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Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project is pushing Big Tech to pay users for data

369 points by ohjeez 6y ago

Sodman 6y ago
I know it might sound like a minor ding, but the signup form doesn't allow apostrophes or accents in the name fields. Many people (myself included) have these in their legal names. I know this is US focused, but for an org that's all about data, this feels like a big oversight. For starters, _most_ data-hoarding websites allow these characters these days, so it's just one more obstacle when trying to match and verify "my" data. I guess let's hope I signed up to every website with the same e-mail address? On a similar note, it also rejected my 5-digit valid zip code as "invalid", so I'm unable to sign up at all.
- joshribakoff 6y ago
  He tweeted about this as an idea a few days ago. It’s possible this was thrown together in a few days by a junior dev. While I’m all for data privacy, there’s much bigger issues I’m personally focused on, like the fact. Breonna Taylor’s murderers are not in jail. Andrew Yang tweeted that his solution would be to make cops wear pink. This guy is a joke.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Yang jokes around a bunch (and swears a lot in speeches too) but if you listen to his long form interviews he does go into a tremendous amount of depth, more-so than many other politicians do. Andrew Yang talks racism in America with Bakari Sellers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiMfPo0u6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiMfPo0u6U But what can we DO? Six ideas for police reform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gd4nx-dk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gd4nx-dk0
- bena 6y ago
  This is another reason why I can't understand anyone who works in software of what is generally thought of as "technology" likes Yang. He does not understand. He likes to talk about "MATH". And while the numbers he uses may work out, I wonder how he acquires those numbers in the first place. Also, it often seems like he needs "ENGLISH" more than "MATH". Because "technology" is a meaningless word. A carburetor is technology. A ramp is technology. Just about everything is technology in some fashion. So. We already tax technology, if indirectly, through taxing goods and services. Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services. And then there's the fact that he's now doing the thing he's complaining about: data harvesting. And to top all of that off, the issues you just mentioned. This guy can't even harvest data effectively or efficiently. Or identify people who can. And I'm supposed to trust him to create legislation affecting those companies? Or identify people who can? He has just blatantly demonstrated he does not have those skills.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    > Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services. So for whatever service they offer, we give them data. And extra secondary income from every third party they pass that same data along to. And the risk of first party data breaches. And the risk of data breaches from any other party that gets access. And likely that same data getting scraped by aggregators just from being used. The deal is by no means equal, and we the customer pay dearly. I'm quite happy with the idea of making it expensive to retain any data that's not required by law or explicit operational need.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Yang himself is not really a tech guy (he's an econ grad who became a lawyer, then ran companies and non-profits). But looking at his book and platform, one can't help but notice that it heavily incorporates ideas that are popular in tech circles (UBI, automation, etc). Then on top of that he spends time talking about non-mainstream topics like Ranked Choice Voting, blockchain, etc. Who else talks about these things on the debate stage?
- oneplane 6y ago
  At least you can access the page. For a data-org that's red flags all over; how can you trust an organisation that can't even be trusted with data?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deegles 6y ago
I think this is a great idea but measures would have to be taken to prevent Hollywood accounting from erasing payouts to consumers. Establishing a value for each data point gathered and an ongoing payout from derived data (e.g. training a machine learning model using your search habits should not mean you get nothing if the original data isn't kept) is crucial. Also, keeping track of all of those payouts would also be a huge burden for even Google, I can't imagine for a small startup. This also needs to be considered so that it doesn't stifle innovation. Some napkin math: assuming 1 billion MAU for Google Search and around $30B in revenue for Q1 2020, that's $30 in revenue per MAU per quarter or around $120/year. This would be before costs of course and represents the ceiling of what they would be able to pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/alphabet-googl-earnings-q1-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/alphabet-googl-earnings-q1-2... https://techjury.net/blog/google-search-statistics/ https://techjury.net/blog/google-search-statistics/
buboard 6y ago
No, not all users andrew. Pay the users that create content that gets popular, not people just for existing. Creating a data trail is not valuable IP. I m actually surprised at the amount of content that people give away to these platforms, even here. A major reason is that there is no legal mechanism for users to directly pay other users. Things like brave attention token are steps in the right direction
awillen 6y ago
I'm all for people controlling their data and being fully informed of how it's being used, but I just don't understand the idea that you should be paid for the data that you give to companies when you choose to use their products. The payment that you get is the products. You don't get a check from Google, but you get to use Google, which is an incredibly useful tool. I like Yang, but I think he's barking up the wrong tree. We should be focused on giving people control over their data and awareness of how it's being used so they can make informed decisions, not insisting they get paid for it.
- fragmede 6y ago
  By adding payouts into the mix, companies become incentivized to not sell your data if it's not material to them. I go to the store, I buy something. Transaction over. The idea that the store tracks the shit out of me when I'm in the store is creepy enough. I can accept that ship has sailed since I'm in their store. That the store turns around and makes money off of that browsing data so Facebook can sell me ads for products I lingered in front of, is another level entirely. Thus the data dividend forces the store to truly think through wether or not it's worth it to them to the data. For mega-corp retailers like Target or Whole Foods, they may decide it is (though I'd prefer not), and in that case, since it is my data being sold it doesn't seem unreasonable that I should get something from that transaction. (Unlike physical goods, my data, eg home address/email/IP address/etc, doesn't stop being mine just because someone else also has it.)
  - qeternity 6y ago
    You’re missing the point: when you go to a store, you hand them cash. When you go to a website, you hand them data, which they turn around and sell for cash. The data you give them is the payment for their product. Why else would Facebook invest billions into free products? I’m not shedding a tear for the mega corps, but people need to understand that companies will charge for products one way or another.
    - maerF0x0 6y ago
      Many people think that "free" is a bad deal given the profits these companies make. Many people would prefer the more transparent pricing of "$5 per month" over the abstract "Whatever we can earn from your data, combined with everyone else's, by any means"
lordgrenville 6y ago
In terms of assessing the value of one individual's data, shouldn't there be some consideration for the fact that it's worth nothing to that person on their own? I can't sell my data on the free market. It's a transaction over an object that has value in only one direction.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Is that really true? There are "customer research" apps that will offer you small, but non-trivial amounts of money for basically selling your personal information.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    It's partially true. You can't sell most of your personal information. E.g., when your name, face, and weight end up in somebody's dataset it'll be because of the "free" social fitness app you used rather than because you were able to directly connect with anyone who cared about that data and work out a reasonable price.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      So you're saying a marketplace hasn't been built yet. That's like saying your car had no value until Uber was built (only taxis have value), or short term rental homes had no value until Airbnb was built (only hotels have value). Your data today has value. It's how you get access to Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc, for the monetary cost of $0.00. That is value, and yes, you can't cash that out to $ _yet_. That's because a marketplace hasn't been built yet, but maybe legislation could create such a market and give consumers a fair shake.
      - hansvm 6y ago
        Kind of. I think we're talking past each other. The ancestor comment said they "can't sell [their] data on the free market," and we contested that statement and each other a bit. Bringing up that a marketplace hasn't been built yet and that the data still has value is somewhat irrelevant to the conversation I thought we were having. FWIW, I agree with you -- a marketplace hasn't been built (not that I'm sure it should be), and our data definitely has value.
kumarm 6y ago
Aren't companies already paying indirectly by providing free service? I am no fan of Facebook but I am using the service free of cost and in return company collects data for targeted advertising. Shouldn't this be more targeted at cable companies which collect a monthly fee and again sell your data? And may be forcing Big Tech to provide a paid alternative which doesn't use data collected?
- gnulinux 6y ago
  Facebook is also making money off of you by showing you ads. It's a question of how much is enough. Facebook is charging nothing, sure, but what if the value they take from us (our data, our ad attention+clicks) is more valuable than the value they give us (a free social media)?
  - reverend_gonzo 6y ago
    Well if what they gave us was more valuable than what they took, they wouldn’t be a very profitable company, would it?
    - beojan 6y ago
      The value of what they provide isn't necessarily it's cost. That's the whole reason we trade. The value of a good is different to different people. If a book is worth £5 to me, and £1 to you, then if I give you £2.50 for the book we've both gained more than we've lost.
    - gnulinux 6y ago
