cat videos on the internet that I'm not aware of?
opt in (Score:5, Insightful)
What's in it for DDP? (Score:1)
LOL (Score:2)
"Andrew Yang wants people to get paid for the data they create on big tech platforms like Facebook and Google"
We want them to pay US for our data.
And Yang is also pushing for them to charge us... (Score:2)
Yeah right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now Facebook is ready to pay $5/month for your data, coincidentally, you now need to pay $5/month for your Facebook account...
In reality, your data is probably worth much less than you think. Let's continue with Facebook. Its revenue is ~$70 billion (almost all of it is ads) and it has 2.5 billion active users, that's $30 per year per user. It means that if you had to pay for Facebook instead it would be $2.5/month. So maybe you think your data is worth $2.5/month.
No, what is worth $2.5/month is your attention. The value of your data is only the difference between targeted ads and untargeted ads. Let's be generous and say that targeted ads are worth double, it means that your data is now back at $1.25/month. Furthermore, as DuckDuckGo likes to say, you don't even need tracking and personal data to do targeted advertising. It can be based on ephemeral data, like the search term, IP-based location, etc... So that's even less.
In the end, if you get back the value of your data, after deducting all the fees and taxes, you should be happy to get a few dollars at the end of the year. The reason tech giants are making so much money on your data is because they have billions of users, not because your individual data is worth a lot.
For a couple of dollars per person, I can get get very personal data from data brokers. Things like health conditions, if you are an expecting mother, if you own a home or want to move, etc... If I want to step outside the law, for 10x more, I can get the whole package: SSN, bank account information, home address, mother's maiden name, etc...
Your data may be worth a lot to you, not so much on the global market. Just like your may think your grandma silverware is worth a lot because it looks nice and you are attached to it, but in reality, you will only be able to sell it at scrap value, and it isn't even solid silver...
Re: (Score:2)
The value of your data is only the difference between targeted ads and untargeted ads.
This. Personally I'm getting self conscious. I pine for a time when every website assumed I had a small penis and offered me drugs. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I should put tape over the webcam while sitting here naked, it's like they know there's no point in advertising those drugs anymore.
Privacy inequality (Score:1)
Poor people would end up accepting high-snoopage to afford services while the wealthy could pay for privacy.
Re: Privacy inequality (Score:2)
That's how everything works. This isn't the place to solve income inequality. Especially since this boils down to a wealth transfer from the upper middle class to the lower middle class, so it is in fact addressing income inequality in a small way.
Another dumb idea (Score:2)
It is already possible (Score:2)
(I work for a tech company, but this is personal opinion).
Many of the free products will also provide premium versions where you pay for more features, and have your data excluded from others. There is a real reason for this, since it could be corporate accounts, or schools where the data should not be shared at all.
Look at Hotmail/Outlook for example. They have a "premium" version, which is also included with Office subscriptions.
Facebook has "Workplace" which is a per domain installation of many of its pr
No, no, no. Just stop COLLECTING data. (Score:1)
We don't want our data 'collected'. We never wanted our data 'collected', not by anyone, not ever.
Just. STOP. Leave everyone alone.
Get out of our Internet. Get out of everyones' phones, Get out of everyones' houses. Just leave everyone alone and mind your own business.
This won't change anything (Score:2)
Ok. So Facebook/Gmail/whatever will now charge $X dollars to use their service. Which happens to be the same amount as they are legally obligated to pay you.
Good job. You did nothing except make the accountants and payment processors happy.
My prediction: (Score:1)
So someone came up with an idea for money to move in a new direction, huh? What do you want to bet the final incarnation of this involves running that money through the gov't on its way to the consumer?
I agree (Score:1)
And I've been saying this for years.
I don't use their service, but they have my data (Score:1)
Hypertext (Score:2)
Possibly the 1st thing... (Score:2)
Possibly the 1st thing I've heard Yang say that I agree with. It'll never work, but I agree that big tech gets away with way too much user data.
Well, you know what they say... (Score:2)
It costs you a lot to put it up on the internet.
And a WHOLE LOT MORE to get it off.
Come and get it! Free Lunch! (Score:1)