
What if people were paid for their data? - leonagano
https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2018/07/07/what-if-people-were-paid-for-their-data
======
bumholio
The value of my data is not that it can train a statistical model about
preferences of developers in their 30s - that's absolutely marginal. My
personal data is useful in itself as a proxy for my own life, my preferences,
my buying habits, it's a map on how to influence and predict my behavior,
possibly against my will.

A company having exclusive access to all my personal data, emails, etc. can
for example, infer that I have an urgent need to buy an airline ticket to
visit my sick father, and extract my reserve price for that ticket, as opposed
to an average price for all passengers. Or it can deduce the minimal paycheck
I am willing to accept for a job.

So even in the unlikely case I can recover the full value of my data from the
market, I haven't really earned anything. My information differential is a
competitive advantage in the market, and selling it is self defeating,
companies are _not_ selling or giving their data back to me. So the more data
you sell or give, the larger the asymmetry grows until the only deals you can
make are bad deals.

 _Edit: I can neither confirm nor deny I am developer and /or in my 30s_

~~~
nerfhammer
In your example you're assuming that there is monopoly control over whatever
product you're trying to buy. But that's usually not the case: there is more
than one airline, for example.

If it were possible to market products exclusively to people who wanted that
exact product, companies would no longer need to waste money on broadly
targeted advertising and compete more directly on price and product features
and not on marketing budget. You would get "paid" in cost savings.

Of course that's generally not really possible no matter how much of your data
marketers could reasonably know about. A grab bag of "data" from an individual
person barely predicts much of anything, which is the real reason there isn't
much of a market for it.

~~~
bumholio
Indeed - but markets are rarely perfectly competitive, to negate any advantage
price discrimination can bring. For example, it's often the case a route/date
combo is offered by a single airline.

I also agree that information can be beneficial for me, helping companies
finding me easier without spending on advertising etc. But in that case, I
would simply give that information away and share it as broadly as possible
(for example, by searching multiple sites for the products I am interested
in); so that side of the coin is not relevant for someone selling his
information.

~~~
TomMarius
You can buy the ticket anonymously. There doesn't have to be any link between
data about your grandfather and your identity you're using to buy the ticket.
Why would you even give anyone data about your grandparents?

~~~
chimeracoder
> You can buy the ticket anonymously. There doesn't have to be any link
> between data about your grandfather and your identity you're using to buy
> the ticket.

How do you propose buying an airplane ticket anonymously?

~~~
croddin
On some booking sites it might actually be a good idea to open them in
incognito mode, and you can get a quote without them using data linked to you.

~~~
mtgx
I've noticed tracking that can track across browsers and their incognito modes
even with ublock origin enabled. It may have tracked me by ip, I don't know
but I feel like we're getting to the point where the existing incognito modes
are useless.

------
vasco
I've had this idea in the bucket of "crazy things I'll never do" which is
similar to this, half art-piece, half serious:

\- Users sign up to an ad network and they insert all information about
themselves, the more, the better.

\- They are periodically prompted to add or update their data (like facebook
asking you if you're still living in the same city).

\- An adblock-like browser extension, replaces all ads they see with the own
network's ads, which are highly targeted, and hence get much more money than
regular ads for the ad network.

\- The ad network is setup as a non-profit foundation which pipes all the
revenue into donations to institutions doing work related to privacy
initiatives (EFF and similar).

\- Users are shown how much money their willingful lack of privacy has
generated for privacy initiatives.

It's a play on using the argument of "I have nothing to hide" in order to
advance actual privacy legislation and protections. If someone builds this,
I'd sign up and use it.

~~~
trunamp
> An adblock-like browser extension, replaces all ads they see with the own
> network's ads, which are highly targeted, and hence get much more money than
> regular ads for the ad network.

That's all fun and games, as long as you realize that all browser-extensions
capture your keypresses, all data on all pages, and et cetera. All browser
extensions see everything you do, and everything you type, and et cetera.

~~~
SquareWheel
What a bunch of fear-mongering...

Browser extensions are subject to a permissions system, just like apps. Their
code is also fully visible to you, and fully sandboxed.

The only real danger to extensions right now is that they can auto-update
without a user review, and thus can "turn evil". It's happened to a handful of
popular extensions (eg. Stylish).

Requiring the user to manually update extensions has its own share of problems
though, so I'm not even sure if I disagree with browsers makers decision to
auto-update.

But the claim that "all extensions are keyloggers" is just blatant nonsense.

------
adrian_mrd
I remember reading one of Bill Gates’ ideas to reduce spam. Charge a nominal
fee for each e-mail sent, from memory, it was something like $0.000001 USD per
e-mail.

