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?
I think the basic premise is that the status quo of transactions (free service for user data) has resulted in an imbalance of power for tech companies, and that by increasing the cost of acquisition, users have a means to collectively negotiate better "market rates" from the tech companies for services rendered. It can be regarded as similar to "unionizing" the users.
It would be interesting to get some preliminary guidance on what tech companies would do in response (start charging for premium services? only give premium services to the most valuable users?)
Andrew Yang has also mentioned in prior podcasts on UBI (Freakanomics, etc.) that probably the best way to fund such a program would be proceeds from increased taxation on tech companies.
I for one would love to see cable companies turned into public utilities. But that goal is not mutually exclusive from the goal to give the consumer some more power over the big tech conglomerates.
> only give premium services to the most valuable users?
Almost certainly. What people often miss in this discussion is that advertising is progressive--it's a transfer of value from richer people who can and will pay for both the service being used and the product that is being advertised to poorer people who cannot.
You can have a condescending attitude about it if you want, but the reality is advertising-backed business models make services available to people who would not otherwise be able to afford them.
The ramifications of creating barriers to advertising is ultimately taking these services away from the poor.
Within that statement is an ideological assumption that the only way to provide services to people is through a for profit venture. We worship market based solutions except we have things like taxes to build public infrastructure without a profit motive.
I'm not making an ideological assumptions there. I'm just referring to the status quo. The proposals I've seen are along the lines of "let's ban or add obstacles to advertising-based models", not "let's build a publicly funded Google search". I'm not saying the latter is an impossibility, but it's a much larger undertaking, and if you do the former without the latter, the effect will be as I said above--the poor lose access.
Regarding the "market rates", you're right, it does sound like unionizing. I suppose it shouldn't be as much of an issue if there was more competition so that companies would need to offer "better free services" in exchange for data. With network effects, that's hard to achieve, though.
Something where a switch is easier and doesn't cut you off from the old platform would be nice, similar to how domains or phone numbers work: you own your profile and all the data, but you can switch platforms at any time without losing contacts or abilities, keeping the competition between platform-providers alive. I have no idea how that would work out though. Does FB have actually any value besides the fact that everybody you know is there? If you were able to connect with them while they're on FB and you're not, would a lot of people decide to stay in FB because it's such a great platform?
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)?
It's already bad enough that the surveillance economy is threatening our civil liberties in more ways than one. It's outright dystopian when you need to organize a social media campaign to get medical treatment. Considering the sheer number of people who desperately need medical help, the chances of succeeding is very very low.
>It's outright dystopian when you need to organize a social media campaign to get medical treatment.
The above comment wasn't an example of that, though. His friend was getting medical treatment, the issue is that you can't just buy a kidney (at least not in the US), you need to find a donor.
That isn't just an outright baseless claim, it's wrong by definition. The said person had to go to social media to find a donor, which 100% matches what I descibed, and the fact that some felt this was necessary points to a broken system. It's also terrible to imagine what shady companies can do with targeted ads aimed at vulnerable people who can't find any donors.
I mean, we can't make kidneys in a lab, so you probably have to ask someone for theirs if you need one. FB is useful for connecting with people, so naturally people would ask there.
Perhaps better government assistance in finding donors would be nice? It shouldn't have to involve people going directly to social media so they can tell the whole world about their medical condition.
exactly, even in a situation where medical is all paid for you still have to find a donor yourself. There are countries where you can get a donor via "alternative" means but when going by the book, finding a donor is on you.
I cant think of any other way he could have gotten exposure without having to go on tv, radio, public areas and making his case. That power of facebook ( and other social media is undeniable )
Even Wajahat Ali on CNN, who has such a big audience, found a donor off Twitter. Not everyone has the ability to reach out to Anderson Cooper and ask for help.
For every evil thing Facebook has done, there are stories like this. Having my friend alive, his family seeing him everyday is well worth it.
The fact that you need public exposure to find a donor is the problem, not the solution. Going to social media doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to find a donor. Worse, you could be targeted by online scammers and trolls, which is the last thing you want in a difficult situation.
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.
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.
Maybe the world is starting to believe that "it was profitable" is not always a defensible position? Perhaps an age of consumption is passing towards an age of ethics. Time will show.
Really asking for exact equal value to an exchange is in itself isn't just /a/ fallacy but an entire stack of them. It implicitly assumes a universal equal value when the utility and demand differ greatly based upon circumstances including marginal utility. One pair of boots is worth more to someone without them than someone who has eight comparable ones. Even if such exact trades could be found there is no incentive to provide them without it functioning as a loss leader of some sort.
If there is a nationwide push to disincentive all rent-seeking then I'd be all for it. Google selling customer behavior data seems like it's far less deleterious to society than running your business with a goal of generating short-term investor value.
>Aren't companies already paying indirectly by providing free service?
I think it's more about changing the frame. That Tech companies have been profiting off something you actually have always intrinsically owned, your personal data, and now is the time to retake that ownership.
But there's a lot of cases where there's data about someone that is not owned by them. e.g. If I go into a store and am recorded on the CCTV, the store still owns that video, even if it is about me. This could be pretty similar to the way that if someone uses Facebook and clicks on something, Facebook would own the log which recorded this.
In other cases the data that users upload to websites is definitely owned by them. e.g. If I take a picture on my phone, and then later upload it to Facebook, the photo is still owned by me. However, for any site that allows users to upload photos, it will be part of the terms of service that the users give the site a license to display the photo.
I agree with that but we're talking about things that are really measurements of your mind right? What kind of articles do you read, what kind of posts do you like, products you like to buy etc. The Tech giants use rough simulacra of your mind to try and target you as efficiently as possible with ads. This seems like some kind of Black Mirror episode to me.
I think it's more complicated than that. It's not clear that users do intrinsically own this data. Without the product and the graph attached to the product, this data won't exist.
Is it fair to say that it’s user-generated or user-specific data? Without the user, the data either wouldn’t exist, or wouldn’t be worth much, as in the case of shadow profiles.
It gets hairy quickly. Do you own your DNA sequence? You could say it's essentially just data. Would you be opposed to a company patenting your DNA and profiting off it?
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?