17 ms·

An argument that companies should pay users for their data

221 points by phront 9y ago

montrose 9y ago
There's a whole genre of articles based on conflating two senses of "your," belonging to you, and about you. If I observe that you have blue eyes, that's a fact about you, but it doesn't belong to you, at least not without redefining what "belong" means. It would be helpful if, instead of deliberately conflating these two senses of "your," articles on this subject went in the other direction and explicitly discussed the distinction. We have from time to time redefined what "belong" means, but these redefinitions tend to be very complicated and have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. My guess is that a redefinition on the scale of facts about you = your property would be a disaster.
- taneq 9y ago
  And here you're conflating "public facts about you" with "facts that only your cell phone / mattress / underpants / web browser know about you." "Facts about you" falls into at least two categories: "Facts which you want and reasonably expect to remain private", and "facts which you display to the world and have no expectation of privacy about."
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Which is fine as far as semantics go, but in the context of this thread the first category doesn't exist unless you're under 13 and in the US, or subject to the GDPR, or a few other nooks and crannies of international laws.
- specialist 9y ago
  I disagree. You're trying to distinguish between privacy and identity. If there's a dividing line, it's very, very hard to discern.
- chopin 9y ago
  I think it is pretty easy. The moment you start storing this data outside your brain, it's "my" data. You can memorize or observe it all you want but not store it permanently or semi-permanently elsewhere. I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" (most skip the latter part anyway, if not confronted with a shitstorm) mentality.
  - mdpopescu 9y ago
    > I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" Huh. I actually believe most western societies are incredibly tilted in the "ask permission" direction. You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing. Personally, I prefer freedom: do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone's rights (and no, Imaginary Property doesn't count).
    - jstarfish 9y ago
      > You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing. The rules are very selectively enforced depending on what class you belong to though. As a guy with a pair of scissors, I can't start cutting hair without "asking permission" in the form of a license. As a guy with a cart, I can't sell hot dogs on the street corner without getting some sort of vending license. I can't just start driving around and picking up random fares in my car without applying for a limousine license or taxi medallion. But then you get Uber, whose business model was based around ignoring these regulations and scaling to such size where they were too big to prosecute (easily). Just the same, I'll get fined if I catch too many fish from the local pond whether or not I've gone to the trouble of applying for a fishing license, but Acme Megacorp will go ahead and dump toxic waste into the same pond until it's forcibly stopped from doing so (and the taxpayers are forced to clean it up via Superfund).
- dang 9y ago
  There's a simpler, shallower issue too: 'you' in headlines is a linkbait trope, so headline writers drop it in wherever they can. This one managed it twice. Presumably we're all wired to respond to "hey you!" Since clickbait is against the site guidelines, we replace such titles with neutral ones. Usually we do that by copying a representative phrase from the article itself. But that was surprisingly hard to do this time.
  - x1232 9y ago
    Wow, gruseom went fully native.
- will_brown 9y ago
  The funny thing is based on the way you described belong...it really made me realize the collection of data really seems to be eerily similar to this definition: >Obtaining information with reference to the identity, habits, conduct, movements, whereabouts, affiliations, associations, transactions, reputation, or character of any society, person of groups of persons. Guess what that is? It’s, in part, the statutory (legal) definition of private investigator, which is prohibited by law without a license. So sure under the law we don’t necessarily own that data about ourselves, but the collection of the data is highly regulated for a reason. Obviously tech companies obtain user consent to collect data (at least some of the time), but if PI’s can be regulated in their activities so can a tech company or digital product, and it’s not to difficult to see regulations that say a tech company can’t collect user data and turn around and sell it to third parties. I am curious though, how exactly would such a legal framework be a disaster in your opinion?
- oliwarner 9y ago
  To be fair, modern privacy laws blur the same lines. If you collect data about me in the EU, I have legal control over that data. I can order you to give it to me. I can order you to delete it. Sounds like ownership to me.
  - neveroffensive 9y ago
    > Sounds like ownership to me. Sure, the EU has essentially asserted in law that you own your data. That doesn't really make it true though. I don't even think the EU was really addressing the moral/ethical nature of data with that law, politicians just wanted a way to remove defamatory content from the internet so they could regain control of their public image. Just because something makes it into law doesn't mean it's reasonable/accurate/moral/just. In fact, I would argue most laws are created based on a groups narrow desire to achieve an immediate effect in the current society. Few laws are created with genuine exploration of larger implications on society/morality, and even fewer laws are created in the context of rights/what the government can/cant't control.
deleted 9y ago
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GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
Seems like an is ought question that is long settled: look at the credit reporting agencies. We may be doing impressive new things and figuring out how to learn a lot more about people, but who owns data on a person is a dead and buried question.
- mywacaday 9y ago
  Not dead and buried in Europe with GDPR coming.
  - skocznymroczny 9y ago
    Which will add another checkbox that you have to tick once when entering a website. EU is not the ally of ordinary folk when it comes to the Internet.
    - s73v3r_ 9y ago
      It absolutely is. I hope more jurisdictions follow suit.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      Actually, GDPR seems to be explicitly designed so that no amount of checkboxes or legalese in terms&conditions can be sufficient to continue as-is, companies actually would have to change behavior to be compliant. Lots of previous threads have discussions about the particular details. Of course, we'll have to see how it turns out in practice, but it's just a couple more months.
- specialist 9y ago
  I'm not dead yet. USA's credit reporting agencies are a bight on humanity. All the power with none of the accountability, ambiguous rules ruthlessly enforced, profiting from other people's misfortune.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  The fact that credit reporting agencies currently are obviously abusing data that they're not able to safeguard doesn't mean that the question is dead and buried, quite the opposite - it means that the role of credit reporting agencies will have to change as their abilities will eventually get legally restricted and they won't be able to continue in this manner.
saas_co_de 9y ago
The next generation of technological progress has to be an answer to these questions. Google and Facebook (and similar companies) have killed innovation with their monopolies and in order to break their monopolies new technologies must be invented that disrupt their business models. It is interesting to see the NY Times advancing such avant garde ideas but it is good to see rising social consciousness of the limitations of current technology.