      No the value is decided at the moment of transaction, so that's how companies can accumulate value over transactions that are deemed "fair" by both parties. You can decide go give someone $10 for bunch of apple, and the seller can accumulate value from this. The problem here is that one side of the trade does not fully know the value they provide. When you give $10 for an apple, you know exactly what you give and what you get. When you give $0+"your data"+"your ad view/clicks" for "free Facebook service" it's really really unclear what it is you're giving to Facebook and what it is Facebook is giving you.
Calvin02 6y ago
I foresee tech companies creating paid and non-paid versions of their products. If you don't want your data monetized, please pay $50/month for Google Search, GMail, Maps, and YouTube. If you are okay with the value exchange of ads and free services, then you are opting into a mutually agreed upon arrangement with no compensation.
- mc32 6y ago
  This would create a weird paradox: Advertisers want people with disposable income. People without much disposable income get really targeted ads (they won’t pay for the privacy). People with disposable income pay for the privacy service and don’t get ads or get poorly targeted ads. It then becomes more like traditional ads that get broadcast to everyone. So the policy shoots itself in the foot.
  - cyberlurker 6y ago
    I think you overestimate how much people with disposable income value internet privacy. I'm sure Google has good numbers on this from YouTube premium.
  - buboard 6y ago
    Yeah. It s like advertising to poor countries because CPMs are lower there
  - diebeforei485 6y ago
    Podcasts already have premium versions without ads. Video streaming (and music streaming though not as much anymore) also have premium versions without ads. I think people are willing to pay for an "ad-free" experience on some services and still see ads elsewhere.
- criddell 6y ago
  I'm not sure that can work with so many of those services being built on a social graph. You may not want your data monetized, but if you are in the contacts list of somebody else who has opted in, your half of any conversation isn't going to be excluded.
bilal4hmed 6y ago
how much would you pay monthly for Google ? Im paying for Google Storage, Youtube Premium and would like one fee where I dont see any ads at all.
- cyberlurker 6y ago
  $50 a month for a family plan would be acceptable to me. Side topic: do parents who hand kids iPads to watch YouTube worry about the advertisements? That used to be a concern on regular cable television.
- codq 6y ago
  About a year and a half ago, the credit card I was using to pay for YouTube Premium expired and for about a day, I was subjected to ads on YT—it was horrifying. Once you go ad-free, it's hard to go back. I'd happily pay for an ad-free version of every service I use. Scott Galloway has been suggesting that Twitter move to a subscription model, with all accounts with less <5000 followers be free, subsidized by a progressive monthly fee for larger accounts based on number of followers above 5000. This would serve dual purpose of eliminating a whole heap of bots and fake accounts, forcing them to be tied to a credit card. With Twitter earning recurring revenue from whales, along with reducing or eliminating personal data aggregation for ad-targeting, I can't see a downside.
  - 121789 6y ago
    I'm curious on how the dynamics would change in that system. Frankly I think it would make everything quite a bit worse. I think one of the only benefits of twitter is that it allows organic popularity. Once you add penalties for getting too popular, people will need to make up that cost. What will happen is large accounts will start to advertise in their tweets, essentially defeating the purpose of removing advertising. Plus, you could then weaponize bots against smaller accounts on a large scale
- kats 6y ago
  There was actual study conducted by the Fed and an MIT prof. They surveyed how much they would have to pay users to stop using these services: For the median US user: $48/month for Facebook, $1,173 for YouTube, and $17,530 for internet search altogether. For a sample of students in Europe: €2.17/month for Snapchat, €1.52 for LinkedIn, €536 for Whatsapp. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/fed-tries-to-figure-out-value-of-free-internet-services-to-americans.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/fed-tries-to-figure-out-valu...
aminozuur 6y ago
Facebook is giving me much more real value than they could ever make from me in dollars.
- machinehermit 6y ago
  hah love the sarcasm.
  - tootie 6y ago
    If it didn't provide value, no one would be using it.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      I'd like to introduce you to an entire field of endeavor called "marketing". Non-industrial diamonds don't provide value, yet people are regularly buying them for ridiculous sums[1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
      - warkdarrior 6y ago
        Diamonds do provide value in non-industrial settings, most commonly as an indicator of a person's appreciation for another person. They are in the same value class as cut flowers, although of course at a different price point.
    - 3131s 6y ago
      Right, that's why I use heroin.
      - tootie 6y ago
        Lots of people consider feeling good to be valuable. Risk to health is part of the cost that people are willing to pay. Same for alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, skydiving.
rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
In all countries except Iran, the trade of human organs has been made illegal. Organ donation is legal, of course, but under strict regulation to ensure that it's being done ethically for everyone involved. We had good reasons to prohibit the sale of human parts (even if the donor consents to getting paid for the transplantation). Now, we have very good reasons to protect personal data too. Why not forbid the trade of personal data for the same reasons we banned it for our physical parts, and implement strong regulations (GDPR 2.0) to make sure that organizations only access and use our personal data for ethical, commonly-approved purposes?
jerf 6y ago
It doesn't work. There isn't enough money in the data for anyone to care. Your entire data load might be worth $100 a year. The only reason it funds massive industries is cost-effective aggregation by dirt-cheap computer power. I ran the numbers on Facebook a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462402 It comes out that they're making roughly $17/yr in annual revenue per user. Revenue, not profit. Cross checking my numbers against some other sources, it may be now more like $40 or $50/yr. Profits, the thing they could actually afford to share with you, look like maybe $10/year. So, what, Facebook is going to cut me a check for $5 every year? Google sends me another 5-spot, and a few other companies send me a dollar or less? What problem does that solve?
- GoodJokes 6y ago
  Less money in their hands makes them less powerful and more accountable to users. Lots of people get measly dividends per year for stocks relatively. The shareholder rights are probably equally or more important though in that case.
- erentz 6y ago
  When I see these breakdowns I think I’d pay $17 per year for Facebook without all of the ads and tracking and data mining and knowing I was just getting a good service optimized for its customers. Why not ban tracking and ad targeting and selling personal data, and force that business model to go extinct, and now they have to start charging for service and their users become actual customers.
  - sida 6y ago
    Arguably without the ranking and recommendation, FB is quite boring. The feed is such an integral part of FB.
  - asciident 6y ago
    I would not, I'd rather they target me with personalized ads like they are doing now. I hate paying for things, and I imagine neither would 99% of users. Since me and the other 99% of people contribute most of the value to Facebook for you, would you be willing to subsidize the other 99% of people and pay $1700/year?
anjel 6y ago
This would have saved a lot of problems if proposed in 2008. Now that FANG has trillions in the back, if it's not a retroactive dividend, Ill-gotten gains get retained and this is not much more than closing the barn door after the cows are gone.
metalgearsolid3 6y ago
If Facebook's abuse of everyone's personal data was as strikingly abhorrent as say, organ theft, Andrew Yang would write the policy to give me a $4.56 USD check while I lay bleeding in a tub of ice.
jakelazaroff 6y ago
I know this is well–meaning but I think it's ultimately misguided. The root issue isn't that people aren't getting paid for their data — it's that their data is commodified in the first place.
- ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
  There is an easy solution to these problems, just flood the social networks with more and more garbage until they become unusable we're making strides to that anyway
- treve 6y ago
  Forcing payment for the data will make some of these business model not work, and I'm all for that. It's not about users receiving a few dollars, it's companies having to pay all them.
baron816 6y ago
Why would you pay for something people are giving you for free? If people are volunteering that information, I think it’s fine to use it to finance the free product they’re getting. I’m totally free to not use Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  I would like you to explain to me how you could avoid using Google given that Google Analytics is present in some 70% of the top 10,000 websites and reCaptcha also has huge penetration.
  - bryan_w 6y ago
    Browse in incognito mode. It shouldn't give GA any tractable info. That's the easiest way without installing a browser plugin, but if you do a 2 second plugin search, you'll find many that block Google and the 1000's of other companies that are tracking you that you don't know about This is completely a technical problem that can be solved in software
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Simple use a DNS that blocks them. It will break many things but nobody said it was free.
- chillacy 6y ago
  > If people are volunteering that information Given the articles and comments I've read in the past year, I don't think a lot of people are exactly thrilled with the exchange. Outside of HN I think there's some feeling of unfairness to see so much money being made off "our data", for better or worse. It's complicated because the data isn't worth much until it's processed and analyzed, and that's where much of the value-add is. But nonetheless unfairness is a very strong emotion.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    > It's complicated because the data isn't worth much until it's processed and analyzed, and that's where much of the value-add is It isn't worth much, per user, even after it's processed and analyzed.
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
It's his right to claim highly valued services for free and then cash compensation for when he uses them. It is also the right of every sensible corporation in the world to forward that audacious claim directly into the trash bin and not entertain it for another moment.
darren0 6y ago
This brings up a concept I never really thought of. Is it better to approach this problem from the perspective of privacy vs ownership. If it is not a tangible asset, ownership seems tricky. It's like IP law. Do you really own the observation of your behavior?
torresjrjr 6y ago
