Andrew Yang wants you to make money off your data by making it your personal property

[redqueen]

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang released his comprehensive plan to regulate the tech industry in a blog post Thursday.

His top priority: establishing "data as a property right," which would give people more control over their data and potentially enable them to make money when companies use it to power their products and services.

That would be a major shift from how things work currently, where companies typically own any data generated by users, limiting their ability to restrict access to that data or earn any money off it.

...

According to a report Yang cited, gathering and using Americans' personal data has become a $198 billion industry, and he argued that users haven't gotten enough in return.

...

https://amp.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-data-ownership-property-right-policy-2019-11

The technology to put this plan into practice already exists. Yang is the only candidate who demonstrates not just an understanding of these issues, but has also developed plans to use them to improve people's lives.

[genxlib]

1. I like it on the surface but I see problems

The main one being that we are already compensated for the data through free services.

For instance, Google gives us free internet search, free mapping, cheaper phone software, etc. In return, they get the data that those services generate. We agree to that contract when we sign the user terms.

Fair or not, that is the market.

I think there are better arguments to regulate some the other data whores (like credit bureaus for instance) but there is a lot of gray area.

Rather than try to work out compensation, I would rather regulate in other ways. For instance, data gathering for anything other than what is necessary should be illegal. Google maps needs to know where I am, Flappy Bird does not.

[redqueen]

2. That would be logical if the data was used once.

A transaction like that would make sense. But to sign over your data to be collected and used repeatedly in perpetuity is not logical. Thats the type of use that should be ceased or compensated.

Our data is our property. That's the crux of it. Whether it's flappy Bird or Google maps, we should get a transparent description of the intended use and be able to decide based on that understanding.