How much is your data worth of technology companies worth? Lawmakers want answers

New regulation proposed by US Senators Mark R. Warner and Josh Hawley seeks to protect the privacy of tech companies to force them to throw the “true value” of their data to open the users. In particular, companies with more than 100 million users, would provide each user with an estimate of the financial value of their data, as well as from revenue generation reveal “to get to share the collection, processing, distribution, ‘manual or user data. ” In DASH, the law would have you the right to their own data from company to bases cancellation data. When the researchers to explore the ethical implications and digital platforms policies and large data, they are sympathetic transparency of the bill to increase the ambition and empower home users. However, the estimated value of user data is not easy and is not, in my opinion, to solve the privacy issues. The data collected from the tech data collector is made up not only of traditional identifying information such as name, age and sex. instead viewed as Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov, it contains “tweets, Facebook likes, spasms, Google search, online comments, one-click purchases, see, but also leaping a photo in your feed.” In other words, they contain large amounts of data even mundane intimate moments in people’s lives. And if Facebook starts interactions with friends and family, Google searches until late at night, and Alexa your life dining commands, he would not want to know how the bill suggests, what your “data value, and if it sells “? However, the value of the user data may be the calculation is not so simple. Estimates of what the value of user data are quite different. This includes assessments of less than a dollar for an average person, the data of a bit ‘more generous US $100 for a Facebook user. A user sells its data to $2,733 on Kickstarter. To reach that number, it had to exchange data, including keystrokes, mouse movements and frequent screenshots. Unfortunately, the DASH law did not specify how they would appreciate the value of user data. On the contrary, they said that the Securities and Exchange Commission, an independent federal agency, “is a method or develop procedures to calculate the value of user data.” The Commission thinks that will soon realize that the value of the estimate of user data is a challenging task, more legislation to provide greater transparency users proposed as personal goals. However, privacy is no longer just a matter of policy. The data shared by some insights can offer a lot in life. Facebook like, for example, a can help you sexual orientation with a high degree of accuracy to predict. The purpose has used its purchasing data to predict which customers are pregnant. The case received widespread attention after a pregnant teenager dealer was out before his father. Such predictive capability means that private information is not included in only the user data. Companies can also use your data private, close based on statistical correlations between the data of a number of users. How can the value of such data is reduced to a single dollar value? And ‘more than the sum of its parts. What’s more, this ability to use statistical analysis to people in a group to identify the category they belong, far-reaching impact on data protection can have. When service providers use predictive analytics enables a user to guess the sexual orientation, race, sex or religious beliefs, they stop on this basis of discrimination? After we already sparked predictive technologies continue to work, even if users delete their part of the data that have helped to create. on the data, data sensitivity, not only about what it contains, but how governments and businesses can influence the control. This is reflected in my current research on social credit system planned China. The Chinese government is planning national databases and “reliability reviews” to be used to adjust the behavior of Chinese citizens. Google, Amazon and Facebook “Monitoring capitalism”, as the author Shoshana Zuboff also supported using the predictive data to “optimize and herd our behavior towards the most profitable results.” In 2014, the revelations about his Facebook feed has experienced the emotional state of the users in a public protest ended influence. However, this example is only made visible as digital platforms in general, you can use to keep busy for users and in the process, it generates more data data. Privacy is so much to make your personal life more than the large capacity of the technology compared to what it knows about you. What is Truth hurts that datafication, with all its implications for data protection, it does not affect all the same. Big Data play the prejudice and discrimination hidden continuing inequalities in the network by gender, race and class. Women, minorities and the poor are the most affected financially. UCLA professor Safiya Umoja Noble has shown, for example, as the Google search rankings to reinforce negative stereotypes about black women. Given such inequality how could a numerical value on record the “real” value of user data? The lack of a proposal for a specific legislation is strange. But more it could disrupt its request that data transparency will only be achieved by revealing monetary value. Numerical evaluation of the financial value does not reflect the data could predict our actions or to guide our decisions. The Dashboard law is the business of the most transparent data and Empower users. However, I believe he can fulfill that promise, it will fail. If lawmakers want to address data protection, not only they govern monetization data, but much to address the value and cost of data in people’s lives. This article is published by the conversation with a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Picture copyright by Jaap Arriens-NurPhoto / Getty Images