The fediverse is already here and more or less offered a working solution to aggregated data abuse. Fediverse instances are mostly crowd-funded, the software is typically open source, and there are no direct paths to placing ads, which disincentivises data collection or selling. The only attack vectors are web scraping, really. It's just a matter of educating the (boomer and zoomer) public, that "official companies" with proprietary services aren't the only legitimate platforms, and that the actual internet isn't 5 websites, but millions of interoperable and bustling websites and fediverse instances. https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ (recomended) https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/ https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/ and many more.
gentleman11 6y ago
This is a mistaken approach. The problem with data harvesting is the threat to future human freedom, not an injustice about paying people fairly
- pphysch 6y ago
  Economic inequality and freedom are closely linked
  - gentleman11 6y ago
    Having a few extra dollars a month doesn’t prevent the government from punishing you for doing something they don’t like. For example, Hong Kong is relatively wealthy compared to the rest of China, but participating a protest in Hong Kong can still lead to jail time (or far worse now). Paying them a few dollars for their data does nothing for them but potentially let them take one extra day off work per year to protest, although with the censorship and monitoring that China does, is that safe?
kashfi 6y ago
... Anyone else having issues verifying their phone? I've never had such a buggy experience verifying my phone. It seems like after you complete the application, the green submit button, as well as the text fields in the following sequences, are buggy -- single click doesn't seem to pick up the action, double click seems to upset it, tab into the button to press Enter doesn't work. This is all via Chrome.
AlexandrB 6y ago
What I'd like to see come out of this is some way to evaluate the value of data collected so that it can be compared year-to-year. One reason the antitrust argument is hard to make is that the average Facebook user pays nothing and it's hard to argue that, for example, Facebook's monopolistic behaviour is harming the consumer. If we could track the "cost" to the consumer in terms of the value of data collected and observe an increase over time it would lend credence to a case for antitrust action.
angel_j 6y ago
An incentive for people to post a greater volume of shit to the web than they do already? I approve this acceleration toward total data anarchy.
aabbcc1241 6y ago
Beside the few penny, I want diversity of internet back ...
pdonis 6y ago
I don't want to get paid for letting big tech use my data. I want big tech to not use my data in the first place.
kazinator 6y ago
Being paid means nothing if you don't have the power to negotiate, and declare it "not for sale".
- aeternum 6y ago
  A system that allows you to be the broker of your data really seems like the right way to go. Similar to app permissions, users could choose which aspects of their data/profile to share with each company. The data could then be accessed via a federated API. With this in place, you could make it illegal for companies to store any PII themselves. Of course whoever controls that central user repo would have great power.
maerF0x0 6y ago
This seems to be an area full of quandries. If data is your property, then you can sell it to someone else permanently without royalty. Expect to see signup forms that say your first month of SaaS app is $0.01 and you will receive a credit for $0.01 for selling your data to them. If data is Intellectual Property subject to royalty like other intellectual property (say, stock photos for example) then you can assign away the royalties and we can expect it to be assigned away in the signup form or EULA. If data is a form of labor it will be subject to minimum wage laws and other employment law. If data is intrinsic to the individual it cannot be sold or reassigned (like i cannot sell or reassign my other human rights).
transitivebs 6y ago
It's ironic that they require you to input "as many of your emails as possible" in order to fight on your behalf. Fighting fire with fire, I guess? Seems wrong though...
- oneplane 6y ago
  It's more ironic that they apparently can't be trusted with data because they geoblock GDPR-countries which you would only do if you know ahead of time that you can't deliver your website without datamining your visitors.
ngngngng 6y ago
I wish Facebook didn't exist. The sad truth is that if I delete my Facebook there are a couple hundred people I would never hear from again. Countless community events I would never be invited to because Facebook is all anyone uses to get the word out around here.
mizay7 6y ago
Yeh, this seems backwards, the users pay the companies for free products with their data and their attention. That's the business model. Why would Facebook and Google run those servers if they couldn't have profitably targeted ads. If you want privacy honoring products you want the users to pay money for the service.
- luisvictoria 6y ago
  This argument makes perfect sense, the problem starts when companies like Facebook start tracking individuals who do not use their services.
  - mizay7 6y ago
    Agreed, and that should be illegal. Having companies pay for data of non-users as part of Yang's proposal doesn't change anything.
sohamsankaran 6y ago
In a weird way, this would be a regressive policy -- the data of the richest people is worth orders of magnitude more, so this would just make the rich, well, richer. Increasing corporate tax rates would help the poor much more.
- redisman 6y ago
  This sounds wrong. The value of data is in the massive amount of datapoints. If I had a data company I would always pick the large masses and discard the outliers if given the choice.
  - sohamsankaran 6y ago
    If you want to target ads, which is where the majority of the money in 'data' comes from, personal data about rich people that helps target ads to them is a lot more valuable than personal data about poor people.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Really depends how you measure the value of data. Rich people being served ads is more valuable, but the targeting algorithms probably churn on all the data at large. I imagine given Yang's history he'd argue for the latter and cut a flat fee to everyone like they do in Alaska for oil.
andyshi 6y ago
How about profit sharing. If you make money by selling my data, I should get a cut.
jszymborski 6y ago
There are too many perverse incentives here. You end up with the most vulnerable people further their vulnerability. What we really need is a data tax. The more data you collect, the more taxes you need to pay. You can even index it against company income and have a lower data tax bracket for small start-ups and a higher data tax bracket for large orgs. User data needs to be treated as a liability, not an asset.
- drivebycomment 6y ago
  I think this is the right framing. Treat user data like pollution. If you leak it or accidentally share with others, put a big enough fine. Have strict rules around safe procedures and handling of the data, and sanction companies for violating them. Make the cost of keeping data high enough that they would stop frivolous collections.
sub7 6y ago
This is the kind of bullshit solution that results in class action lawsuits paying millions of people $5 each (only the lawyers win) A better idea would be to give each user equity in the company. An even better idea would be give that equity voting rights. Side benefit: platforms would have to KYC human beings and we'd kill off a lot of bots and other generated horseshit.
monadic2 6y ago
I’d be much more comfortable if I could pay Big Tech to not share my data.
- nisten 6y ago
  Me too, in exchange for a product I don't want to be confined to a form of payment which only allows one to give away rights to their data in exchange for the product. I'd like the legal right to always be shown the option to pay money instead.
dang 6y ago
The project site was also posted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599774), but we merged those comments hither because people were complaining that they couldn't view that page.
lucasb9 6y ago
The online "user data" business model is identical to the highway, or the magazine, or the mall, or the airport business model. You create traffic by providing access at or below cost, and make money by selling ads to all the traffic you create. Should highways, airports or magazines pay users money from the revenue they generate by selling ads around their high traffic properties? Another consideration is about the proportion of an ad's cost that can be attributable to the data these companies have, which depends on the degree to which the ad is targeted or not. For example, are keyword-tied search ads and the money Google makes from them related at all to any data they may have on you? Furthermore, any attempt to account for the "price" of used data (basically just something to id you online) should be matched by a valuation of the true value this companies offer in compensation. In the case of google: what's the value to users from having fast, accurate search; petabytes upon petabytes of free content (from the mundane to the educational) on youtube ($5 - $9/mo if you go by Disney+/Netflix prices); and entire office suite ($5 - $12/mo looking at many SaaS/Office 365) kept up to date; a quality email client ($99/yr for Hey); a free OS for your phone and computer (Android/Chromebooks); a high quality global mapping service w/ turn-by-turn GPS ($300 devices back in the day?); a Calendar ($3 - $9/mo looking at competitors), 15GB of cloud storage; unlimited storage for all your photos in the cloud (say the average user has 50Gb of photos, thats $3 - $9/mo).... and I could go on. In the case of Facebook I believe there is genuine value in having a directory of all your friends/acquaintances/family, and a repository for memories either there or on instagram. I see the techlash and policies like this data-dividend as a very natural impulse from society to get a spoonfull from the honeypot these companies created. Just because it is natural doesn't mean it is right. Our economic model is premised on the idea that the fruits of your labor/property/ideas are yours to keep, however spectacular they may be. Keep in mind that this policy does nothing to change the way this companies operate, or question their overall effects on society.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  The analogy between online ads and highway is very weak. #1 highway is essential, they provide transport. Online ads on the other hand, is not. In the sense that most ads are for arousing consumerism impulse. (No I am not arguing ads is wrong or something, I was saying if they are not as essential ad highway) #2 highway is physical and does not infringe privacy. Online ads are virtual, and blindly intrusive to privacy. #3 highway is regulated as infrastructure, internet ads companies are not. And they are ferociously resisting being treated as infrastructure.
_curious_ 6y ago
