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I keep coming back to my default idea here - that PII needs to be seen as legally owned by me and only licensed to others for use. The default legal framework

I keep coming back to my default idea here - that PII needs to be seen as legally owned by me and only licensed to others for use. The default legal framework should include medical / epidemiology research as freely licensed and commercial use as ... well let's just say i think my license conditions will be expensive. If an advertising channel then shows ads that breach license they are liable. A fairly simple licensing process will come into play and we can find new ways to fund things Edit: Yes i do get a lot of the issues around regulation of tech - it's almost like saying regulation of every day life which is really broad. And the different bodies and approaches will also need to be broad. But i am a believer in markets and individual decision making and i also believe that personal information has in the past few years become a genuine new ... commodity? And we need to raise that commodity into visibility - to be able to put prices on it openly. Maybe it won't work, maybe privacy is like a human right and can only be dealt with at that level - but i don't think so - privacy to me seems ephemeral and usually poorly defined. Longer discussion to be had

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
If you're a US citizen with a Facebook account, your value for Facebook is about $ 200 per year. That's the average, including children, seniors, etc. If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much. If you want to use Facebook without targeted advertising, you need to either convince them that they don't need all that money, or pay it yourself. And that's just Facebook. In other words: the internet economy without targeted ads will be a very different place. Facebook will survive. imgurl / snopes / fivethirtyeight? Unlikely...
- UweSchmidt 6y ago
  Worth noting that the $200 ultimately come from our pockets. We are paying those $200 anyway through markups on products ads made us buy.
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    Isn't the 200 bucks more a way for FB sellers to get your money instead of other shops?
    - names_are_hard 6y ago
      No, because it's $200 on top of what you would otherwise spend on the stuff you buy. The cost of marketing has to get baked into the price of goods or the sellers would be losing money. If they weren't advertising, or could advertise for less, they'd be able to lower prices.
      - tangjurine 6y ago
        Advertising can lower the cost per item, if there was a large startup cost and marginal costs are small. More importantly, facebook ads have caused me to buy more things because the ads showed me things that I thought were useful that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Honestly, I feel like maybe I should be paying to see FBs ads sometimes.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    I would love to see a correlation score between profiles and purchases
  - names_are_hard 6y ago
    Not necessarily. I don't know what percentage of advertising revenue is from political advertising, but that's money that Facebook makes off of you that doesn't come out of your pocket. Essentially any time you're shown an ad that aims to convince you to support some idea, or vote for something, or change your behavior in some way (like going vegan) instead of trying to get you go spend money, you provide value to Facebook that doesn't come out of your pocket. I suspect that this is a lot of the value of "the next billion". Why bring Facebook to people who have little disposable income? Because there are still ad buyers who will pay to reach those audiences if they have votes to give, or even just public support for some cause or another.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  >If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much. I wouldn't be surprised if it's much more than that. Most businesses sales follow the Pareto principle, 80% of their revenue comes from 20% of their customers.
- pjc50 6y ago
  "Without ads" and "without targeted ads" are different things. There's an "ad-centrist" view whereby adverts should be OK so long as they're chosen to go with the content on the page and the community that the site aims at - you know, like all newspapers and magazines used to do. I'm not sure how imgurl survives given the abuse workload; there is an inevitable death spiral of image hosting sites as they get cluttered by more and more adverts of worse and worse quality. Stackexchange handles this very differently, too.