It never took off, of course, but it’s important for us as a society to come
up with better solutions than “Trust Zuck” or let company lawyers win with
their horribly user-antagonistic end-user licence agreements (EULA).

As an aside, I find it fascinating how lawyers aren’t getting much of the
blame in all of this debate around data. Who actually writes and/or approves
most of these policies? The legal eagles, that’s who.

Let’s at least debate the alternatives to the current adtech dominance of the
most popular online platforms (Facebook, Google search, Android OS, Apple’s
App Store ads, etc.).

edit: fixed spelling mistakes, added the ‘as an aside’ para.

~~~
petermcneeley
“Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by
connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.”

― Jaron Lanier

~~~
adrian_mrd
Ha! Reminds me of the late, great, Bill Hick’s seminal piece on marketers and
advertisers: [https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0](https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0)

I oft wonder how much disdain Bill Hicks would have for the tech bros and the
Orwellian apparatus many large tech companies have created.

~~~
bena
But he's wrong though, isn't he?

I mean, marketers and advertisers simply recognize what already exists. Yes,
there is an "anger market". Yes, there are certain things that work to attract
people prone to "being angry".

Overall, I find Hicks to be a bit overvalued. At least the bits that get
circulated the most. The bit about advertisers and the bit where he "destroys"
a heckler, which is just him hurling basic abuse at someone. There's nothing
really funny or particularly witty in it, just "Go kill yourself" over and
over again. I think he plays to a certain demographic that wants to feel as if
they've figured out the secret and that the secret is it's all going to shit.

I'd imagine he'd have a diatribe about "tech bros" that would pretty much
consist of saying they should kill themselves in various ways.

~~~
adrian_mrd
Not sure if he is wrong, per se, as his arguments do have some merit.

Re: "marketers and advertisers simply recognize what already exists."

Yes, but they encourage consumption, purchasing and/or commercial activities.
They are not doing it for the sake of a 'good cause' or because they believe
in it (although they may), their incentive is to make money.

That's what I believe Bill Hicks was attacking in this segment. Their
unrelenting ability to turn anything into a commercial endeavour - even when
it is not present.

~~~
bena
What in here ([https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-
marketing-a...](https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-
annotated)) is an actual critique on what marketers do? What's the argument?

It's all "kill yourself" some reductive thoughts about how they identify
markets followed by a snide remark about marketing arsenic as a childhood
sleep aid. Only that last jibe could be said to be anything approaching an
actual critique. The rest is just plain abuse.

You think Hicks was doing it for the sake of a 'good cause' or because there
was money in it? But that's part of the rub, isn't it? You can't really buy in
without selling out. It's the same sort of dilemma that exists with a band
like Rage Against the Machine. They advocate all of this stuff, all of this
anti-commercialism, etc, but fully take part in it.

"Oh noes, they're encouraging me to buy things. The horror"

Fuck man, at least they're honest about what they're trying to do. Not
everyone is.

~~~
adrian_mrd
Likely have to agree to disagree on this one. It's a comedy piece for one, and
it's an opinion at that, but what is the critique Bill Hicks is making in the
Youtube link I shared? I think it's best summed up with "you are filling the
world with bile and garbage".

And honest about what they do? That seems wildly inaccurate. Like any
profession, there are honest advertisers & marketers and there are dishonest
ones, but the incentive of advertising is to influence purchasing decisions,
and marketing to promote awareness, encourage consumption, and/or generate new
revenue.

What would you have (had) Rage Against the Machine do? Stop making music that
people enjoy and relate to? Or, should they do what the KLF did and
(allegedly) burn a million dollars in cash one night and renounce all future
songwriting and performance royalties? What would that achieve apart from an
artistic statement?

Lastly, by your definition, aren't Rage Against the Machines just good at
marketing? Or is licencing one's music to a large music label perhaps the most
effective method of advertising their beliefs and opinions? Playing to larger
audiences or making coin from their trade, doesn't necessarily mean they are
hypocrites.