wpasc 9y ago
The media portrayal of the tech world would be more impactful if it weren't so hyperbolic, dramatized, and skewed. There are myriad valid complaints about the tech world, but Facebook paying you for you posting your photos is not one of them. Facebook is free. Google search is free. 15gb of gmail/google drive is free. You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat. (I don't work for either so I'm not tooting my own horn, just giving credit where I believe credit is due) I think as it currently stands (collect data on me and I get free 99.99% uptime, cloud available services for email, cloud drive, and social networking) is a pretty sweet deal.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits. And because the stock market machine demands greater and greater profits they need larger stronger monopolies to generate those obscene profits.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    > They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Your reasoning is extremely fallacious because you're overlooking a lot of nuance. Yes, it is true that in aggregate part of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. How much exactly depends on macroeconomic factors, industry dynamics, pricing power of distributors and retailers, and hundreds other variables. But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. However, advertising is valuable to advertisers because it works to some degree. And it works because people are influenced by it. Now, as an individual I have no control over what other people are doing and so I have no control over how valuable advertising is and how much is being spent on it and how much is being passed on to consumers. Therefore as an individual I look around me and prices are what they are and already have in them advertising costs which will not go up by me using service. Therefore as an individual the marginal cost of me using these services is effectively zero (imagine the ratio between the value of advertising to me and the aggregate value of advertising, that's effectively zero). As an individual those services are free. So it depends on what your definition of "free" is. A) Would prices be lower if advertising didn't exist? Yes [0]. B) Would prices be lower to me if I didn't use these services? No. The thing is that in definition A) I don't really have a choice, so it's irrelevant. I only have a choice as an individual. [0] And even here some people will disagree with you. What I call "free market fundamentalists" will argue that No, they wouldn't, because the advertising leads to higher sales and greater operational efficiency, so that advertising costs are exactly offset by lower per-unit costs.
WingH 9y ago
But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar to Google and Facebook. Given the choice of getting paid a dollar, or using it for free (in exchange for them using my data), I would choose the latter. Only in aggregate is it worth a lot.
- amelius 9y ago
  In that case, I would pay Google and Facebook a dollar, and keep my data safe from their prying eyes.
  - WingH 9y ago
    I would do that too. But the notion of getting paid for your data, when its worth so little by itself is not appealing.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  > But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. Just take the market cap of the company divided by users to get an average. Google is at about $700B with may ~2B global users, so global average is more like $350/user. The value of US users is probably 10X less developed parts of world (based on ad rates) so US users are worth more like $3000. You are undervaluing yourself :) which is how they win.
  - marcinzm 9y ago
    >Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. No it's not. You're mixing up the value of the data with the value of your attention. The world has made a killing off of advertising long before personalization came about so saying it's all due to personalization is a bit silly imho.
    - deong 9y ago
      It's also conflating a bunch of stuff that goes into Google's valuation that isn't directly tied to ownership of your data. Once upon a time, Google just made a search engine, and that search engine quickly took over the world. Google made a lot of money plopping ads on search results long before you could create a Google account or store all your email there. Presumably, the technical ability to build products like that is worth actual money. If Google deleted all personal data, the company would not be worth $0.
mtgx 9y ago
This wouldn't be such an issue if they couldn't see the data on which they are computing (and individual data wouldn't be exposed in data breaches either). But I'm not sure if Google even cares too much about doing that (I know they've experimented with this, but nothing on a scale that matters), and Facebook certainly doesn't. Apple seems to be the only one that does somewhat with its differential privacy approach. I think they can all do much more, but they're not trying too hard.
- deong 9y ago
  I'm not sure you understand what differential privacy is. Apple still has your data. If there's a breach, an attacker gets your data. It's probably encrypted, just as it is with pretty much any modern system where user data is collected, but differential privacy doesn't have anything to do with what data is collected or stored. Differential privacy is just a method for limiting how much information can be reliably inferred about an entire dataset from limited queries on statistical properties of the data. It's basically this. Imagine I have two data sets that are identical, except one has your specific data and the other doesn't. It's possible in some circumstances to infer information about you by asking for things like averages on the datasets. Differential privacy is a method for defeating attacks that rely on that type of "leakage" of information. It assures that if two datasets are close enough, queries on those datasets will not yield significant information about their differences (i.e., the presence or absence of one particular data point won't be detectable). It's all about how queries of the data perform, and not at all about the data itself.
farhanmalik7544 9y ago
Read:https://www.savahapp.com https://www.savahapp.com
mdale 9y ago
There is already mechanical Turk for the cases the author described. There are many paid initiatives to label data that these companies employ. These "AI" companies sample sizes are small compared to the services they provide against them. Once divided up its pointless to think about them "paying" you and is counter to the point. They already are paying in the form of the service they are providing. I.e free storage, service etc. Democratizing the data so more companies can use it to build products beyond these major concentration of platform players is a much more practical. This is similar to the personal data requests legislation that Europe already has in place. This would be an extension to enable competing services to access this data as their customers opt into the the service. Enabling more companies to build more competitive products (employ people working towards market competitive products) not trying to set "sustainable" sheep that feed from the same troff of the concentrated power of these companies. Certainly universal basic income; but that should be wholly independent of being subordinates to these service providers.
crispyporkbites 9y ago
The thing is, I don't actually have my data. Perhaps if I collected it and stored it, perhaps put it behind an accessible API and supplied Google et al with an API key to access it I might have a case for charging them for it.
- specialist 9y ago
  It's worse than that. We currently don't even have the right to determine who has our data, or how its being exploited. The remedy, of course, is to establish intrinsic properties rights over our own data. No different than copyrights. Maybe we need a new catchphrase. I propose bodyrights. It captures the notions of self, privacy, identity, and sovereignty all in one.