"We are asking you to sign a written authorization giving DDP the authority to act as your authorized agent to exercise your legal rights under the CCPA." OK, so first question - what is this DDP entity? A "movement" doesn't tell me who or what entity I am assigning agency to, endorsing, giving money to, etc. The article omits this key piece of information and nor does the website disclose on a cursory glance! Is it a gov org? nonprofit, for profit, coop, other? And equally important: who legally runs/owns it? Am I missing the obvious here?! Without a clear and upfront answer to the basics here, I would not recommend anyone blindly engage with / opt into anything like this regardless of whose brainchild it is.
m0zg 6y ago
Instead of the lunatic, "lead balloon" BS like this (or UBI, for that matter), I'd rather someone worked on requiring US websites to honor "do not track" by law. Right now there's this idiotic arms race where browser vendors (other than Google, of course) are baking in more and more anti-tracking, and adtech companies are piling on more and more sophisticated tracking on the other end. Because the problem is asymmetrical, tracking always beats anti-tracking. Ideally, I'd like to have a switch that would just disable tracking on everything, and if I find out I'm still being tracked, I need to be able to sue. The whole tracking bullshit will solve itself in no time at all. And no, GDPR cookie warnings are basically deliberate sabotage of this idea, because presented with an option with lots of text the user always clicks "yes".
- oneplane 6y ago
  GDPR doesn't say you have to 'warn' for 'cookies' but that you have to ask consent for data processing before doing it and you can't deny people if they don't want that. If you happen to use a cookie to track a user for data processing then you may pop up a cookie-specific message. In the end what needs to happen is exactly what GDPR is made for: don't grab people's data and track them unless they say it is OK to do so.
jordache 6y ago
your individual data is worth nothing alone. When aggregated with great many others, it then means something.
popcornarsonist 6y ago
> The project’s signup form asks for people to put in all of the email addresses they use online to help identify how many platforms are currently profiting off of an individual’s data. It also asks for users to provide their PayPal information so any money that could eventually be gained from platforms could be deposited directly into a user’s account. This seems like a wild thing to be asking for at this stage in the project.
hypewatch 6y ago
This sounds like an enforcement nightmare. It’s a nice idea, but how would it actually work? So we would get some sort of commission from Instagram for every ad we view. And the government will need to track this for every Californian, then divvy up a couple dollars per person each year. I know there are some Yang fans on HN and I don’t want to get too political here but his ideas are too oversimplified, from the $1k UBI thing to this they feel like the left’s version of “build a wall”. They’re simple ideas that are great for social media attention but ultimately oversimplify an inherently complex problem. Again, I’m not trying to make a political argument either way here, just pointing out how social media seems to incentivize our leaders to oversimplify policy ideas.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  > This sounds like an enforcement nightmare. It’s a nice idea, but how would it actually work? The same way anything works. The largest players write the regulations, stand up a new regulatory body, require anyone that can be remotely considered a data collector or warehouse or whatever term they come up with to 'pre-certify' their operation at a 6 or 7 figure sum to crowd out any upstart players.
happy-dude 6y ago
The information provided in this article is sparse; Yang discusses the vision of where this project was probably inspired by in his "Yang Speaks" podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNCVHcZp5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNCVHcZp5s episode w/ Jaron Lanier (re: data unions, brokers, etc.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WuwG_fYJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WuwG_fYJ4 pre-launch episode Make sure to check out the FAQ and Privacy Policy of the project to get a better grasp of what legal framework and actions they are taking.
nickvincent 6y ago
Hey HN, I wanted to share this very related, but completely unaffiliated and independent initiative I’ve been a part of: https://datadividends.org https://datadividends.org . To quote the website, we’re “an ad-hoc team of scholars and practitioners (without any political affiliation) that formed to answer the questions: What are data dividends? Why should we have them? How should they work? “ Very coincidentally, we just presented on the topic of data dividends at the RadicalxChange conference two days ago (https://www.radicalxchange.org/2020-conference/ https://www.radicalxchange.org/2020-conference/, VODs still processing) and launched a website with a summary of our report yesterday. Was very surprised (and excited) to see this very similarly named project launch today! While we’re very much interested in tackling the same core problem, I think the group agrees with many of the concerns raised in this thread (paychecks will be small, administrative challenges, etc.). We’re also very concerned about the potential for “privacy as a luxury good” and the fact that a data dividend could exacerbate existing inequalities. Our main philosophical difference is that we argue that this discussion should be framed around the idea that the data fueling profitable intelligent technologies is “our data”, not “my data”. As such, our ideas for “disbursing the dividend” are focused on promoting collective benefit, e.g. through programs well-known to reduce inequality, support for "data unions", and new infrastructure to support the sharing of data (and ideally, increase innovation, competition, etc.). Overall, I think increased discussion around this topic is really great!
stjohnswarts 6y ago
What we really need is a new amendment to the Constitution about digital privacy rights, end to surveillance without a warrant, digital documetns are the same as "secures in your papers" from a constitutional perspective, etc. Half measures like Yang's simply won't work.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Perhaps a "digital bill of rights"? > Earlier in his campaign, Yang said that data should be classified as property, and users should have certain rights over how their data is collected and used by tech companies. Yang offers more insight on what these rights would look like in Thursday’s proposal, and he pledges to pass a “Digital Bill of Rights, ensuring ownership of data, control over how it’s used, and compensation for its use” if he is elected president. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964834/andrew-yang-digital-ads-tax-elizabeth-warren-antitrust-tech-facebook-google https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964834/andrew-yang-dig... And for a balance of opinion, a counter-argument on why this might be bad: > Or let's take the central element of yang's proposal, establishing data as a property right and allowing individuals to be compensated for the use of that data if it is used by a big tech company like Google or Facebook when selling to advertisers. This again is a bit of a problem as tech expert Gigi sohn said on this show recently. > Gigi makes a pretty convincing case there that actual ownership of your data could have a lot of problems, while the core underlying concern is more about data privacy. why not just tackle that instead? https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/470719-saagar-enjeti-yangs-plan-to-regulate-big-tech-misses-the-mark https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/470719-saagar-enjeti-yangs...
aaron695 6y ago
So now I'm rewarded with $ for posting more crap people will blindly like? So my data will now be even less about me?
creato 6y ago
Funny, I'd consider it more valuable to me to not give FB my payment info than to accept whatever pittance my data is worth.
nisten 6y ago
A divident, while logically possible, may be practically quite difficult to implement and regulate effectively. Not that we shouldn't try to do it, it'll just be hard. I think there's a simpler way to solve this. This is just an exchange, you're getting a product, and you're giving away to them and all subsequent third parties all the rights to your data in exchange. That's your payment. The problem here is that this is your only form of payment by default for that tier of product and that sucks. In my opinion it should illegal to do that by default without first giving the customer the option to pay in money in exchange that exact same product. And if I'm paying I don't want you sharing my personally identifiable information shared with no analytics, no tracking, no third-party consulting and if you can't pass a security audit or can't figure out how to anonymize/encrypt my information properly, I don't want you accessing it in clear form at all outside your company promises including from your remote employees. I think that's fair. If you're startup and can't afford to pay for a credible audit, then you shouldn't be allowed to even know my first name. You'll have to use a secure and audited intermediary to provide you that in anonymized form and you figure out how to handle on your own.
isoskeles 6y ago
Ironically they’re using CCPA as an excuse to push this. CCPA is supposed to help keep my data more safe. How exactly will my data be more safe upon giving Facebook some of my banking info and government id so I can officially receive payment for my data?
Nasrudith 6y ago
The entire meme of "selling their data" is deeply wrong. They take pains to minimize the leakage - if it was all available they could practically DYI it when targetting customers losing only the hosted ads themselves.
liquid153 6y ago
What a useless policy to spend time on. No one cares except the vocal geeks and if it did go through I’m sure people will be excited to get a $5 check once a month.
- boublepop 6y ago
  Your missing the forest for the trees. Unionizing workers isn’t about everyone getting a penny more because they are organized. It’s about restoring power balance by organizing the many who contribute more than the few. If you get everyone who contribute data to Facebook, google, twitter etc. organized, then you can do a hell of a lot more than just get a couple of dollars for each person. You might even get them to clean up major parts of their act. Because a threat of “tomorrow we will request GDPR removal of all content from 1million users unless you do x” is much more of a threat than #quitfacebook will ever be.
windycity123 6y ago
What is interesting is that in essence, our data is the payment that we make to use facebook, instagram etc.... So if companies are now taxed on data or required to pay people for the right to use their data this would seriously alter incentives which would also change the content that we, the users, have access to. These companies will not have the incentive to provide the same quality content and product as their profits have been slashed. Data is also used not to just send targeted ads but to conduct beta testing and software updates. Without access to free data, Facebook would start charging people for having an account and I'm sure many would rather not do that. This basically got me to thinking about how consumers can get a greater hold of their data without dismantling the relationship between these consumers and online platforms.

