The future of data

Two apparently conflicting pieces of news caught my attention this week amid the fallout of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica disaster: Facebook is carrying out market research to find out how many of its users would be interested in paying to use the social network free of advertising or treatment of their data. At the same time, Matt Hancock, the UK’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports, says he’s open to the idea of forcing digital platforms such as Facebook or Google to pay for the data they extract from their hundreds of millions of users.

As things stand until May 25, when the EU’s General Regulation of Data Protection (GRPD) comes into force, affecting all companies operating in the bloc, our data is pretty much up for grabs, available to whoever wants it. One of the biggest problems is that very few people have any idea what happens to the information they generate, perhaps imagining that it is bought and sold, when in fact, with few exceptions, our data is collected, processed and exploited by the provider of the service helping to generate it.

There’s no reason why in the future we may pay to protect our data, as well as selling it, effectively sharing a percentage of the profits companies can make from it. The possibility of combining this with a freemium model that potentially excludes those who can afford it from advertising-based models and the use of their data evokes a stratified society, with a privileged layer that pays for the right to his privacy while another is forced to sacrifice it and charge what they can for a kind of basic income.

Obviously, reducing advertisers’ access to potential clients (who are likely to have higher income) also reduces the overall attractiveness of a social network. If most of the people being targeted on an advertising campaign on Facebook are those people who cannot pay to safeguard their privacy, advertisers are going to reduce the amount they spend, which means that Facebook will have to do some math to work out how to make up for potential lost revenue.

What’s like to happen to our personal data in the future? At the moment, just a few companies are involved in its exploitation, but many more may enter the fray, and from a wide range of sectors. Will they pay users for access to their data, and who will decide to pay to protect their data? Are both scenarios possible? We will have a better idea in the months and years following the implementation of the GPRD, and there are no certainties.

(En espa?ol, aquí)