  - gipp 9y ago
    Okay, but like operationally, what does that even mean? How do we establish a legal definition of what "your data" even is? When we talk about "big data" and data collection, the vast majority of what we're talking about basically just boils down to web logs, and derived data that's inferred from those logs. So is an entry in a web log that corresponds to something you did now your property? Is anything someone writes down about me now my property? If I walk in a store and the store owner writes down that I was there, is that my property?
    - specialist 9y ago
      Can those bits of data be tied back to people?
    - politician 9y ago
      The GDPR clearly lays out the definition of personal data, and the regulations are actually pretty easy to read. https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-1/ https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-1/ PS: GDPR says that "Yes, entries in web logs that can personally identify a data subject is personal data"
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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michaelbuckbee 9y ago
It's kind of like reverse micropayments, in most cases the actual value of your "puppy pictures" etc is only valuable in the aggregate.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
I see the problem but this feels like a bad solution. The way I see it there are two real problems here. (1) Google, Facebook and the like do have a cost, just that it's data instead of money. The fact that we're one step removed from money obscures the true cost associated with the services. And when you combine that with the fact that the services themselves obscure what data they're collecting/have, there's no way for an end consumer to know if they're getting a 'good deal' since they have no idea what they're paying. A fix to this would be radical forced transparency - every consumer should be able to find out what data any company has on them - both collected and bought (and bought from whom for how much.) (2) Data is too large a competitive advantage in certain industries. It seems similar to me to utilities. Barring local law I could try and start up a new water company and displace the incumbent but it would never work - the huge fixed costs make the industry prone to natural monopolization. Same here except with data. There are absolutely ginormous costs associated with collecting user data that could rival Google's or Facebook's (if it's even possible). You could start a company to try to beat Google but you'll never get the data to make it good enough to compete and since you're not good enough to compete you'll never get the data. The free market here has done it's work - it's generated something new and useful and beneficial to society, now we should nationalize it so that it stays that way.
heurist 9y ago
Your data is worthless. Everyone's data is priceless.
elemenofi 9y ago
why is nobody here speaking about the basic attention token? https://basicattentiontoken.org/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/
- balthasar 9y ago
  Basic attention token has nothing to do with the article.
deleted 9y ago
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pentae 9y ago
I'll never understand why I can't pay Google and Facebook $20 to $50 per year to simply respect my privacy and not give me advertisements. I can't imagine they make more than this off my viewing behaviour (especially as I use adblock)
- whamlastxmas 9y ago
  Use fastmail instead of gmail and some alternative search engine that respects your privacy.
- dageshi 9y ago
  It would probably raise them so little money at their scale it's not worth the trouble, that's why they don't do it.
- ooyy 9y ago
  Those people who are willing to pay $50 per year for such thing are worth more than 50$ per year as targets for advertising.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Sort of like Youtube Red except for their search interface and other properties, too? Count me in. I subscribe to YT Red as well.
- uuuyno 9y ago
  Because it's a boring, safe, traditional business model. Instead they've bet on harvesting and exploiting information about the behaviour of the many, to ultimately allow them to exert some 'control/influence' over individuals. And they're winning the business lottery with it. More shame us for only considering ourselves when deciding whether or not to use a service like google. I can choose not to use google/facebook, but if everyone else uses them, they'll still have incredible power over me through the insights they gleaned about everyone else
tsumnia 9y ago
I've had this discussion with people before. It both sounds good and not depending on the viewpoint. The good is already spoken about in the article - I generate data that a company is in turn using to make money. The analogy I have used before is imagine if I owned land and ate apples on that land. If the apple seeds I spit out grew, I'd have apple trees. It would be bothersome to me if the state came in and sold all the apples the tree grew and I never saw a dime. Refraining from political discussion, I'm upset someone else is profiting off my work. No different than using my uploaded picture to train image processing systems. Now the bad, how much am I REALLY worth? Online surveys pay out pennies at most for my "opinion". I'm a middle-class, white, male, computer scientist - the market is literally flooded with data from people like me. My data is only worth something if I was, say, a single Hispanic mother or some other niche demographic, and that's only because of their rarity. Now, this is where the discussion typically leads to science fiction. I think this would be a great use of blockchain currency and let the market drive the value of your data. If there's a shortage of, say, beach pictures (because why not), then you're Instagram data might be of value. Likewise, the GPS locations of an underrepresented demographic is suddenly worth a more because its hard to get that kind of data. But I think the major issue still falls back to how much its all worth. The article says $20,000, which nicely would support arguments for a living wage. I generate the data that runs the world, so pay me enough to live it in. However, what if the data isn't worth $20k?
- tinymollusk 9y ago
  I think your analogy would be more apt if you were spitting seeds onto public property, and the state took the trees. Or even further: you spit seeds (your data) onto Google's property while they gave you a free tram ride to the other side.
  - tsumnia 9y ago
    Another could be someone lets you use their land for free, so you use the land to grow a unique breed of flowers. Later you find out that person that owns the land is selling honey from bees that visit those flowers (solely or in some combination with other flower patches). This honey revenue depends on your proper upkeep of your flowers. Okay, fine, its the cost for using their land. But THEN, you find out that your flowers (or, again, the combination) are so unique, that person begins making millions of dollars in revenue off the honey. As the primary producer of the income, I'd feel a bit shafted if I didn't get some of type of reciprocation. Doubly so if that person accidentally let a malicious entity on the land who then stole my unique breed of flower and then started selling/reproducing it.
ancap 9y ago
I find the term "your data" bothersome. Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data". Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy, but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering.
- cinquemb 9y ago