369 points by ohjeez 6y ago

I know it might sound like a minor ding, but the signup form doesn't allow apostrophes or accents in the name fields. Many people (myself included) have these in their legal names. I know this is US focused, but for an org that's all about data, this feels like a big oversight. For starters, _most_ data-hoarding websites allow these characters these days, so it's just one more obstacle when trying to match and verify "my" data. I guess let's hope I signed up to every website with the same e-mail address? On a similar note, it also rejected my 5-digit valid zip code as "invalid", so I'm unable to sign up at all.

joshribakoff 6y ago
He tweeted about this as an idea a few days ago. It’s possible this was thrown together in a few days by a junior dev. While I’m all for data privacy, there’s much bigger issues I’m personally focused on, like the fact. Breonna Taylor’s murderers are not in jail. Andrew Yang tweeted that his solution would be to make cops wear pink. This guy is a joke.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Yang jokes around a bunch (and swears a lot in speeches too) but if you listen to his long form interviews he does go into a tremendous amount of depth, more-so than many other politicians do. Andrew Yang talks racism in America with Bakari Sellers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiMfPo0u6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiMfPo0u6U But what can we DO? Six ideas for police reform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gd4nx-dk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gd4nx-dk0
bena 6y ago
This is another reason why I can't understand anyone who works in software of what is generally thought of as "technology" likes Yang. He does not understand. He likes to talk about "MATH". And while the numbers he uses may work out, I wonder how he acquires those numbers in the first place. Also, it often seems like he needs "ENGLISH" more than "MATH". Because "technology" is a meaningless word. A carburetor is technology. A ramp is technology. Just about everything is technology in some fashion. So. We already tax technology, if indirectly, through taxing goods and services. Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services. And then there's the fact that he's now doing the thing he's complaining about: data harvesting. And to top all of that off, the issues you just mentioned. This guy can't even harvest data effectively or efficiently. Or identify people who can. And I'm supposed to trust him to create legislation affecting those companies? Or identify people who can? He has just blatantly demonstrated he does not have those skills.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  > Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services. So for whatever service they offer, we give them data. And extra secondary income from every third party they pass that same data along to. And the risk of first party data breaches. And the risk of data breaches from any other party that gets access. And likely that same data getting scraped by aggregators just from being used. The deal is by no means equal, and we the customer pay dearly. I'm quite happy with the idea of making it expensive to retain any data that's not required by law or explicit operational need.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Yang himself is not really a tech guy (he's an econ grad who became a lawyer, then ran companies and non-profits). But looking at his book and platform, one can't help but notice that it heavily incorporates ideas that are popular in tech circles (UBI, automation, etc). Then on top of that he spends time talking about non-mainstream topics like Ranked Choice Voting, blockchain, etc. Who else talks about these things on the debate stage?
oneplane 6y ago
At least you can access the page. For a data-org that's red flags all over; how can you trust an organisation that can't even be trusted with data?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deegles 6y ago

I think this is a great idea but measures would have to be taken to prevent Hollywood accounting from erasing payouts to consumers. Establishing a value for each data point gathered and an ongoing payout from derived data (e.g. training a machine learning model using your search habits should not mean you get nothing if the original data isn't kept) is crucial. Also, keeping track of all of those payouts would also be a huge burden for even Google, I can't imagine for a small startup. This also needs to be considered so that it doesn't stifle innovation. Some napkin math: assuming 1 billion MAU for Google Search and around $30B in revenue for Q1 2020, that's $30 in revenue per MAU per quarter or around $120/year. This would be before costs of course and represents the ceiling of what they would be able to pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/alphabet-googl-earnings-q1-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/alphabet-googl-earnings-q1-2... https://techjury.net/blog/google-search-statistics/ https://techjury.net/blog/google-search-statistics/

buboard 6y ago

No, not all users andrew. Pay the users that create content that gets popular, not people just for existing. Creating a data trail is not valuable IP. I m actually surprised at the amount of content that people give away to these platforms, even here. A major reason is that there is no legal mechanism for users to directly pay other users. Things like brave attention token are steps in the right direction

awillen 6y ago

I'm all for people controlling their data and being fully informed of how it's being used, but I just don't understand the idea that you should be paid for the data that you give to companies when you choose to use their products. The payment that you get is the products. You don't get a check from Google, but you get to use Google, which is an incredibly useful tool. I like Yang, but I think he's barking up the wrong tree. We should be focused on giving people control over their data and awareness of how it's being used so they can make informed decisions, not insisting they get paid for it.

fragmede 6y ago
By adding payouts into the mix, companies become incentivized to not sell your data if it's not material to them. I go to the store, I buy something. Transaction over. The idea that the store tracks the shit out of me when I'm in the store is creepy enough. I can accept that ship has sailed since I'm in their store. That the store turns around and makes money off of that browsing data so Facebook can sell me ads for products I lingered in front of, is another level entirely. Thus the data dividend forces the store to truly think through wether or not it's worth it to them to the data. For mega-corp retailers like Target or Whole Foods, they may decide it is (though I'd prefer not), and in that case, since it is my data being sold it doesn't seem unreasonable that I should get something from that transaction. (Unlike physical goods, my data, eg home address/email/IP address/etc, doesn't stop being mine just because someone else also has it.)
- qeternity 6y ago
  You’re missing the point: when you go to a store, you hand them cash. When you go to a website, you hand them data, which they turn around and sell for cash. The data you give them is the payment for their product. Why else would Facebook invest billions into free products? I’m not shedding a tear for the mega corps, but people need to understand that companies will charge for products one way or another.
  - maerF0x0 6y ago
    Many people think that "free" is a bad deal given the profits these companies make. Many people would prefer the more transparent pricing of "$5 per month" over the abstract "Whatever we can earn from your data, combined with everyone else's, by any means"

lordgrenville 6y ago

In terms of assessing the value of one individual's data, shouldn't there be some consideration for the fact that it's worth nothing to that person on their own? I can't sell my data on the free market. It's a transaction over an object that has value in only one direction.

dannyw 6y ago
Is that really true? There are "customer research" apps that will offer you small, but non-trivial amounts of money for basically selling your personal information.
- hansvm 6y ago
  It's partially true. You can't sell most of your personal information. E.g., when your name, face, and weight end up in somebody's dataset it'll be because of the "free" social fitness app you used rather than because you were able to directly connect with anyone who cared about that data and work out a reasonable price.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    So you're saying a marketplace hasn't been built yet. That's like saying your car had no value until Uber was built (only taxis have value), or short term rental homes had no value until Airbnb was built (only hotels have value). Your data today has value. It's how you get access to Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc, for the monetary cost of $0.00. That is value, and yes, you can't cash that out to $ _yet_. That's because a marketplace hasn't been built yet, but maybe legislation could create such a market and give consumers a fair shake.
    - hansvm 6y ago
      Kind of. I think we're talking past each other. The ancestor comment said they "can't sell [their] data on the free market," and we contested that statement and each other a bit. Bringing up that a marketplace hasn't been built yet and that the data still has value is somewhat irrelevant to the conversation I thought we were having. FWIW, I agree with you -- a marketplace hasn't been built (not that I'm sure it should be), and our data definitely has value.

kumarm 6y ago

Aren't companies already paying indirectly by providing free service? I am no fan of Facebook but I am using the service free of cost and in return company collects data for targeted advertising. Shouldn't this be more targeted at cable companies which collect a monthly fee and again sell your data? And may be forcing Big Tech to provide a paid alternative which doesn't use data collected?

gnulinux 6y ago
Facebook is also making money off of you by showing you ads. It's a question of how much is enough. Facebook is charging nothing, sure, but what if the value they take from us (our data, our ad attention+clicks) is more valuable than the value they give us (a free social media)?
- reverend_gonzo 6y ago
  Well if what they gave us was more valuable than what they took, they wouldn’t be a very profitable company, would it?
  - beojan 6y ago
    The value of what they provide isn't necessarily it's cost. That's the whole reason we trade. The value of a good is different to different people. If a book is worth £5 to me, and £1 to you, then if I give you £2.50 for the book we've both gained more than we've lost.
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    No the value is decided at the moment of transaction, so that's how companies can accumulate value over transactions that are deemed "fair" by both parties. You can decide go give someone $10 for bunch of apple, and the seller can accumulate value from this. The problem here is that one side of the trade does not fully know the value they provide. When you give $10 for an apple, you know exactly what you give and what you get. When you give $0+"your data"+"your ad view/clicks" for "free Facebook service" it's really really unclear what it is you're giving to Facebook and what it is Facebook is giving you.