\--- edit: minor typo fixes, refined some sentences

~~~
bena
Where's the humor? What's the joke? Explain how it's funny.

He doesn't explain how it's filling the world with bile and garbage, that's
just a claim. And sure, it may qualify as criticism, but it's empty criticism.
You could easily say that about most things. Bill Hicks is filling the world
with bile and garbage. You'd want me to qualify that. Defend it, prove it.
Something you're not asking of him.

Yes, advertisers want you to buy shit. Anyone who works in advertising will
tell you that their job is to get you to buy shit. Advertising's job is to get
you to buy shit. Maybe one brand of shit over another. Or shit you may not
necessarily need, but all the same. You may disagree with the utility of what
they're trying to sell you, but that's kind of irrelevant. The job itself is
to make the product appealing enough to purchase.

You can bitch about advertisers who take on clients of products known to be
harmful. That companies that do advertising for cigarettes are morally
suspect. But the job in and of itself is no better or worse than a lot of
others. Do you think Hicks blamed advertisers for making him a chain smoker?
Then again, he was mostly a chain smoker to deal with his other addictions.
But last time I checked most illegal narcotics don't have an advertising arm.
Unless you count Bill Hicks, who advertised for them essentially for free.

Also, don't use acronyms unless you are going to explain what they mean. The
only hit for KLM I got was the Royal Dutch Airline. It was only once I
searched "KLM burning money" that I got the result that I think you were
talking about, the KLF burns a million quid. And apparently, they went on a
lecture circuit after that, Bill Drummond started writing, Jimmy Cauty
continued as a music producer (which I don't know how that fits in with the
whole "renouncing the industry" bit) and artist. So it's not like they fucked
off and became bus drivers. They still leveraged that fame. And they regard
that stunt as a mistake now.

As for Rage Against the Machine, I do see their predicament. They could go
full Fugazi and reject most of the corporate structure, but then their reach
becomes much less. Your message can't really reach.

And here's the thing, I'm not totally against what they're doing. I do think
it's a bit ironic preaching anti-consumerism using the vehicle of consumerism
to get your message. "Buy this thing that tells you that buying things is
stupid". I think they're wrong in rejecting the entire notion of consumerism.
Just like Hicks is wrong in rejecting the entire notion of advertising and
marketing (which is a bit of an anti-consumerist screed). But the answer isn't
to become a charge card wielding shopaholic either. No matter the extreme you
go to, you've gone to the wrong one. Extreme isn't the answer, ever. There is
value in a lot of things.

~~~
adrian_mrd
Well, I find the Bill Hicks skit funny :) If you don’t, then all power to you.

Some people think the Smurfs is a nice, cute cartoon and others see a Marxist
village led by a misogynistic Karl Marx figure. They’re both just
perspectives, a la, the Rashomon effect.

And the KLM to KLF thing was a typo. People make mistakes - myself included!

------
Puer
Companies will argue, either rightly or wrongly, that people are already
getting paid... Just not in cash. Google Maps is free for me to use, so long
as I relinquish location data necessary for it to function, which Google can
then use as they please to analyze what businesses I frequent, where I live,
what type of transportation I use, etc.

~~~
mLuby
You don't have to give them that data. It's still free because they can serve
ads based on where you're searching.

~~~
Puer
I disagree. The modern act of viewing a digital ad produces more data than
people realize. How long you looked at an ad, whether you clicked it, whether
you skipped it or tried to hide it, etc. All of those implicit actions create
data that is then surrendered to the collector.

~~~
mLuby
Yep, no argument about user metadata. My point was specifically about location
data, which users do not have to give.

> Google Maps is free for me to use, so long as I relinquish location data
> necessary for it to function

------
bo1024
I generally agree with Weyl and Posner's position here in that we need to
completely change people's perspective on the value of their data and how
easily they give it away. So I don't want to distract from that point.
However, I do want to also point out that data itself functions more like
capital than it does like labour (although the act of providing data may be
more similar to labour).

Capital is always the source of financial asymmetry between the labourers and
the wealthy capital-owners. So instead of "selling" our data to companies for
a fixed price, allowing them to exploit it forever, maybe we should be only
renting companies the temporary right to use our data -- keeping the wealth
asymmetry from growing.

------
Nition
In some ways we already are. For instance if I use my supermarket loyalty
card, they let me save around 1-2% on my purchase in exchange for the better
tracking they get.