  I agree with what you are saying: "So right away, let us cast aside the technological protocols, that are usually referred to as “the internet”, that of which was built upon that make accessing or publishing information public between two or more machines… Because talking about such things would require most internet users to cast aside social constructs they willingly suspend on a daily basis upon engaging with such technology/services (without any care to understand for oneself, one might add) and then demand collectively in retrospect to have their cries pacified while continuing to use such services (of which, most for free). Yup, let us look past all that and believe (because that’s all we can do for ourselves) that institutions/organizations/companies/governments, that all consist of our fellow human beings in all of our qualities and flaws, can provide for the individual that which he chooses not to do for himself, to a satisfactory level in which his desires are forever coddled and placated." "The Banality of Privacy As A Service" [0] [0] http://pictobar.tumblr.com/post/63785124046/the-banality-of-privacy-as-a-service http://pictobar.tumblr.com/post/63785124046/the-banality-of-...
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  "Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data"." Yes it does. "Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy" That it is. " but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering." And when did I agree to Equifax's terms?
  - ancap 9y ago
    >Yes it does. While you've presented a compelling counter-argument, I'm still not convinced. >And when did I agree to Equifax's terms? You didn't need to because they never stored "your data".
taeric 9y ago
Can't you be paid by virtue of cheaper costs? Ad agencies filtering out value is of dubious value for society. Cheaper cars, more effective roads and transit, wiser food choices, data driven medicine, and plenty of other progress points continue to help most everyone that is at stake in this discussion. My hope is it continues to help even more.
BeetleB 9y ago
Similar to Betteridge's Law of Headlines: Any time a question has a "shouldn't", the answer is usually no.
paulcole 9y ago
You are being compensated for it. You get to use Facebook, Gmail, Google Search, etc. without taking out your wallet. Want more compensation? You’re free to negotiate or take your data elsewhere to a higher bidder.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  Reconcile that with the fact that Facebook collects data on people who don't use Facebook.
brwsr 9y ago
Off course, but the steady stream of money to the rich is unstoppable. The problem is that we are conditioned to accept the extreme wealthy and even look up to them. Most people think everything is OK as long as they have a decent income. So most people only find out first about the horror of this system once they lose their job and hit the streets. But then it's all too late when the reality sinks in. With the sticker POOR on your head your kinda lost till you die in this world. We live in a world of modern slavery where one needs the skill and luck to find a good job to avoid the streets. A better distribution of wealth would be great of course. Imagine all those billionaires rendering at least half of their fortunes back to the poor. But that is not realistic and will never happen. Things will get worse to the point they lock us up in some sort of "District 9" (Elysium).
- 111_1_111 9y ago
  Modern slavery: a world where you need skill to find a job.
dasil003 9y ago
This is absolute nonsense and dangerous to boot. Facebook's ARPU is still less than $20/year. If they literally paid all of their profits directly to their user it would still be a pittance. The real value of privacy has to do with freedom, manipulation and surveillance, and that is not represented by economic measures at all. Talking about the value of the data in purely economic terms is exactly the way you would want to frame the issue if you had more nefarious plans down the line.
- lambdadmitry 9y ago
  However, this also means that they can charge users $3/mo (just to be safe) and be at least as successful as they are now, but without all the spying and manipulation. Unfortunately that will also put a cap on their profits, so it's unlikely they'll do that.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    There's also precedent for companies charging users and still also making money off their data.
    - shams93 9y ago
      Exactly
  - chc 9y ago
    That's assuming their userbase is a lot less elastic than it probably is. They'd have to retain at least half of their current users in order for that to even come close to replacing current revenue. The reason these pay-with-your-privacy businesses are so successful is because charging actual money is a huge barrier that will drive away many customers.
    - mc32 9y ago
      And presuming they don't have a competitor offer the same services "for free". And why wouldn't someone do that, even Google could jump in to the rescue with its moribund G+.
yarrel 9y ago
I can't wait to spend my $20!
nofunsir 9y ago
I'm astounded by the amount of blow-back in this thread. Do you all really love gathering user data that much that you can't even consider the possibility of parting with it, or at least with its free availability?
balthasar 9y ago
This sort of data collection is inevitable with a highly commercialized Internet.
squarefoot 9y ago
Puppy pictures aside, I'd put it another way: I'm unique and what I do online is the product of an unique person thinking. If some corporation makes money by analyzing my behaviour, then I should be allowed to treat my data just like a song or a book: that is, intellectual property, with the clause that if and only if that data is gathered with consent and full transparency (using 100% free and open source software for example), then they're exempted from paying fees and/or lawsuits. Just my 0.2€. I don't condemn companies for using technology to make money, and am perfectly fine if they scan my surfing habits, but people rights should always come first, and if they scan my emails or private messages or use the information in a way I don't approve then I want to be able to hit them badly.
tomcooks 9y ago
An argument that having terrorcorporations get your data becoming normalized even further - the "but you do get some money in exchange!" edition. Next step is getting some discount in the walled garden store or some crypto token payment. Blah.
trendia 9y ago
Can I trademark my likeness (as famous actors or musicians do) and then sue Facebook if they use it? I'm sure there's some reason it wouldn't work, but it's fun to think about.
- canadianwriter 9y ago
  In general they use ananymized data. No one is advertising to Burt who likes bee hives, they are advertising to a cookie pool that likes bee hives. Your likeness would probably not cover anonymized data. At least here in Canada, PII (personally identifiable info such as email) is not allowed to be used.
stratigos 9y ago
Ive been saying it for years - I wont allow fb, twttr, ggl, or any of the tech giants access to my data until they compensate me fairly for it. If theyre making billions off of us, then I want a few thousand in return. Until then, no accounts and no data from me! Privacy Badger, ABPlus, block @ DNS level, etc. Also Ive been a succesful technologist, programmer, and social being for many decades, and not having any of those accounts has never been a downer in my life. I feel much healthier, sound, and happier than my peers that have FB accounts. Cant see the value in that jank. Cant see why it makes sense to empower those companies at our expense.
fullshark 9y ago
This is analogous to asking why TV viewers aren’t paid?
anonyx69 9y ago
They do pay users for their data in the form of whatever service or content they provide.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  Facebook collects data on people who are not Facebook users too.
deleted 9y ago
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ThatHNGuy 9y ago
but we're already giving all our data out for free, why suddenly should they pay us? We are the problem: we don't say "Hey Facebook, if you pay me $XX, then I'll create an account on your website", but the way around.

