Data Doesn't Have To Be a Dirty Word

So far in life online there have been two major ways to pay for the vast universe of things we can see, do, and share :

1) With data

Meaning content and services are provided to us for 'free', in exchange for the platform or publisher being able to optimize our data through machinery that enhances the targeting of ads

2) With dollars

Meaning we can bypass the ad mechanism and pay a subscription fee to a publisher of content, or we might opt to pay a content creator directly, e.g. through Patreon.

As with so many things today, could there now be a third way?

This paper (on which I was a Project Lead along with entrepreneur Jad Esber and economist Scott Kominers, and a Co-Author along with a consortium of people from the worlds of industry and academia), is an in-depth exploration of this question.

First, a quick primer on the discourse surrounding data:

There have been many metaphors used to describe data – data is the new oil, data is the new sand, data is the new plutonium.

And of course there's the surveillance capitalism argument, which contends that a data-driven digital economy has created futures markets in human behaviour, and as such undermines autonomy, if not democracy. 

Moving from the metaphorical to the visual, if you search on 'data' on Google images, this is what you get:

I think we all agree that doesn't help much. Therefore in this paper we go deeply into these themes:

Defining Data and its Value:

What are we actually talking about when we talk about data - aka moving beyond the metaphor and to concrete categories and definitions

Distributing the Value of Data:

If the internet economy to date has been largely shaped by platforms and ad tech, how can the new 'pipes' of the internet be shaped so that users/creators have value returned to them?

What's Different This Time?

If this is such a great idea why hasn't this happened before? 

Because of a number of forces currently at play:

• Regulation (e.g. the phasing out of 3rd party cookies and restrictions of data flows brought about by privacy regulations in various states and countries) and antitrust actions that call for data portability and interoperability, among other remedies

• The related growth of negative sentiments toward large centralized platforms

• The development of technologies for Personal Data Stores and decentralized systems

• A general movement of greater literacy about privacy and data

A User-Empowered Data Economy:

What are the components of a data-driven economy that provides benefits to the people that generate the data, in addition to the platforms and companies in the value chain that refine it?

What would be required in terms of infrastructure and industry standards in order for this to work? What kind of systems would need to be implemented to enable a shift to the less centralized and more bottom up self-provisioning of data?

If you're interested in thinking about what a more user-empowered version of data creation, aggregation, and monetization could look like you can click here to view the full paper.

Or you can join us on January 13th, 2025 for a webinar I'm moderating on the topic called "Agency in Datafied World'. (Payment not required in either data or dollars).