Re: nettime paying users for their data
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 24/07/14 02:29 AM, Felix Stalder wrote: Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset is really a lousy idea, In as much as they constitute fixed capital, algorithms such as Google's Page Rank and Facebook's Edgerank appear 'as a presupposition against which the value-creating power of the individual labour capacity is an infinitesimal, vanishing magnitude'.( Marx 1973: 694) and that is why calls for individual retributions to users for their 'free labor' are misplaced. It is clear that for Marx what needs to be compensated is not the individual work of the user, but the much larger powers of social cooperation thus unleashed and that this compensation implies a profound transformation of the grip that the social relation that we call the capitalist economy has on society. http://quaderni.sanprecario.info/2014/02/red-stack-attack-algorithms-capital-and-the-automation-of-the-common-di-tiziana-terranova/ no matter how you slice it. If a person's personal data is economically valuable to the degree required for it to be anything more than a negligible source of passive income, the rest of their life(style) will be less workerish and more megastarish. If people want minimum wage for Tweeting then I want minimum wage plus benefits for reading their arguments. Facebook-workerism is creepy. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Icedove - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJT0zxpAAoJECciMUAZd2dZ2qMH/ApHQTqV99A+g0M7hqZW8WoR 9ZSxlnFrRSbRSArtUm9r5izacZsxsOyhm2AE8eFg83l933ZPLiMB7tNOgU31cETs p913/CV0qLYBYfptaSFSbL7qYadDt9eSlljtSZRTWZw0MAXYaPAoxRZmo5RrxwY/ 6vjoVEVvivP9bZHRsQL0VrL8PtI1N2HV1PjhqqA33Jc1xQx2QIY8fU5kGJcHnpIN teC0Ps2L3xvNb+4bTbpc3rPpGGx1d7XUk/cTiw++4uLb2K2rtHTmA2ko9g0G0+/o LrEBRQ6cEBUeXoU6XZKBN4WwoVPebCSm9kyBRKmCeuGSg5TY/bmyordeLH2Byv8= =r8ML -END PGP SIGNATURE- # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime paying users for their data
On 07/24/2014 17:51, Wolfie Christl wrote: Maybe the other way round: If users would have been paid for their data, business models driven by personal data would be less attractive or would look different at least Hi Wolfie, you are right, paying individual users for their personal data doesn't work, one way or the other. The bottom line is, the data of a single person has very little exchange value, hence the need to aggregate such enormous amounts to extract some value out of it. But there is something else I found fascinating in these numbers. Facebook is a near global monopoly, it provides services to 1'300 million people. I'm not sure there is another company (except Google) that has such a reach and provides something of value to so many people. Yet, it is a relatively small company generating just a tiny bit more than two dollars of revenue per person. So, it's a small company, serving the entire world. One must assume that it has destroyed much more exchange value than it produced. But it does so, extremely profitably, with a profit margin of close to 30%. For a relatively small number of people, this shrinking of markets is profitable, but it's still a shrinking of markets. One the one hand, it's a good thing -- since markets, as they expand in reach, are shrinking. Profits require extreme scales and near monopolies, only then one can compensate for the shrinking of markets through expansion profitably. This process seems like snake eating its own tail. Yet, as long as we all depend on markets to for our daily survival, the prospects for most people are brutal. Given the harsh social cnsequences, this makes all the control aspects in these technologies (facebook nsa) terrifying. Unless, we learn to live outside the markets as we know them which will require to redistribute wealth on massive scale.. Felix -- | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime paying users for their data
What if Facebook users, or users In general get their personal data licensed say under GNU/GPL, and create conflict with user contracts, and take the issue to collective level with the help of wider alliances, by collectivizing users' individual cases, viral campaigning and strike like creative direct action, aiming to push vectoral class towards open/public collective bargaining, or to leave people free. Orsan # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime paying users for their data
I think the market vale of all that time the users are spending on Facebook is actually zero, since that's what Facebook is paying for it right now. More dangerously, Facebook could counter by arguing that they have created free infrastructure for organizing gatherings, publicizing products and events, keeping in touch with loved ones (services which previously cost money, eg long distance phone bills) etc and submit the market value of those services (what would it have cost to build a website and gather all your friends' contact info seven years ago, in man-hours?). Then they could maybe write it off as promotional giveaway, since the value of their services might be over and above the cost of producing it? Once this market value was assessed, tax agencies could begin taxing users for receiving it. I mean legally, anything you receive in kind is taxable. I dare anyone here to go in with a tax lawyer and insist that your national revenue agency issue a written statement declaring that free online services fall outside the tax code. If you had to declare that these services were provided in exchange for personal and / or business and / or customer data, maybe you wouldn't have to value those commodities because the tax lawyers would only care that you had paid something... PS - An AOL case was settled for $15M when the volunteers who moderated their online communities sued for minimum wage back pay. http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/aol_settled_with_unpaid_volunt.php?page=all -- * WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison * FLICK's WEBSITE: http://www.flickharrison.com ??? Grab this Headline Animator # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime paying users for their data
On 24.07.2014 11:29, Felix Stalder wrote: If you divide the 30 cents income by the 60 hours work, the you end up with an hourly-wage of $.005. Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset is really a lousy idea, no matter how you slice it. Maybe the other way round: If users would have been paid for their data, business models driven by personal data would be less attractive or would look different at least. Additionally it heavily depends on which data is being sold: According to an OECD report [1] bankruptcy info is worth $25/record, employment history about $14/record and educational history about $12/record. Background check or employment screening packages are sometimes worth $100-300/query. If companies really start selling aggregated data scores based on digital behaviour, on body health data and on various sensors at home and workplaces at large scale this will be much more valueable than today's profits mainly based on advertising. Anyway it's a lousy idea and it doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems of corporate surveillance. Users love being tracked - even when they get (nearly) nothing for it. They're using loyality cards since ages, small (pseudo) incentives are sufficient to make them participate in nearly anything. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium/sites/futurium/files/futurium/library/OECD%20-%202013%20-%20Exploring%20the%20Economics%20of%20Personal%20Data.pdf Cheers Wolfie -- Cracked Labs http://crackedlabs.org # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime paying users for their data
Dear Felix I'm afraid you are mixing up value of personal data and value of time spend filling a service with this data. related, two demands on the User Rights: The Right to get Revenue http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/u0ibb/ The right to be the (prime) beneficiary of whatever is created from our 'cognitive surplus'. http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/ict3g/be-the-prime-beneficiary-of-whatever-i yours olia # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime paying users for their data
Felix says: Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset is really a lousy idea, no matter how you slice it. Well, if you were being paid by some quasi-state surveillance operator to alienate yourself from your most intimate personal relationships, that would be quite a slice of contemporary life now, wouldn't it? But that's what would be happening if Facebook was remunerating your gaze. The idea of paying people for their attention has ever been the most narrow-minded decline of welfare-state unionism into abject Matrix-like servility. Create your own liberation and ditch the attention economy! BH # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