Calvin02 6y ago

I foresee tech companies creating paid and non-paid versions of their products. If you don't want your data monetized, please pay $50/month for Google Search, GMail, Maps, and YouTube. If you are okay with the value exchange of ads and free services, then you are opting into a mutually agreed upon arrangement with no compensation.

mc32 6y ago
This would create a weird paradox: Advertisers want people with disposable income. People without much disposable income get really targeted ads (they won’t pay for the privacy). People with disposable income pay for the privacy service and don’t get ads or get poorly targeted ads. It then becomes more like traditional ads that get broadcast to everyone. So the policy shoots itself in the foot.
- cyberlurker 6y ago
  I think you overestimate how much people with disposable income value internet privacy. I'm sure Google has good numbers on this from YouTube premium.
- buboard 6y ago
  Yeah. It s like advertising to poor countries because CPMs are lower there
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  Podcasts already have premium versions without ads. Video streaming (and music streaming though not as much anymore) also have premium versions without ads. I think people are willing to pay for an "ad-free" experience on some services and still see ads elsewhere.
criddell 6y ago
I'm not sure that can work with so many of those services being built on a social graph. You may not want your data monetized, but if you are in the contacts list of somebody else who has opted in, your half of any conversation isn't going to be excluded.

bilal4hmed 6y ago

how much would you pay monthly for Google ? Im paying for Google Storage, Youtube Premium and would like one fee where I dont see any ads at all.

cyberlurker 6y ago
$50 a month for a family plan would be acceptable to me. Side topic: do parents who hand kids iPads to watch YouTube worry about the advertisements? That used to be a concern on regular cable television.
codq 6y ago
About a year and a half ago, the credit card I was using to pay for YouTube Premium expired and for about a day, I was subjected to ads on YT—it was horrifying. Once you go ad-free, it's hard to go back. I'd happily pay for an ad-free version of every service I use. Scott Galloway has been suggesting that Twitter move to a subscription model, with all accounts with less <5000 followers be free, subsidized by a progressive monthly fee for larger accounts based on number of followers above 5000. This would serve dual purpose of eliminating a whole heap of bots and fake accounts, forcing them to be tied to a credit card. With Twitter earning recurring revenue from whales, along with reducing or eliminating personal data aggregation for ad-targeting, I can't see a downside.
- 121789 6y ago
  I'm curious on how the dynamics would change in that system. Frankly I think it would make everything quite a bit worse. I think one of the only benefits of twitter is that it allows organic popularity. Once you add penalties for getting too popular, people will need to make up that cost. What will happen is large accounts will start to advertise in their tweets, essentially defeating the purpose of removing advertising. Plus, you could then weaponize bots against smaller accounts on a large scale
kats 6y ago
There was actual study conducted by the Fed and an MIT prof. They surveyed how much they would have to pay users to stop using these services: For the median US user: $48/month for Facebook, $1,173 for YouTube, and $17,530 for internet search altogether. For a sample of students in Europe: €2.17/month for Snapchat, €1.52 for LinkedIn, €536 for Whatsapp. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/fed-tries-to-figure-out-value-of-free-internet-services-to-americans.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/fed-tries-to-figure-out-valu...

aminozuur 6y ago

Facebook is giving me much more real value than they could ever make from me in dollars.

machinehermit 6y ago
hah love the sarcasm.
- tootie 6y ago
  If it didn't provide value, no one would be using it.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    I'd like to introduce you to an entire field of endeavor called "marketing". Non-industrial diamonds don't provide value, yet people are regularly buying them for ridiculous sums[1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
    - warkdarrior 6y ago
      Diamonds do provide value in non-industrial settings, most commonly as an indicator of a person's appreciation for another person. They are in the same value class as cut flowers, although of course at a different price point.
  - 3131s 6y ago
    Right, that's why I use heroin.
    - tootie 6y ago
      Lots of people consider feeling good to be valuable. Risk to health is part of the cost that people are willing to pay. Same for alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, skydiving.

rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago

In all countries except Iran, the trade of human organs has been made illegal. Organ donation is legal, of course, but under strict regulation to ensure that it's being done ethically for everyone involved. We had good reasons to prohibit the sale of human parts (even if the donor consents to getting paid for the transplantation). Now, we have very good reasons to protect personal data too. Why not forbid the trade of personal data for the same reasons we banned it for our physical parts, and implement strong regulations (GDPR 2.0) to make sure that organizations only access and use our personal data for ethical, commonly-approved purposes?

jerf 6y ago

It doesn't work. There isn't enough money in the data for anyone to care. Your entire data load might be worth $100 a year. The only reason it funds massive industries is cost-effective aggregation by dirt-cheap computer power. I ran the numbers on Facebook a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462402 It comes out that they're making roughly $17/yr in annual revenue per user. Revenue, not profit. Cross checking my numbers against some other sources, it may be now more like $40 or $50/yr. Profits, the thing they could actually afford to share with you, look like maybe $10/year. So, what, Facebook is going to cut me a check for $5 every year? Google sends me another 5-spot, and a few other companies send me a dollar or less? What problem does that solve?

GoodJokes 6y ago
Less money in their hands makes them less powerful and more accountable to users. Lots of people get measly dividends per year for stocks relatively. The shareholder rights are probably equally or more important though in that case.
erentz 6y ago
When I see these breakdowns I think I’d pay $17 per year for Facebook without all of the ads and tracking and data mining and knowing I was just getting a good service optimized for its customers. Why not ban tracking and ad targeting and selling personal data, and force that business model to go extinct, and now they have to start charging for service and their users become actual customers.
- sida 6y ago
  Arguably without the ranking and recommendation, FB is quite boring. The feed is such an integral part of FB.
- asciident 6y ago
  I would not, I'd rather they target me with personalized ads like they are doing now. I hate paying for things, and I imagine neither would 99% of users. Since me and the other 99% of people contribute most of the value to Facebook for you, would you be willing to subsidize the other 99% of people and pay $1700/year?

anjel 6y ago

This would have saved a lot of problems if proposed in 2008. Now that FANG has trillions in the back, if it's not a retroactive dividend, Ill-gotten gains get retained and this is not much more than closing the barn door after the cows are gone.

metalgearsolid3 6y ago

If Facebook's abuse of everyone's personal data was as strikingly abhorrent as say, organ theft, Andrew Yang would write the policy to give me a $4.56 USD check while I lay bleeding in a tub of ice.

jakelazaroff 6y ago

I know this is well–meaning but I think it's ultimately misguided. The root issue isn't that people aren't getting paid for their data — it's that their data is commodified in the first place.

ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
There is an easy solution to these problems, just flood the social networks with more and more garbage until they become unusable we're making strides to that anyway
treve 6y ago
Forcing payment for the data will make some of these business model not work, and I'm all for that. It's not about users receiving a few dollars, it's companies having to pay all them.

baron816 6y ago

Why would you pay for something people are giving you for free? If people are volunteering that information, I think it’s fine to use it to finance the free product they’re getting. I’m totally free to not use Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

AlexandrB 6y ago
I would like you to explain to me how you could avoid using Google given that Google Analytics is present in some 70% of the top 10,000 websites and reCaptcha also has huge penetration.
- bryan_w 6y ago
  Browse in incognito mode. It shouldn't give GA any tractable info. That's the easiest way without installing a browser plugin, but if you do a 2 second plugin search, you'll find many that block Google and the 1000's of other companies that are tracking you that you don't know about This is completely a technical problem that can be solved in software
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Simple use a DNS that blocks them. It will break many things but nobody said it was free.
chillacy 6y ago
> If people are volunteering that information Given the articles and comments I've read in the past year, I don't think a lot of people are exactly thrilled with the exchange. Outside of HN I think there's some feeling of unfairness to see so much money being made off "our data", for better or worse. It's complicated because the data isn't worth much until it's processed and analyzed, and that's where much of the value-add is. But nonetheless unfairness is a very strong emotion.
- balfirevic 6y ago
  > It's complicated because the data isn't worth much until it's processed and analyzed, and that's where much of the value-add is It isn't worth much, per user, even after it's processed and analyzed.

