Read the Terms and Conditions.
A short story about our first product, a game called MillionSharing that we have launched recently.
The people and their data
We call our game a slottery, because it mixes and matches elements from a lottery with elements of a simple slot machine game. The game is for free and it goes like this: if users register and play our game, they get the chance to win up to 12 Mio. EUR for themselves and and their friends and family. And in cooperation with WeForest, our users can spend their CareCoins — our in game currency — to plant real trees and help us save the planet. So MillionSharing makes it possible for our users to win a lot of money without the need to pay for a lottery ticket and help us to plant trees in africa.
After publishing the game we made an advertising campaign on facebook for our product launch. We got a lot of feedback about that campaign but some of the comments were like: “Don’t register for that game, they only want your data.” I perfectly understand the people, that are concerned about giving away their personal information because of all that negative media buzz about the latest data leaks, phishing attacks, spam mails and security issues. It is a sign of a paradigm shift from blind trust to digital natives and I appreciate this shift from the bottom of my heart. But receiving those comments about privacy concerns over facebook — the biggest collector of personal profiles in human history — has a certain irony.
Therefore, I would like to have a closer look at the topic “The people and their data in the times of the internet”.
“Sign Up — It’s free and always will be.”(*)
(*) Text on the log-in page for facebook.
In 2017 Facebook Inc. had a turnover of more than 40 Billion Dollars and a profit of 15 Billion Dollars. If we go by the official numbers and take 2.2 Billions of users that are on facebook that means every facebook user creates a turnover of rougly 20 Dollars per year. This is the hidden fee that users pay for using the services facebook offers for “free”. Nearly 100% of this revenue is created by displaying ads and show them to the group of people that is mostly affected by those ads (which even can be used to manipulate people to vote for a red-headed dimwit).
The product facebook is not about connecting people in a social way in the first place (as it was, when Mark Zuckerberg invented it). Today it is more about creating a view on the world that optimizes how companies can sale their products and create opinion and trends. Don’t get me wrong: It is an absolutely legit goal for a company to provide services and earn money with it. But facebook is not “for free”, because users pay with their interaction and every “like” for that service.
“We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals” (*)
(*) Part of the legal terms for using google services.
Every search term that is entered and every video view on YouTube makes us share personal information about our lifes, our health, our passion, our believes and our interests with Google. And we give away our information in exchange for hyperlinked answers to our questions. This information can be used for good reasons like predicting precisely when and where a new flu wave hits our city. Or it is used for not so good reasons like making you buy stuff, that you actually don’t need. By making the Android operating system open sourced, Google has connected more than 4 billions of people with google accounts to their services like gmail, youtube and ad-words to feed their servers with more data. And every piece of information is stored, organized and indexed to create profiles and catalogues and categories that measure all aspects of the digital and analog life. The google business model makes up for a turnover of 110 Billions per year or 20 Dollar per year and per person with an internet connection.
Alexa, put chocolate on my list
Around 40% of online sales went through an Amazon server before customers get their packets delivered. Amazon sells products for 250,000 $ per Minute, so what Google is for answers, Amazon is today for buying products online. With services like Audible, Prime Music and Prime Video Amazon has insights into its users movie, book and listening habits. With the AI powered Alexa system Amazon has found a niche in living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms of more than 20 Million households, making Amazon the worlds largest speaker manufacturer and in the same device the worlds biggest eavesdropper. And with this data, Amazon can predict and affect when and what people buy and offer the preferred goods from Amazon for optimal prices and influence peoples buying choices directly. It is no coincidence, that prices for the exact same product can differ, if users see them on an Android phone or an iPhone or on a Webbrowser — it is the algorithm and the dataset that can manipulate the user and predict how much a user is willing and able to pay for a product.
A simple equation: Data = Money. Big data = Big money.
Scientiest estimate, that by 2020 every user will account for 1.7 MegaByte of BigData that he or she generates every day and shares with the big tech companies (btw: this article text has rougly 7 KiloBytes or 0.4% of 1.7 MegaBytes to put it in perspective). Is it by driving a connected car, that sends traffic and weather information to servers, calling an Uber, having a smart heating, searching the web for a nearby sushi restaurant, ordering pizza online, clicking an ad for clothing, letting a smartwatch measure the heartbeat or only listening to favorite tunes on spotify. Every single action we fullfill with an online connection creates a dataset that will be of a monetary value for a company. Ninety percent of all data in the digital world today has been created in the last two years alone. And there is only a dozen of companies, that create profit with it. The current situation is, that people share their data for free with dozens of companies that build more or less complex business models around the gathered data. And basically theres nothing wrong with generating data and creating profit with it. But the more information we give out of our hands, the more we get concerned about what companies and governments know about us and what they do with this knowledge.
Is there a way to protect my personal information?
This is the good news. Yes, there is a way. It’s in the blockchain. An approach called the Personal Data Wallet bridges the gap between sharing a social life online and still being able to fully control and encrypt personal data. I’ll try to explain that concept in simple words: if users store their likes, their friends, their personal data and their iot-data encrypted and forgery-safe in their blockchain secured Personal Data Wallet, they have full control, which bits of information they want to share with online services and when and for how long. They can grant permissions to read and to write information on a detailled level and even withdraw access rights from a service if they do not longer use it because the information never leaves the encrypted space. So if a doctor wants access to health data collected by a smartwatch, the owner can grant permission to access heartrate information, but if a health insurance company wants to know the exact same data, the user can prohibit access to that data. Or if family members want to share their current location with each other, they could do so without sharing that information with other parties.
Is there a way to get paid for sharing data?
This is the good news. Yes, there is a way. It’s in the blockchain. An economic system called the Profit-Sharing economy is designed to reward people for their interactions in the digital and analogue world. The idea behind this concept is that every entity (person or company) that creates or requests data or interacts with a digital medium is part of the value chain. And since every bit of information can be controlled by its creator, it is possible to reward every entitiy in the value chain accordingly to the contribution to the economic system. Some examples: If users of a navigation system collect data about traffic conditions and authorize that system to use that data to optimize the traffic, they can get a reward for their contribution. If users give the power company the permission to decide, when their cars battery will be charged to optimize the power grid, the users could be rewarded by a discount on their electricity bill. If users do not grant access to the charging cycle, they have to pay the full price for electricity. Or if an author publishes an essay about big data on medium.com, the readers of that essay could reward the author directly for his work only by reading the essay. Or if a data owner lets advertisers see his preferences about buying a new car, he could get an incentive from a car manufacturer for answering a survey to find the perfect car.
Originally published at www.profit-sharing-network.com on July 17, 2018.
