Why we should be paid for our data from social media
Facebook just has reached 1 trillion market capitalization in 2021 and earn 84 $ billion from advertising revenue in 2020. This advertising revenue is exploited from 2.8 billion user’s data that the giant tech firm has collected from the social media platform. So, users should be paid and get a fair share of their data value from social media.
Consciously and unconsciously, the collected data ranges from your interest that the social media knows from the user’s engagement with the data of your family relationship data. This personal data allows the social media to enjoy the high value of the advertising revenue because advertisers are willing to pay higher to match their advertisements with their targeted audiences.
This unfair practice issue causes more and more people to voice out that the current social media business model should be fixed. There are two proposals to solve this problem. The first proposal is “Pay-For-Privacy” (PFP). Users pay for the social media service, so the platform has no need to exploit users’ data and no advertisement on the social media.
The alternative proposal in order to maintain social media as a free service is “Personal Data Economy” (PDE). Users should be paid for their personal data when the platform benefits from the data. For example, social media should pay users the share of the advertising value that users see on the platform because their personal data match the marketers preference.
Any third party who collects and uses our personal data needs to ask and receive consent and permission from the user, this is the fundamental of personal privacy rights. However, the Personal Data Economy is the view that we are the true owner of our personal data and personal data is our property, so any third party who benefits from our personal data should pay for our data rights or we should earn royalties from our personal data.
Both our personal data privacy and property rights should be protected. Users should be the one who chooses the privacy preference and also earn the fair share of their personal data value that the social media generates from users’ personal data as well. So, when our personal data are used for targeting advertisements by social media and marketers, we deserve to earn the royalty from our data.
Average annual revenue per user of Facebook in 2020 is 32$, which varies from 163$ in North America to 14$ in Asia. This is the average annual value of advertising that is based on users’ personal data. Let’s imagine that we as users of social media earn a part of this value every year. This can be called “Universal Basic Data Income” that everyone could earn from their personal data that was built up from their daily use of social media over time.
Clearly, from the Facebook data, no one can be rich or lift from poverty just by seeing the advertisements on the social media platform, but at least they will get the fair share of their personal data that they deserve.
Many movements support the PDE concept such as the Data Dividend Project, which the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and California Governor Gavin Newsom support the campaign. However, some might criticize that the PDE is difficult to implement as the micropayment for paying the personal data value such as bank transfer of 7$ to billion users does not make economic sense.
However, the recent development of blockchain technology has unlocked the micropayment obstacle of PDE implementation. Low cost of 0.00001$ per transaction of Layer 2 and proof of history blockchain technology development, cause the PDE is viable as a new business model opportunity for a fairer social media or decentralized social media, where users earn a share of the advertising revenue in cryptocurrency or token that the social media generate for the rights of their personal data. Users can sell the earned token to their local currency or fiat currency via their local cryptocurrency exchange later.
The Personal Data Economy is the core value of our new blockchain startup, Castcle, decentralized social media, that we believe in. Do you believe in personal data property rights?
It is time to disrupt social media. Will you join our journey? Any feedback is appreciated and welcome.
Read our Whitepaper | Read our docs
MVP Design
Join Castcle Communities
Facebook | Twitter | Medium | Telegram | GitHub | Discord
Reference