- pradn 6y ago
  And what about all the sales that are made through Facebook ads? They support millions of jobs around the world. A less efficient ad machine would mean worse sales or higher marketing costs or both. Some of this excess goes directly to profits, but a good chunk of it supports employment. Imagine if we got rid of all advertising and what that would do to demand. I know the discussion here is centered on targeted ads, but I think there would be significant economic effects if their incidence was decreased. The global consumer economy runs on all these extra desires created by ads, and ads do fulfil the function of informing customers. If I have to see ads (and I really don't), I'm not against tracking ads per se, but the long-term storage of them. Given current technology and governance, there's not a way to separate these two. In any case, there's significant economic effects to stopping tracking ads.
- bogwog 6y ago
  > If you want to use Facebook without targeted advertising, you need to either convince them that they don't need all that money, or pay it yourself. And that's just Facebook. I hate this argument. It's tries to find a solution to sustain the status quo in the face of change. But that's illogical because if there is a change, then the status quo is going to change too. The only way Facebook is going to stop doing targeted advertising is if they're forced to, likely due to new regulations. If that happens, Facebook's entire business model will collapse, so they'll either have to make massive fundamental changes to how they make money, or they'll die and be taken over by a competitor. In either case, users don't "owe" Facebook anything. Consumers are the life blood of the economy, and thinking about how consumers should change their behaviors to sustain a corporation is backwards thinking.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    I think you might be missing the main point of the argument. It is not that users owe or need to sustain facebook. It is that most users may prefer keeping FB and targeted adds, over losing FB and taking down targeted adds.
marcinzm 6y ago
I mean, you already have that via the Facebook EULA for example. You give them a license to use your data however they want and in return you get access to Facebook. You can not accept their terms and in return they can not allow you to use Facebook.
disease 6y ago
I always wondered what's stopping a rival to Facebook that offers users a share of the money they are generating. Besides the scale barrier to entry of course. Generally speaking, people like money and will switch products and services that puts money in their pocket.
- ksk 6y ago
  >I always wondered what's stopping a rival to Facebook that offers users a share of the money they are generating. They sort of do. The money is converted into the utility of the product to each user. Technically, they could lower the utility of Facebook and pay you the rest.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  I think challenge it doesn't solve a user oriented problem. Most users care about the enjoyment/utility/stimulation they get out of a social network. Some users care about their privacy. Needing an extra $30-60/year does not rank high on user priorities. While facebook might make $200/US individual, their profit margin is only 30%.
  - diggernet 6y ago
    Imagine if Facebook gave 10% to their users, lowering their profit margin to 20%. Let's say every user gets 10% of the average, or $20/year. As you say, not a big priority. But some people would sign up, who otherwise would not. And some people would keep their accounts, who otherwise would not. Win for Facebook? Hard to say. Now, what if Facebook gave each person 10% of what they personally brought in? That wouldn't take much more tracking than what they already do. But in this case, you'd have a lot of people maximizing their time on Facebook in order to increase their payout. Win for them, bigger win for Facebook. Heck, Facebook could even get rid of all their stupid dark patterns, and stop the endless research into more dark patterns, improving their bottom line even more. No need to trick people into engaging if they are voluntarily engaging for a small sum.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