221 points by phront 9y ago

There's a whole genre of articles based on conflating two senses of "your," belonging to you, and about you. If I observe that you have blue eyes, that's a fact about you, but it doesn't belong to you, at least not without redefining what "belong" means. It would be helpful if, instead of deliberately conflating these two senses of "your," articles on this subject went in the other direction and explicitly discussed the distinction. We have from time to time redefined what "belong" means, but these redefinitions tend to be very complicated and have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. My guess is that a redefinition on the scale of facts about you = your property would be a disaster.

taneq 9y ago
And here you're conflating "public facts about you" with "facts that only your cell phone / mattress / underpants / web browser know about you." "Facts about you" falls into at least two categories: "Facts which you want and reasonably expect to remain private", and "facts which you display to the world and have no expectation of privacy about."
- rhizome 9y ago
  Which is fine as far as semantics go, but in the context of this thread the first category doesn't exist unless you're under 13 and in the US, or subject to the GDPR, or a few other nooks and crannies of international laws.
specialist 9y ago
I disagree. You're trying to distinguish between privacy and identity. If there's a dividing line, it's very, very hard to discern.
chopin 9y ago
I think it is pretty easy. The moment you start storing this data outside your brain, it's "my" data. You can memorize or observe it all you want but not store it permanently or semi-permanently elsewhere. I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" (most skip the latter part anyway, if not confronted with a shitstorm) mentality.
- mdpopescu 9y ago
  > I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" Huh. I actually believe most western societies are incredibly tilted in the "ask permission" direction. You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing. Personally, I prefer freedom: do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone's rights (and no, Imaginary Property doesn't count).
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    > You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing. The rules are very selectively enforced depending on what class you belong to though. As a guy with a pair of scissors, I can't start cutting hair without "asking permission" in the form of a license. As a guy with a cart, I can't sell hot dogs on the street corner without getting some sort of vending license. I can't just start driving around and picking up random fares in my car without applying for a limousine license or taxi medallion. But then you get Uber, whose business model was based around ignoring these regulations and scaling to such size where they were too big to prosecute (easily). Just the same, I'll get fined if I catch too many fish from the local pond whether or not I've gone to the trouble of applying for a fishing license, but Acme Megacorp will go ahead and dump toxic waste into the same pond until it's forcibly stopped from doing so (and the taxpayers are forced to clean it up via Superfund).
dang 9y ago
There's a simpler, shallower issue too: 'you' in headlines is a linkbait trope, so headline writers drop it in wherever they can. This one managed it twice. Presumably we're all wired to respond to "hey you!" Since clickbait is against the site guidelines, we replace such titles with neutral ones. Usually we do that by copying a representative phrase from the article itself. But that was surprisingly hard to do this time.
- x1232 9y ago
  Wow, gruseom went fully native.
will_brown 9y ago
The funny thing is based on the way you described belong...it really made me realize the collection of data really seems to be eerily similar to this definition: >Obtaining information with reference to the identity, habits, conduct, movements, whereabouts, affiliations, associations, transactions, reputation, or character of any society, person of groups of persons. Guess what that is? It’s, in part, the statutory (legal) definition of private investigator, which is prohibited by law without a license. So sure under the law we don’t necessarily own that data about ourselves, but the collection of the data is highly regulated for a reason. Obviously tech companies obtain user consent to collect data (at least some of the time), but if PI’s can be regulated in their activities so can a tech company or digital product, and it’s not to difficult to see regulations that say a tech company can’t collect user data and turn around and sell it to third parties. I am curious though, how exactly would such a legal framework be a disaster in your opinion?
oliwarner 9y ago
To be fair, modern privacy laws blur the same lines. If you collect data about me in the EU, I have legal control over that data. I can order you to give it to me. I can order you to delete it. Sounds like ownership to me.
- neveroffensive 9y ago
  > Sounds like ownership to me. Sure, the EU has essentially asserted in law that you own your data. That doesn't really make it true though. I don't even think the EU was really addressing the moral/ethical nature of data with that law, politicians just wanted a way to remove defamatory content from the internet so they could regain control of their public image. Just because something makes it into law doesn't mean it's reasonable/accurate/moral/just. In fact, I would argue most laws are created based on a groups narrow desire to achieve an immediate effect in the current society. Few laws are created with genuine exploration of larger implications on society/morality, and even fewer laws are created in the context of rights/what the government can/cant't control.

deleted 9y ago

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GCU-Empiricist 9y ago

Seems like an is ought question that is long settled: look at the credit reporting agencies. We may be doing impressive new things and figuring out how to learn a lot more about people, but who owns data on a person is a dead and buried question.

mywacaday 9y ago
Not dead and buried in Europe with GDPR coming.
- skocznymroczny 9y ago
  Which will add another checkbox that you have to tick once when entering a website. EU is not the ally of ordinary folk when it comes to the Internet.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    It absolutely is. I hope more jurisdictions follow suit.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Actually, GDPR seems to be explicitly designed so that no amount of checkboxes or legalese in terms&conditions can be sufficient to continue as-is, companies actually would have to change behavior to be compliant. Lots of previous threads have discussions about the particular details. Of course, we'll have to see how it turns out in practice, but it's just a couple more months.
specialist 9y ago
I'm not dead yet. USA's credit reporting agencies are a bight on humanity. All the power with none of the accountability, ambiguous rules ruthlessly enforced, profiting from other people's misfortune.
PeterisP 9y ago
The fact that credit reporting agencies currently are obviously abusing data that they're not able to safeguard doesn't mean that the question is dead and buried, quite the opposite - it means that the role of credit reporting agencies will have to change as their abilities will eventually get legally restricted and they won't be able to continue in this manner.

saas_co_de 9y ago

The next generation of technological progress has to be an answer to these questions. Google and Facebook (and similar companies) have killed innovation with their monopolies and in order to break their monopolies new technologies must be invented that disrupt their business models. It is interesting to see the NY Times advancing such avant garde ideas but it is good to see rising social consciousness of the limitations of current technology.

wpasc 9y ago

The media portrayal of the tech world would be more impactful if it weren't so hyperbolic, dramatized, and skewed. There are myriad valid complaints about the tech world, but Facebook paying you for you posting your photos is not one of them. Facebook is free. Google search is free. 15gb of gmail/google drive is free. You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat. (I don't work for either so I'm not tooting my own horn, just giving credit where I believe credit is due) I think as it currently stands (collect data on me and I get free 99.99% uptime, cloud available services for email, cloud drive, and social networking) is a pretty sweet deal.

sharemywin 9y ago
They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Those companies pay advertising which increase prices plus their tech size profits. And because the stock market machine demands greater and greater profits they need larger stronger monopolies to generate those obscene profits.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  > They aren't free. You pay for them in high prices for good and services. Your reasoning is extremely fallacious because you're overlooking a lot of nuance. Yes, it is true that in aggregate part of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. How much exactly depends on macroeconomic factors, industry dynamics, pricing power of distributors and retailers, and hundreds other variables. But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. However, advertising is valuable to advertisers because it works to some degree. And it works because people are influenced by it. Now, as an individual I have no control over what other people are doing and so I have no control over how valuable advertising is and how much is being spent on it and how much is being passed on to consumers. Therefore as an individual I look around me and prices are what they are and already have in them advertising costs which will not go up by me using service. Therefore as an individual the marginal cost of me using these services is effectively zero (imagine the ratio between the value of advertising to me and the aggregate value of advertising, that's effectively zero). As an individual those services are free. So it depends on what your definition of "free" is. A) Would prices be lower if advertising didn't exist? Yes [0]. B) Would prices be lower to me if I didn't use these services? No. The thing is that in definition A) I don't really have a choice, so it's irrelevant. I only have a choice as an individual. [0] And even here some people will disagree with you. What I call "free market fundamentalists" will argue that No, they wouldn't, because the advertising leads to higher sales and greater operational efficiency, so that advertising costs are exactly offset by lower per-unit costs.

WingH 9y ago

But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar to Google and Facebook. Given the choice of getting paid a dollar, or using it for free (in exchange for them using my data), I would choose the latter. Only in aggregate is it worth a lot.

amelius 9y ago
In that case, I would pay Google and Facebook a dollar, and keep my data safe from their prying eyes.
- WingH 9y ago
  I would do that too. But the notion of getting paid for your data, when its worth so little by itself is not appealing.
saas_co_de 9y ago
> But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. Just take the market cap of the company divided by users to get an average. Google is at about $700B with may ~2B global users, so global average is more like $350/user. The value of US users is probably 10X less developed parts of world (based on ad rates) so US users are worth more like $3000. You are undervaluing yourself :) which is how they win.
- marcinzm 9y ago
  >Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. No it's not. You're mixing up the value of the data with the value of your attention. The world has made a killing off of advertising long before personalization came about so saying it's all due to personalization is a bit silly imho.
  - deong 9y ago
    It's also conflating a bunch of stuff that goes into Google's valuation that isn't directly tied to ownership of your data. Once upon a time, Google just made a search engine, and that search engine quickly took over the world. Google made a lot of money plopping ads on search results long before you could create a Google account or store all your email there. Presumably, the technical ability to build products like that is worth actual money. If Google deleted all personal data, the company would not be worth $0.

mtgx 9y ago

This wouldn't be such an issue if they couldn't see the data on which they are computing (and individual data wouldn't be exposed in data breaches either). But I'm not sure if Google even cares too much about doing that (I know they've experimented with this, but nothing on a scale that matters), and Facebook certainly doesn't. Apple seems to be the only one that does somewhat with its differential privacy approach. I think they can all do much more, but they're not trying too hard.

deong 9y ago
I'm not sure you understand what differential privacy is. Apple still has your data. If there's a breach, an attacker gets your data. It's probably encrypted, just as it is with pretty much any modern system where user data is collected, but differential privacy doesn't have anything to do with what data is collected or stored. Differential privacy is just a method for limiting how much information can be reliably inferred about an entire dataset from limited queries on statistical properties of the data. It's basically this. Imagine I have two data sets that are identical, except one has your specific data and the other doesn't. It's possible in some circumstances to infer information about you by asking for things like averages on the datasets. Differential privacy is a method for defeating attacks that rely on that type of "leakage" of information. It assures that if two datasets are close enough, queries on those datasets will not yield significant information about their differences (i.e., the presence or absence of one particular data point won't be detectable). It's all about how queries of the data perform, and not at all about the data itself.

farhanmalik7544 9y ago

Read:https://www.savahapp.com https://www.savahapp.com

mdale 9y ago

There is already mechanical Turk for the cases the author described. There are many paid initiatives to label data that these companies employ. These "AI" companies sample sizes are small compared to the services they provide against them. Once divided up its pointless to think about them "paying" you and is counter to the point. They already are paying in the form of the service they are providing. I.e free storage, service etc. Democratizing the data so more companies can use it to build products beyond these major concentration of platform players is a much more practical. This is similar to the personal data requests legislation that Europe already has in place. This would be an extension to enable competing services to access this data as their customers opt into the the service. Enabling more companies to build more competitive products (employ people working towards market competitive products) not trying to set "sustainable" sheep that feed from the same troff of the concentrated power of these companies. Certainly universal basic income; but that should be wholly independent of being subordinates to these service providers.

crispyporkbites 9y ago

The thing is, I don't actually have my data. Perhaps if I collected it and stored it, perhaps put it behind an accessible API and supplied Google et al with an API key to access it I might have a case for charging them for it.

