Comment by ianai
5 years ago
One idea I’ve chewed on: Make it a law to have to pay people for their private data. Ie charged by the minute (second would be best) to the tune of minimum wage or an organizations WTP as a salary for 24/7 access. The idea is to price and legislate it at the point where it makes sense for the average citizen/user. Creating the notion of private property and reinforcing it is a fundamental purpose of government.
This would raise many problems: do you pay based on how long you store the data for? Does derived data qualify too (otherwise you can keep the original data for a minute, derive an intermediate data format out of it, then discard the original)? Do you charge for how long is spent processing that data (so they just throw more CPU at it so the data is only processed for milliseconds)?
I don't think this is a solution. Not only is this hard to implement & enforce, but this still ends up legalizing the unwanted processing of consumer's data as long as the processors can pay the fee. Those users should be allowed to decline regardless of how much the processor is willing to pay.
Those questions would be addressed in the actual legislation. Yes, enforcement becomes the tough point. I actually suspect that might be why it makes sense. Companies would be incentivized to not keep data around any longer than they need it. And companies like facebook would have incentives to decrease the size of their networks as a mitigation from class actions. They might even restructure to match a franchise model where you only ever interact with your “local” FB. That local FB would be much easier to police both within FB and externally.
I mean, you fundamentally "pay" with your private data already in the sense that those services use your "payment" in order to offer you the service in the first place.
You could force businesses to put a number on it. But in general websites don't just sit on the money they make from ads - they spend it on hosting costs and whatever other business expenses. Note that I'm not arguing whether some of them are still making a fortune with it - but requiring that users are paid for using a service that incurs costs for the other party is... backwards?
Yes, you’re paying with your data already. But you’re generally not able to ask to be paid for it. We’re treating peoples data like a public good that anyone can profit off of - except the individual who owns and generates it. That’s why there's got to be a way to make it possible for the market to properly manage this market on its own-once the market participants are given a legally reinforced way to interact as a market with supply and demand.