If you're a US citizen with a Facebook account, your value for Facebook is about $ 200 per year. That's the average, including children, seniors, etc. If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much. If you want to use Facebook without targeted advertising, you need to either convince them that they don't need all that money, or pay it yourself. And that's just Facebook. In other words: the internet economy without targeted ads will be a very different place. Facebook will survive. imgurl / snopes / fivethirtyeight? Unlikely...

UweSchmidt 6y ago
Worth noting that the $200 ultimately come from our pockets. We are paying those $200 anyway through markups on products ads made us buy.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  Isn't the 200 bucks more a way for FB sellers to get your money instead of other shops?
  - names_are_hard 6y ago
    No, because it's $200 on top of what you would otherwise spend on the stuff you buy. The cost of marketing has to get baked into the price of goods or the sellers would be losing money. If they weren't advertising, or could advertise for less, they'd be able to lower prices.
    - tangjurine 6y ago
      Advertising can lower the cost per item, if there was a large startup cost and marginal costs are small. More importantly, facebook ads have caused me to buy more things because the ads showed me things that I thought were useful that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Honestly, I feel like maybe I should be paying to see FBs ads sometimes.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  I would love to see a correlation score between profiles and purchases
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  Not necessarily. I don't know what percentage of advertising revenue is from political advertising, but that's money that Facebook makes off of you that doesn't come out of your pocket. Essentially any time you're shown an ad that aims to convince you to support some idea, or vote for something, or change your behavior in some way (like going vegan) instead of trying to get you go spend money, you provide value to Facebook that doesn't come out of your pocket. I suspect that this is a lot of the value of "the next billion". Why bring Facebook to people who have little disposable income? Because there are still ad buyers who will pay to reach those audiences if they have votes to give, or even just public support for some cause or another.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
>If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much. I wouldn't be surprised if it's much more than that. Most businesses sales follow the Pareto principle, 80% of their revenue comes from 20% of their customers.
pjc50 6y ago
"Without ads" and "without targeted ads" are different things. There's an "ad-centrist" view whereby adverts should be OK so long as they're chosen to go with the content on the page and the community that the site aims at - you know, like all newspapers and magazines used to do. I'm not sure how imgurl survives given the abuse workload; there is an inevitable death spiral of image hosting sites as they get cluttered by more and more adverts of worse and worse quality. Stackexchange handles this very differently, too.
pradn 6y ago
And what about all the sales that are made through Facebook ads? They support millions of jobs around the world. A less efficient ad machine would mean worse sales or higher marketing costs or both. Some of this excess goes directly to profits, but a good chunk of it supports employment. Imagine if we got rid of all advertising and what that would do to demand. I know the discussion here is centered on targeted ads, but I think there would be significant economic effects if their incidence was decreased. The global consumer economy runs on all these extra desires created by ads, and ads do fulfil the function of informing customers. If I have to see ads (and I really don't), I'm not against tracking ads per se, but the long-term storage of them. Given current technology and governance, there's not a way to separate these two. In any case, there's significant economic effects to stopping tracking ads.
bogwog 6y ago
> If you want to use Facebook without targeted advertising, you need to either convince them that they don't need all that money, or pay it yourself. And that's just Facebook. I hate this argument. It's tries to find a solution to sustain the status quo in the face of change. But that's illogical because if there is a change, then the status quo is going to change too. The only way Facebook is going to stop doing targeted advertising is if they're forced to, likely due to new regulations. If that happens, Facebook's entire business model will collapse, so they'll either have to make massive fundamental changes to how they make money, or they'll die and be taken over by a competitor. In either case, users don't "owe" Facebook anything. Consumers are the life blood of the economy, and thinking about how consumers should change their behaviors to sustain a corporation is backwards thinking.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  I think you might be missing the main point of the argument. It is not that users owe or need to sustain facebook. It is that most users may prefer keeping FB and targeted adds, over losing FB and taking down targeted adds.

marcinzm 6y ago

I mean, you already have that via the Facebook EULA for example. You give them a license to use your data however they want and in return you get access to Facebook. You can not accept their terms and in return they can not allow you to use Facebook.

disease 6y ago

I always wondered what's stopping a rival to Facebook that offers users a share of the money they are generating. Besides the scale barrier to entry of course. Generally speaking, people like money and will switch products and services that puts money in their pocket.

ksk 6y ago
>I always wondered what's stopping a rival to Facebook that offers users a share of the money they are generating. They sort of do. The money is converted into the utility of the product to each user. Technically, they could lower the utility of Facebook and pay you the rest.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
I think challenge it doesn't solve a user oriented problem. Most users care about the enjoyment/utility/stimulation they get out of a social network. Some users care about their privacy. Needing an extra $30-60/year does not rank high on user priorities. While facebook might make $200/US individual, their profit margin is only 30%.
- diggernet 6y ago
  Imagine if Facebook gave 10% to their users, lowering their profit margin to 20%. Let's say every user gets 10% of the average, or $20/year. As you say, not a big priority. But some people would sign up, who otherwise would not. And some people would keep their accounts, who otherwise would not. Win for Facebook? Hard to say. Now, what if Facebook gave each person 10% of what they personally brought in? That wouldn't take much more tracking than what they already do. But in this case, you'd have a lot of people maximizing their time on Facebook in order to increase their payout. Win for them, bigger win for Facebook. Heck, Facebook could even get rid of all their stupid dark patterns, and stop the endless research into more dark patterns, improving their bottom line even more. No need to trick people into engaging if they are voluntarily engaging for a small sum.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago