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> $17/yr in annual revenue per user Revenue per user is a very misleading way to evaluate the value when talking about a hyper-global operation. It is as usefu

> $17/yr in annual revenue per user Revenue per user is a very misleading way to evaluate the value when talking about a hyper-global operation. It is as useful as averaging the global price of a loaf of bread, which would be priced as $2-3 in the US but a few cents in a third world country. This is very applicable to ad revenue because ultimately ads are capturing the pricing levels of real economy, and bulk of the facebook users are not from high GDP nations. > Your entire data load might be worth $100 a year This is a very simplistic way to think about data. In fact, calling it data itself is misleading. Because it all boils down to how the data is operationalized and made into information and knowledge about you when the business is interacting with you. Same demographic data is worth separately for selling you ads, driving product development to increase usage, price discriminating against you while buying airplane tickets, selling you insurance, influencing your vote etc. Another way data is not a static, lifeless entity is something people often forget, it is the power of an SQL join. Joining table-a and table-b yields information neither of the tables had alone. So there will always be more a potential of rendering the existing data more valuable (more information yielding) by joining it with a marginal amount of new data. In sum, data doesn't have a static value, and I don't think we have seen the end of ways it could be utilized against users yet. > It doesn't work. To my knowledge, we don't have empirical data that shows it doesn't yet.

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jerf 6y ago
"Revenue per user is a very misleading way to evaluate the value when talking about a hyper-global operation." It doesn't matter, because there's no way to torture the data until "the amount of money that Facebook can afford to remit to its users for giving them their data" is going to be anything significant. They can't afford anything "per user" or any significant number of users. If it were, say, $500 dollars a year, and we were arguing about whether we were an order of magnitude low or high, it might matter, because the difference between $50/yr and $5000/year is pretty significant. But you're never going to get so much as "Facebook can pay most users $15/month for their data" let alone anything worth it to anybody. Also, I've seen people hypothesize about these other values that this data might bring before, but bear in mind I'm operating my analysis based on Facebook overall revenue. There is no hypothetical 10x or 100x amount of value sitting around in the data, which we know, because otherwise Facebook would be collecting some significant amount of the value and it would be showing up in their revenue. The fact I'm basing this sort of analysis on revenue rather than profit is already an ENORMOUS concession to the idea, just staggeringly huge, and even with that concession it's a couple of orders of magnitude away from making sense. If you think there's some huge untapped source of revenue here that might make the idea work, show it to me. Show me the company and their revenue. There's Google, and then it falls off a cliff.
- dTal 6y ago
  Seems like this is putting the cart before the horse. Why should we care what Facebook can and can't afford? We don't owe them a business model. The point of this is to remit to the user the value that has been extracted from them. If Facebook cannot make money, i.e. contribute value, on top of that, then they are actually a drain on society surviving off negative externalities and should go. Deciding how much a user's data is worth is an exercise for the reader, but I would certainly pay much more to avoid Facebook, than Facebook would pay to have me[0]. That's a red flag. [0] - as would anyone who has ever added a Facebook domain to a Pi-Hole, the total cost of which likely exceeds Facebook's per-user revenue by your numbers.
  - TuringNYC 6y ago
    How would this work for, say, Google. Say they cut users a check and their business model no longer worked. Would they then charge for searches? Would users have the option to keep free searches in lieu of a payment?
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Yes right now it's just assumed your value, your cost, their value, and their cost all balance out. But let's slap some numbers and everything and actually see if it does. If we have the option to pay up front, or sell off my data and maybe end up in the red or black. It will all be very complex in the end, but that's just exposing the inherent complexity that already exists and is just papered over.
      - yibg 6y ago
        What number would that be though? Any number is going to be made up and subjective based on the individual. I might day my data is worth $1000 a year while it’s worth $1 to you.
        TuringNYC 6y ago
        If there is a pay option, you could just pay for searches. You set the price threshold by choosing to pay a la carte (or not.)

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jerf 6y ago

"Revenue per user is a very misleading way to evaluate the value when talking about a hyper-global operation." It doesn't matter, because there's no way to torture the data until "the amount of money that Facebook can afford to remit to its users for giving them their data" is going to be anything significant. They can't afford anything "per user" or any significant number of users. If it were, say, $500 dollars a year, and we were arguing about whether we were an order of magnitude low or high, it might matter, because the difference between $50/yr and $5000/year is pretty significant. But you're never going to get so much as "Facebook can pay most users $15/month for their data" let alone anything worth it to anybody. Also, I've seen people hypothesize about these other values that this data might bring before, but bear in mind I'm operating my analysis based on Facebook overall revenue. There is no hypothetical 10x or 100x amount of value sitting around in the data, which we know, because otherwise Facebook would be collecting some significant amount of the value and it would be showing up in their revenue. The fact I'm basing this sort of analysis on revenue rather than profit is already an ENORMOUS concession to the idea, just staggeringly huge, and even with that concession it's a couple of orders of magnitude away from making sense. If you think there's some huge untapped source of revenue here that might make the idea work, show it to me. Show me the company and their revenue. There's Google, and then it falls off a cliff.

dTal 6y ago
Seems like this is putting the cart before the horse. Why should we care what Facebook can and can't afford? We don't owe them a business model. The point of this is to remit to the user the value that has been extracted from them. If Facebook cannot make money, i.e. contribute value, on top of that, then they are actually a drain on society surviving off negative externalities and should go. Deciding how much a user's data is worth is an exercise for the reader, but I would certainly pay much more to avoid Facebook, than Facebook would pay to have me[0]. That's a red flag. [0] - as would anyone who has ever added a Facebook domain to a Pi-Hole, the total cost of which likely exceeds Facebook's per-user revenue by your numbers.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  How would this work for, say, Google. Say they cut users a check and their business model no longer worked. Would they then charge for searches? Would users have the option to keep free searches in lieu of a payment?
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Yes right now it's just assumed your value, your cost, their value, and their cost all balance out. But let's slap some numbers and everything and actually see if it does. If we have the option to pay up front, or sell off my data and maybe end up in the red or black. It will all be very complex in the end, but that's just exposing the inherent complexity that already exists and is just papered over.
    - yibg 6y ago
      What number would that be though? Any number is going to be made up and subjective based on the individual. I might day my data is worth $1000 a year while it’s worth $1 to you.
      - TuringNYC 6y ago
        If there is a pay option, you could just pay for searches. You set the price threshold by choosing to pay a la carte (or not.)