~~~
pradn
I've seen the discount being more like 25%. Hell, pretty much any product at
Safeway has a "Safeway price" that practically forces you to use the discount
card.

~~~
Nition
There's no way one person's data is worth a 25% discount surely. That strategy
must be something like, have the sales we were going to have anyway (to
attract customers to the store), but make the card required to get them.

At the supermarket I'm thinking of, with the 1-2% discount, there'll still be
normal sale items that don't require the card, and then extra discounts that
only the card gives you. Actually I just remembered the card earns you reward
points as well (albeit slowly), so the total amount you "save" is indeed a
little more.

------
a_d
If someone were to figure out the exact mechanics of this, then this could
become universal basic income.

I have thought a lot about what trapped intangible value all of us have, such
that ‘if’ there was a market for it, we could get paid. Our personal data,
with opt-in volunteering, is certainly at the top of the list. The other
potential personal markets that have very similar characteristics (to personal
data), but don’t exist are:

1) Home equity: Americans have $6.2T in home equity that could be “sold”

2) Driving data: get paid for carrying free sensors so that one helps map the
world, so we get to self driving sooner in more cities

3) Opinions: large scale polling for everything, from movie trailers to
startup landing pages to new products/ads — everything

4) Fact checking: crowd sourced journalism; often Reddit crowds figure out the
truth/source faster than pro journalists; there ought to be a market for “if I
know something, Eg some insider info, I could improve on the state of public
truth”

5) Goodwill: one of the most amazing things I stumbled upon was
www.reddit.com/r/borrow; people ask for money and strangers give money; I
would never have predicted this to exist. I believe goodwill and benevolence
is one of the largest untapped markets.

There are probably several other (and better) examples: point is that
royaltiess/annuities from such markets could be part of UBI in the future.

~~~
hyperdimension
Not to take away from your point, but I like to imagine

 _> I believe goodwill and benevolence is one of the largest untapped
markets._

being said in some board room somewhere...

~~~
J-dawg
_“Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar.
That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”_

[https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-
marketing-a...](https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-
annotated)

------
paulcole
I'm already compensated for my data. I can use Facebook, read news websites,
play games, and watch videos without taking out my credit card.

I have no other way to convert my data into dollars so this'll have to do.

------
seiferteric
I had an evil idea once for a site where you got paid to supply information on
other people. You create an account and narc on all your friends and family by
telling the site what things they were interested in and what they have been
talking about lately. The more money they make from targeted ads to that
person, the more money you get paid :) Like I said, it is evil and no one
should do it.

~~~
taneq
Uh, I have bad news. Zuck beat you to that one a while ago... (Except instead
of getting paid you just get nagged if you don't narc.)

------
jacksonbing
This article is thought-provoking, but the value of our data is far beyond
training AI. Tech giants have been utilizing our data for ads targeting for
such a long time. We, as data contributors, deserve to get our share of
profits from the huge amount of money they made from using and selling our
data.

I happen to find out this blockchain project, Measurable Data Token, which
aims to create a decentralized data exchange ecosystem to reward users for
sharing their data. Here is the link to their website
([https://www.mdt.co/](https://www.mdt.co/)) if you guys want to check it out.

------
FLUX-YOU
Without knowing how companies actually use my data, I can't put a price tag on
it myself.

That means I can only rely on the price put out by the companies that collect
it, and if they collude to keep prices low, it doesn't matter if they're
caught, because they already have the data.

I also don't know the entire network that my data transits with the amount of
money that gets paid for data -- Google could sell to some small company which
sells to an international company, which sells to a shell company and ends the
trail for most of us.

I suspect that internet and real celebrities will be paid orders of magnitude
more for their data anyway.

------
ThorinJacobs
There are a bunch of apps and websites that do this already. Google Play
Rewards is probably the most reputable, but they're easy to find and advertise
themselves aggressively.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Google Play Rewards is a good example of how little people realise the worth
of their data though. (Google Play Rewards tends to pay rather little, and in
currency only redeemable at the company store.)

------
kuon
What worries me is that we are always surprised how our data can be used. You
may agree on something you think you understand and indirectly agreed to
something else.

------
brandonmenc
The risk associated with my data being collected is likely not worth what
anyone is willing to pay for it, and I assume this is true for nearly
everyone.

~~~
sparkie
When given the choice, that's what you'd expect most people would think.

But when not given the choice, it turns out people are quite happy to give
over their data in return for no payment.

------
JustSomeNobody
Your data by itself is basically worthless. Your data combined with Google's
algorithms to extract meaning is worth all the services they provide.

------
atom_arranger
Some companies are working on this sort of thing.

[https://www.killi.io/](https://www.killi.io/)

------
plg
They already are, essentially, in-kind—-with “free” software and services like
gmail, fecebook, instaglam, etc etc

------
cirgue
I don’t want money in exchange for my data. I just want genuine anonymity
except where I say otherwise.

------
dsr_
Sell my data? That's ridiculous!

Leasing it for a defined period of time, that's plausible.

------
arisAlexis
this is a huge use case for blockchain. Just try Brave browser to see for
yourself

------
jeisc
How much is it worth and who will pay and how will I collect it.

------
luckyorlame
people are paid for their data, they get to use social media.

~~~
ionised
Doesn't seem like a good deal.