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

It's his right to claim highly valued services for free and then cash compensation for when he uses them. It is also the right of every sensible corporation in the world to forward that audacious claim directly into the trash bin and not entertain it for another moment.

darren0 6y ago

This brings up a concept I never really thought of. Is it better to approach this problem from the perspective of privacy vs ownership. If it is not a tangible asset, ownership seems tricky. It's like IP law. Do you really own the observation of your behavior?

torresjrjr 6y ago

The fediverse is already here and more or less offered a working solution to aggregated data abuse. Fediverse instances are mostly crowd-funded, the software is typically open source, and there are no direct paths to placing ads, which disincentivises data collection or selling. The only attack vectors are web scraping, really. It's just a matter of educating the (boomer and zoomer) public, that "official companies" with proprietary services aren't the only legitimate platforms, and that the actual internet isn't 5 websites, but millions of interoperable and bustling websites and fediverse instances. https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ (recomended) https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/ https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/ and many more.

gentleman11 6y ago

This is a mistaken approach. The problem with data harvesting is the threat to future human freedom, not an injustice about paying people fairly

pphysch 6y ago
Economic inequality and freedom are closely linked
- gentleman11 6y ago
  Having a few extra dollars a month doesn’t prevent the government from punishing you for doing something they don’t like. For example, Hong Kong is relatively wealthy compared to the rest of China, but participating a protest in Hong Kong can still lead to jail time (or far worse now). Paying them a few dollars for their data does nothing for them but potentially let them take one extra day off work per year to protest, although with the censorship and monitoring that China does, is that safe?

kashfi 6y ago

... Anyone else having issues verifying their phone? I've never had such a buggy experience verifying my phone. It seems like after you complete the application, the green submit button, as well as the text fields in the following sequences, are buggy -- single click doesn't seem to pick up the action, double click seems to upset it, tab into the button to press Enter doesn't work. This is all via Chrome.

AlexandrB 6y ago

What I'd like to see come out of this is some way to evaluate the value of data collected so that it can be compared year-to-year. One reason the antitrust argument is hard to make is that the average Facebook user pays nothing and it's hard to argue that, for example, Facebook's monopolistic behaviour is harming the consumer. If we could track the "cost" to the consumer in terms of the value of data collected and observe an increase over time it would lend credence to a case for antitrust action.

angel_j 6y ago

An incentive for people to post a greater volume of shit to the web than they do already? I approve this acceleration toward total data anarchy.

aabbcc1241 6y ago

Beside the few penny, I want diversity of internet back ...

pdonis 6y ago

I don't want to get paid for letting big tech use my data. I want big tech to not use my data in the first place.

kazinator 6y ago

Being paid means nothing if you don't have the power to negotiate, and declare it "not for sale".

aeternum 6y ago
A system that allows you to be the broker of your data really seems like the right way to go. Similar to app permissions, users could choose which aspects of their data/profile to share with each company. The data could then be accessed via a federated API. With this in place, you could make it illegal for companies to store any PII themselves. Of course whoever controls that central user repo would have great power.

maerF0x0 6y ago

This seems to be an area full of quandries. If data is your property, then you can sell it to someone else permanently without royalty. Expect to see signup forms that say your first month of SaaS app is $0.01 and you will receive a credit for $0.01 for selling your data to them. If data is Intellectual Property subject to royalty like other intellectual property (say, stock photos for example) then you can assign away the royalties and we can expect it to be assigned away in the signup form or EULA. If data is a form of labor it will be subject to minimum wage laws and other employment law. If data is intrinsic to the individual it cannot be sold or reassigned (like i cannot sell or reassign my other human rights).

transitivebs 6y ago

It's ironic that they require you to input "as many of your emails as possible" in order to fight on your behalf. Fighting fire with fire, I guess? Seems wrong though...

oneplane 6y ago
It's more ironic that they apparently can't be trusted with data because they geoblock GDPR-countries which you would only do if you know ahead of time that you can't deliver your website without datamining your visitors.

ngngngng 6y ago

I wish Facebook didn't exist. The sad truth is that if I delete my Facebook there are a couple hundred people I would never hear from again. Countless community events I would never be invited to because Facebook is all anyone uses to get the word out around here.

mizay7 6y ago

Yeh, this seems backwards, the users pay the companies for free products with their data and their attention. That's the business model. Why would Facebook and Google run those servers if they couldn't have profitably targeted ads. If you want privacy honoring products you want the users to pay money for the service.

luisvictoria 6y ago
This argument makes perfect sense, the problem starts when companies like Facebook start tracking individuals who do not use their services.
- mizay7 6y ago
  Agreed, and that should be illegal. Having companies pay for data of non-users as part of Yang's proposal doesn't change anything.

sohamsankaran 6y ago

In a weird way, this would be a regressive policy -- the data of the richest people is worth orders of magnitude more, so this would just make the rich, well, richer. Increasing corporate tax rates would help the poor much more.

redisman 6y ago
This sounds wrong. The value of data is in the massive amount of datapoints. If I had a data company I would always pick the large masses and discard the outliers if given the choice.
- sohamsankaran 6y ago
  If you want to target ads, which is where the majority of the money in 'data' comes from, personal data about rich people that helps target ads to them is a lot more valuable than personal data about poor people.
chillacy 6y ago
Really depends how you measure the value of data. Rich people being served ads is more valuable, but the targeting algorithms probably churn on all the data at large. I imagine given Yang's history he'd argue for the latter and cut a flat fee to everyone like they do in Alaska for oil.

andyshi 6y ago

How about profit sharing. If you make money by selling my data, I should get a cut.

jszymborski 6y ago

There are too many perverse incentives here. You end up with the most vulnerable people further their vulnerability. What we really need is a data tax. The more data you collect, the more taxes you need to pay. You can even index it against company income and have a lower data tax bracket for small start-ups and a higher data tax bracket for large orgs. User data needs to be treated as a liability, not an asset.

drivebycomment 6y ago
I think this is the right framing. Treat user data like pollution. If you leak it or accidentally share with others, put a big enough fine. Have strict rules around safe procedures and handling of the data, and sanction companies for violating them. Make the cost of keeping data high enough that they would stop frivolous collections.

sub7 6y ago

This is the kind of bullshit solution that results in class action lawsuits paying millions of people $5 each (only the lawyers win) A better idea would be to give each user equity in the company. An even better idea would be give that equity voting rights. Side benefit: platforms would have to KYC human beings and we'd kill off a lot of bots and other generated horseshit.

monadic2 6y ago

I’d be much more comfortable if I could pay Big Tech to not share my data.

nisten 6y ago
Me too, in exchange for a product I don't want to be confined to a form of payment which only allows one to give away rights to their data in exchange for the product. I'd like the legal right to always be shown the option to pay money instead.

dang 6y ago

The project site was also posted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599774), but we merged those comments hither because people were complaining that they couldn't view that page.

lucasb9 6y ago

The online "user data" business model is identical to the highway, or the magazine, or the mall, or the airport business model. You create traffic by providing access at or below cost, and make money by selling ads to all the traffic you create. Should highways, airports or magazines pay users money from the revenue they generate by selling ads around their high traffic properties? Another consideration is about the proportion of an ad's cost that can be attributable to the data these companies have, which depends on the degree to which the ad is targeted or not. For example, are keyword-tied search ads and the money Google makes from them related at all to any data they may have on you? Furthermore, any attempt to account for the "price" of used data (basically just something to id you online) should be matched by a valuation of the true value this companies offer in compensation. In the case of google: what's the value to users from having fast, accurate search; petabytes upon petabytes of free content (from the mundane to the educational) on youtube ($5 - $9/mo if you go by Disney+/Netflix prices); and entire office suite ($5 - $12/mo looking at many SaaS/Office 365) kept up to date; a quality email client ($99/yr for Hey); a free OS for your phone and computer (Android/Chromebooks); a high quality global mapping service w/ turn-by-turn GPS ($300 devices back in the day?); a Calendar ($3 - $9/mo looking at competitors), 15GB of cloud storage; unlimited storage for all your photos in the cloud (say the average user has 50Gb of photos, thats $3 - $9/mo).... and I could go on. In the case of Facebook I believe there is genuine value in having a directory of all your friends/acquaintances/family, and a repository for memories either there or on instagram. I see the techlash and policies like this data-dividend as a very natural impulse from society to get a spoonfull from the honeypot these companies created. Just because it is natural doesn't mean it is right. Our economic model is premised on the idea that the fruits of your labor/property/ideas are yours to keep, however spectacular they may be. Keep in mind that this policy does nothing to change the way this companies operate, or question their overall effects on society.

justicezyx 6y ago
The analogy between online ads and highway is very weak. #1 highway is essential, they provide transport. Online ads on the other hand, is not. In the sense that most ads are for arousing consumerism impulse. (No I am not arguing ads is wrong or something, I was saying if they are not as essential ad highway) #2 highway is physical and does not infringe privacy. Online ads are virtual, and blindly intrusive to privacy. #3 highway is regulated as infrastructure, internet ads companies are not. And they are ferociously resisting being treated as infrastructure.