specialist 9y ago
It's worse than that. We currently don't even have the right to determine who has our data, or how its being exploited. The remedy, of course, is to establish intrinsic properties rights over our own data. No different than copyrights. Maybe we need a new catchphrase. I propose bodyrights. It captures the notions of self, privacy, identity, and sovereignty all in one.
- gipp 9y ago
  Okay, but like operationally, what does that even mean? How do we establish a legal definition of what "your data" even is? When we talk about "big data" and data collection, the vast majority of what we're talking about basically just boils down to web logs, and derived data that's inferred from those logs. So is an entry in a web log that corresponds to something you did now your property? Is anything someone writes down about me now my property? If I walk in a store and the store owner writes down that I was there, is that my property?
  - specialist 9y ago
    Can those bits of data be tied back to people?
  - politician 9y ago
    The GDPR clearly lays out the definition of personal data, and the regulations are actually pretty easy to read. https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-1/ https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-1/ PS: GDPR says that "Yes, entries in web logs that can personally identify a data subject is personal data"
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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michaelbuckbee 9y ago

It's kind of like reverse micropayments, in most cases the actual value of your "puppy pictures" etc is only valuable in the aggregate.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

I see the problem but this feels like a bad solution. The way I see it there are two real problems here. (1) Google, Facebook and the like do have a cost, just that it's data instead of money. The fact that we're one step removed from money obscures the true cost associated with the services. And when you combine that with the fact that the services themselves obscure what data they're collecting/have, there's no way for an end consumer to know if they're getting a 'good deal' since they have no idea what they're paying. A fix to this would be radical forced transparency - every consumer should be able to find out what data any company has on them - both collected and bought (and bought from whom for how much.) (2) Data is too large a competitive advantage in certain industries. It seems similar to me to utilities. Barring local law I could try and start up a new water company and displace the incumbent but it would never work - the huge fixed costs make the industry prone to natural monopolization. Same here except with data. There are absolutely ginormous costs associated with collecting user data that could rival Google's or Facebook's (if it's even possible). You could start a company to try to beat Google but you'll never get the data to make it good enough to compete and since you're not good enough to compete you'll never get the data. The free market here has done it's work - it's generated something new and useful and beneficial to society, now we should nationalize it so that it stays that way.

heurist 9y ago

Your data is worthless. Everyone's data is priceless.

elemenofi 9y ago

why is nobody here speaking about the basic attention token? https://basicattentiontoken.org/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/

balthasar 9y ago
Basic attention token has nothing to do with the article.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pentae 9y ago

I'll never understand why I can't pay Google and Facebook $20 to $50 per year to simply respect my privacy and not give me advertisements. I can't imagine they make more than this off my viewing behaviour (especially as I use adblock)

whamlastxmas 9y ago
Use fastmail instead of gmail and some alternative search engine that respects your privacy.
dageshi 9y ago
It would probably raise them so little money at their scale it's not worth the trouble, that's why they don't do it.
ooyy 9y ago
Those people who are willing to pay $50 per year for such thing are worth more than 50$ per year as targets for advertising.
r00fus 9y ago
Sort of like Youtube Red except for their search interface and other properties, too? Count me in. I subscribe to YT Red as well.
uuuyno 9y ago
Because it's a boring, safe, traditional business model. Instead they've bet on harvesting and exploiting information about the behaviour of the many, to ultimately allow them to exert some 'control/influence' over individuals. And they're winning the business lottery with it. More shame us for only considering ourselves when deciding whether or not to use a service like google. I can choose not to use google/facebook, but if everyone else uses them, they'll still have incredible power over me through the insights they gleaned about everyone else

tsumnia 9y ago

I've had this discussion with people before. It both sounds good and not depending on the viewpoint. The good is already spoken about in the article - I generate data that a company is in turn using to make money. The analogy I have used before is imagine if I owned land and ate apples on that land. If the apple seeds I spit out grew, I'd have apple trees. It would be bothersome to me if the state came in and sold all the apples the tree grew and I never saw a dime. Refraining from political discussion, I'm upset someone else is profiting off my work. No different than using my uploaded picture to train image processing systems. Now the bad, how much am I REALLY worth? Online surveys pay out pennies at most for my "opinion". I'm a middle-class, white, male, computer scientist - the market is literally flooded with data from people like me. My data is only worth something if I was, say, a single Hispanic mother or some other niche demographic, and that's only because of their rarity. Now, this is where the discussion typically leads to science fiction. I think this would be a great use of blockchain currency and let the market drive the value of your data. If there's a shortage of, say, beach pictures (because why not), then you're Instagram data might be of value. Likewise, the GPS locations of an underrepresented demographic is suddenly worth a more because its hard to get that kind of data. But I think the major issue still falls back to how much its all worth. The article says $20,000, which nicely would support arguments for a living wage. I generate the data that runs the world, so pay me enough to live it in. However, what if the data isn't worth $20k?

tinymollusk 9y ago
I think your analogy would be more apt if you were spitting seeds onto public property, and the state took the trees. Or even further: you spit seeds (your data) onto Google's property while they gave you a free tram ride to the other side.
- tsumnia 9y ago
  Another could be someone lets you use their land for free, so you use the land to grow a unique breed of flowers. Later you find out that person that owns the land is selling honey from bees that visit those flowers (solely or in some combination with other flower patches). This honey revenue depends on your proper upkeep of your flowers. Okay, fine, its the cost for using their land. But THEN, you find out that your flowers (or, again, the combination) are so unique, that person begins making millions of dollars in revenue off the honey. As the primary producer of the income, I'd feel a bit shafted if I didn't get some of type of reciprocation. Doubly so if that person accidentally let a malicious entity on the land who then stole my unique breed of flower and then started selling/reproducing it.

ancap 9y ago

I find the term "your data" bothersome. Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data". Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy, but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering.