_curious_ 6y ago

"We are asking you to sign a written authorization giving DDP the authority to act as your authorized agent to exercise your legal rights under the CCPA." OK, so first question - what is this DDP entity? A "movement" doesn't tell me who or what entity I am assigning agency to, endorsing, giving money to, etc. The article omits this key piece of information and nor does the website disclose on a cursory glance! Is it a gov org? nonprofit, for profit, coop, other? And equally important: who legally runs/owns it? Am I missing the obvious here?! Without a clear and upfront answer to the basics here, I would not recommend anyone blindly engage with / opt into anything like this regardless of whose brainchild it is.

m0zg 6y ago

Instead of the lunatic, "lead balloon" BS like this (or UBI, for that matter), I'd rather someone worked on requiring US websites to honor "do not track" by law. Right now there's this idiotic arms race where browser vendors (other than Google, of course) are baking in more and more anti-tracking, and adtech companies are piling on more and more sophisticated tracking on the other end. Because the problem is asymmetrical, tracking always beats anti-tracking. Ideally, I'd like to have a switch that would just disable tracking on everything, and if I find out I'm still being tracked, I need to be able to sue. The whole tracking bullshit will solve itself in no time at all. And no, GDPR cookie warnings are basically deliberate sabotage of this idea, because presented with an option with lots of text the user always clicks "yes".

oneplane 6y ago
GDPR doesn't say you have to 'warn' for 'cookies' but that you have to ask consent for data processing before doing it and you can't deny people if they don't want that. If you happen to use a cookie to track a user for data processing then you may pop up a cookie-specific message. In the end what needs to happen is exactly what GDPR is made for: don't grab people's data and track them unless they say it is OK to do so.

jordache 6y ago

your individual data is worth nothing alone. When aggregated with great many others, it then means something.

popcornarsonist 6y ago

> The project’s signup form asks for people to put in all of the email addresses they use online to help identify how many platforms are currently profiting off of an individual’s data. It also asks for users to provide their PayPal information so any money that could eventually be gained from platforms could be deposited directly into a user’s account. This seems like a wild thing to be asking for at this stage in the project.

hypewatch 6y ago

This sounds like an enforcement nightmare. It’s a nice idea, but how would it actually work? So we would get some sort of commission from Instagram for every ad we view. And the government will need to track this for every Californian, then divvy up a couple dollars per person each year. I know there are some Yang fans on HN and I don’t want to get too political here but his ideas are too oversimplified, from the $1k UBI thing to this they feel like the left’s version of “build a wall”. They’re simple ideas that are great for social media attention but ultimately oversimplify an inherently complex problem. Again, I’m not trying to make a political argument either way here, just pointing out how social media seems to incentivize our leaders to oversimplify policy ideas.

linuxftw 6y ago
> This sounds like an enforcement nightmare. It’s a nice idea, but how would it actually work? The same way anything works. The largest players write the regulations, stand up a new regulatory body, require anyone that can be remotely considered a data collector or warehouse or whatever term they come up with to 'pre-certify' their operation at a 6 or 7 figure sum to crowd out any upstart players.

happy-dude 6y ago

The information provided in this article is sparse; Yang discusses the vision of where this project was probably inspired by in his "Yang Speaks" podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNCVHcZp5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNCVHcZp5s episode w/ Jaron Lanier (re: data unions, brokers, etc.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WuwG_fYJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WuwG_fYJ4 pre-launch episode Make sure to check out the FAQ and Privacy Policy of the project to get a better grasp of what legal framework and actions they are taking.

nickvincent 6y ago

Hey HN, I wanted to share this very related, but completely unaffiliated and independent initiative I’ve been a part of: https://datadividends.org https://datadividends.org . To quote the website, we’re “an ad-hoc team of scholars and practitioners (without any political affiliation) that formed to answer the questions: What are data dividends? Why should we have them? How should they work? “ Very coincidentally, we just presented on the topic of data dividends at the RadicalxChange conference two days ago (https://www.radicalxchange.org/2020-conference/ https://www.radicalxchange.org/2020-conference/, VODs still processing) and launched a website with a summary of our report yesterday. Was very surprised (and excited) to see this very similarly named project launch today! While we’re very much interested in tackling the same core problem, I think the group agrees with many of the concerns raised in this thread (paychecks will be small, administrative challenges, etc.). We’re also very concerned about the potential for “privacy as a luxury good” and the fact that a data dividend could exacerbate existing inequalities. Our main philosophical difference is that we argue that this discussion should be framed around the idea that the data fueling profitable intelligent technologies is “our data”, not “my data”. As such, our ideas for “disbursing the dividend” are focused on promoting collective benefit, e.g. through programs well-known to reduce inequality, support for "data unions", and new infrastructure to support the sharing of data (and ideally, increase innovation, competition, etc.). Overall, I think increased discussion around this topic is really great!

stjohnswarts 6y ago

What we really need is a new amendment to the Constitution about digital privacy rights, end to surveillance without a warrant, digital documetns are the same as "secures in your papers" from a constitutional perspective, etc. Half measures like Yang's simply won't work.

chillacy 6y ago
Perhaps a "digital bill of rights"? > Earlier in his campaign, Yang said that data should be classified as property, and users should have certain rights over how their data is collected and used by tech companies. Yang offers more insight on what these rights would look like in Thursday’s proposal, and he pledges to pass a “Digital Bill of Rights, ensuring ownership of data, control over how it’s used, and compensation for its use” if he is elected president. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964834/andrew-yang-digital-ads-tax-elizabeth-warren-antitrust-tech-facebook-google https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964834/andrew-yang-dig... And for a balance of opinion, a counter-argument on why this might be bad: > Or let's take the central element of yang's proposal, establishing data as a property right and allowing individuals to be compensated for the use of that data if it is used by a big tech company like Google or Facebook when selling to advertisers. This again is a bit of a problem as tech expert Gigi sohn said on this show recently. > Gigi makes a pretty convincing case there that actual ownership of your data could have a lot of problems, while the core underlying concern is more about data privacy. why not just tackle that instead? https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/470719-saagar-enjeti-yangs-plan-to-regulate-big-tech-misses-the-mark https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/470719-saagar-enjeti-yangs...

aaron695 6y ago

So now I'm rewarded with $ for posting more crap people will blindly like? So my data will now be even less about me?

creato 6y ago

Funny, I'd consider it more valuable to me to not give FB my payment info than to accept whatever pittance my data is worth.

nisten 6y ago

A divident, while logically possible, may be practically quite difficult to implement and regulate effectively. Not that we shouldn't try to do it, it'll just be hard. I think there's a simpler way to solve this. This is just an exchange, you're getting a product, and you're giving away to them and all subsequent third parties all the rights to your data in exchange. That's your payment. The problem here is that this is your only form of payment by default for that tier of product and that sucks. In my opinion it should illegal to do that by default without first giving the customer the option to pay in money in exchange that exact same product. And if I'm paying I don't want you sharing my personally identifiable information shared with no analytics, no tracking, no third-party consulting and if you can't pass a security audit or can't figure out how to anonymize/encrypt my information properly, I don't want you accessing it in clear form at all outside your company promises including from your remote employees. I think that's fair. If you're startup and can't afford to pay for a credible audit, then you shouldn't be allowed to even know my first name. You'll have to use a secure and audited intermediary to provide you that in anonymized form and you figure out how to handle on your own.

isoskeles 6y ago

Ironically they’re using CCPA as an excuse to push this. CCPA is supposed to help keep my data more safe. How exactly will my data be more safe upon giving Facebook some of my banking info and government id so I can officially receive payment for my data?

Nasrudith 6y ago

The entire meme of "selling their data" is deeply wrong. They take pains to minimize the leakage - if it was all available they could practically DYI it when targetting customers losing only the hosted ads themselves.

liquid153 6y ago

What a useless policy to spend time on. No one cares except the vocal geeks and if it did go through I’m sure people will be excited to get a $5 check once a month.

boublepop 6y ago
Your missing the forest for the trees. Unionizing workers isn’t about everyone getting a penny more because they are organized. It’s about restoring power balance by organizing the many who contribute more than the few. If you get everyone who contribute data to Facebook, google, twitter etc. organized, then you can do a hell of a lot more than just get a couple of dollars for each person. You might even get them to clean up major parts of their act. Because a threat of “tomorrow we will request GDPR removal of all content from 1million users unless you do x” is much more of a threat than #quitfacebook will ever be.

windycity123 6y ago

What is interesting is that in essence, our data is the payment that we make to use facebook, instagram etc.... So if companies are now taxed on data or required to pay people for the right to use their data this would seriously alter incentives which would also change the content that we, the users, have access to. These companies will not have the incentive to provide the same quality content and product as their profits have been slashed. Data is also used not to just send targeted ads but to conduct beta testing and software updates. Without access to free data, Facebook would start charging people for having an account and I'm sure many would rather not do that. This basically got me to thinking about how consumers can get a greater hold of their data without dismantling the relationship between these consumers and online platforms.