cinquemb 9y ago
I agree with what you are saying: "So right away, let us cast aside the technological protocols, that are usually referred to as “the internet”, that of which was built upon that make accessing or publishing information public between two or more machines… Because talking about such things would require most internet users to cast aside social constructs they willingly suspend on a daily basis upon engaging with such technology/services (without any care to understand for oneself, one might add) and then demand collectively in retrospect to have their cries pacified while continuing to use such services (of which, most for free). Yup, let us look past all that and believe (because that’s all we can do for ourselves) that institutions/organizations/companies/governments, that all consist of our fellow human beings in all of our qualities and flaws, can provide for the individual that which he chooses not to do for himself, to a satisfactory level in which his desires are forever coddled and placated." "The Banality of Privacy As A Service" [0] [0] http://pictobar.tumblr.com/post/63785124046/the-banality-of-privacy-as-a-service http://pictobar.tumblr.com/post/63785124046/the-banality-of-...
s73v3r_ 9y ago
"Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data"." Yes it does. "Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy" That it is. " but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering." And when did I agree to Equifax's terms?
- ancap 9y ago
  >Yes it does. While you've presented a compelling counter-argument, I'm still not convinced. >And when did I agree to Equifax's terms? You didn't need to because they never stored "your data".

taeric 9y ago

Can't you be paid by virtue of cheaper costs? Ad agencies filtering out value is of dubious value for society. Cheaper cars, more effective roads and transit, wiser food choices, data driven medicine, and plenty of other progress points continue to help most everyone that is at stake in this discussion. My hope is it continues to help even more.

BeetleB 9y ago

Similar to Betteridge's Law of Headlines: Any time a question has a "shouldn't", the answer is usually no.

paulcole 9y ago

You are being compensated for it. You get to use Facebook, Gmail, Google Search, etc. without taking out your wallet. Want more compensation? You’re free to negotiate or take your data elsewhere to a higher bidder.

s73v3r_ 9y ago
Reconcile that with the fact that Facebook collects data on people who don't use Facebook.

brwsr 9y ago

Off course, but the steady stream of money to the rich is unstoppable. The problem is that we are conditioned to accept the extreme wealthy and even look up to them. Most people think everything is OK as long as they have a decent income. So most people only find out first about the horror of this system once they lose their job and hit the streets. But then it's all too late when the reality sinks in. With the sticker POOR on your head your kinda lost till you die in this world. We live in a world of modern slavery where one needs the skill and luck to find a good job to avoid the streets. A better distribution of wealth would be great of course. Imagine all those billionaires rendering at least half of their fortunes back to the poor. But that is not realistic and will never happen. Things will get worse to the point they lock us up in some sort of "District 9" (Elysium).

111_1_111 9y ago
Modern slavery: a world where you need skill to find a job.

dasil003 9y ago

This is absolute nonsense and dangerous to boot. Facebook's ARPU is still less than $20/year. If they literally paid all of their profits directly to their user it would still be a pittance. The real value of privacy has to do with freedom, manipulation and surveillance, and that is not represented by economic measures at all. Talking about the value of the data in purely economic terms is exactly the way you would want to frame the issue if you had more nefarious plans down the line.

lambdadmitry 9y ago
However, this also means that they can charge users $3/mo (just to be safe) and be at least as successful as they are now, but without all the spying and manipulation. Unfortunately that will also put a cap on their profits, so it's unlikely they'll do that.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  There's also precedent for companies charging users and still also making money off their data.
  - shams93 9y ago
    Exactly
- chc 9y ago
  That's assuming their userbase is a lot less elastic than it probably is. They'd have to retain at least half of their current users in order for that to even come close to replacing current revenue. The reason these pay-with-your-privacy businesses are so successful is because charging actual money is a huge barrier that will drive away many customers.
  - mc32 9y ago
    And presuming they don't have a competitor offer the same services "for free". And why wouldn't someone do that, even Google could jump in to the rescue with its moribund G+.

yarrel 9y ago

I can't wait to spend my $20!

nofunsir 9y ago

I'm astounded by the amount of blow-back in this thread. Do you all really love gathering user data that much that you can't even consider the possibility of parting with it, or at least with its free availability?

balthasar 9y ago

This sort of data collection is inevitable with a highly commercialized Internet.

squarefoot 9y ago

Puppy pictures aside, I'd put it another way: I'm unique and what I do online is the product of an unique person thinking. If some corporation makes money by analyzing my behaviour, then I should be allowed to treat my data just like a song or a book: that is, intellectual property, with the clause that if and only if that data is gathered with consent and full transparency (using 100% free and open source software for example), then they're exempted from paying fees and/or lawsuits. Just my 0.2€. I don't condemn companies for using technology to make money, and am perfectly fine if they scan my surfing habits, but people rights should always come first, and if they scan my emails or private messages or use the information in a way I don't approve then I want to be able to hit them badly.

tomcooks 9y ago

An argument that having terrorcorporations get your data becoming normalized even further - the "but you do get some money in exchange!" edition. Next step is getting some discount in the walled garden store or some crypto token payment. Blah.

trendia 9y ago

Can I trademark my likeness (as famous actors or musicians do) and then sue Facebook if they use it? I'm sure there's some reason it wouldn't work, but it's fun to think about.

canadianwriter 9y ago
In general they use ananymized data. No one is advertising to Burt who likes bee hives, they are advertising to a cookie pool that likes bee hives. Your likeness would probably not cover anonymized data. At least here in Canada, PII (personally identifiable info such as email) is not allowed to be used.

stratigos 9y ago

Ive been saying it for years - I wont allow fb, twttr, ggl, or any of the tech giants access to my data until they compensate me fairly for it. If theyre making billions off of us, then I want a few thousand in return. Until then, no accounts and no data from me! Privacy Badger, ABPlus, block @ DNS level, etc. Also Ive been a succesful technologist, programmer, and social being for many decades, and not having any of those accounts has never been a downer in my life. I feel much healthier, sound, and happier than my peers that have FB accounts. Cant see the value in that jank. Cant see why it makes sense to empower those companies at our expense.

fullshark 9y ago

This is analogous to asking why TV viewers aren’t paid?

anonyx69 9y ago

They do pay users for their data in the form of whatever service or content they provide.

s73v3r_ 9y ago
Facebook collects data on people who are not Facebook users too.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ThatHNGuy 9y ago

but we're already giving all our data out for free, why suddenly should they pay us? We are the problem: we don't say "Hey Facebook, if you pay me $XX, then I'll create an account on your website", but the way around.