this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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It seems so strange to me that everyone buys the bullshit that personal data is worth very little.
The data brokerage industry is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Yet, there are only ~8 billion people in the world, many of whom don't have internet access or have very little data being traded. Thus it's reasonably safe to assume that an average regular internet user's data is worth somewhere in the region of $1,000 per year.
These companies don't do anything with the data. We create the data, they collect it and sell it, then whoever buys it is the one that actually makes something from it. If we allow the brokers a very generous profit margin, they are still stealing $500-700 from every one of us, every year.
ChatGPT, summarize this for me like I'm a geriatric politician.
Personal data worth a lot. 8 billion humans exist. Industry is multi trillion of profit. Even at only a single trillion that's 1000 dollars per person a year. It's way more than 1000.
That would mean $8T total. No way it’s that much. Maybe $350 per American.
You're forgetting that many of the 8 billion people don't have internet or have very little data being shared.
If we assume 8 billion people and $1 trillion industry, it's only $125 a year. That's the worst case.
If we assume 4 billion people and $4 trillion industry, it's $1,000 a year. That's the best case. Perhaps a little too optimistic, but it's also very easy maths.
Working backwards from my $500 user value with 30% margin for the brokers, that's around $715 in the industry. This could be made from 6 billion people and an industry value of $4.29 trillion.
Using the method above, that would be $500 in the industry, and with 6 billion people the industry would be worth $3 trillion.
To get more accurate numbers we would need a specific value for the industry. However, I think we can confidently say the value of user data is in the hundreds of dollars, not pennies as is commonly suggested.
I only summarized what the other person said. Bring your complaints to him.
Some nations would be worth more per person to a data broker than others. How many billions have no Internet? How many have little money to spend on the companies the data broker sells to? Americans and Europeans would be at the top of the list, per capita, and could easily exceed $1000, and the total would just barely top 1 trillion.
I don’t know Google who makes all their money in data is a trillion dollar company. I’d say the industry is worth more then a trillion.
Wait is this account a bot that can be summoned with the magic incantation chatgpt?
Nah I'm a demon that can be summoned with the incantation of "Cat gee, be tea"
You must be incredibly busy. I hope the underworld pays overtime
Bad bot
And you are a bad human :)
Money good, gimme gimme.
Haha this made me chuckle. Thanks :)
That's including showing the ads. The data itself isn't worth that much unless people are viewing them.
As far as I'm aware the valuation is just data brokering - ie, the people collecting data from apps and selling to advertisers.
Then I don't believe it, Google makes about 200B in advertising revenue a year, serving about a quarter of the internet ads.
Advertising online is not even a trillion dollar market, how can just the data be bigger? Maybe if you count it being sold resold ten times
I've finally run some actual numbers, after finding a source for the data brokerage industry value (much lower, $319 billion in 2021). The link to your instance's version is here: https://lemmy.world/post/10892972
TL;DR my conservative estimate is that every user is owed roughly $40 per year - but this doesn't include Google or other businesses who keep and exploit proprietary datasets, rather than selling the raw data.
The efficacy of advertising is sold primarily by advertisers. It's possibly worth a vanishing fraction of what these ghouls say it's worth. But so long as buying it and acting like a greedy invasive bastard is more profitable than ignoring it, even by a tiny margin, corporate giants will keep doing it, since the cost to them is a rounding error.
The industry enabling this is large because they get to sell the same garbage to so many bastards.
Data is worth more than gold, and much easier to mine.
If you're online. You need to assume that your data is being used without your permission whether you like it or not. Nothing is going to change. Look at the hordes of brain dead idiots who use tiktok
That's the wrong attitude to have. It can change, and arguably it will change once a critical mass of people realise the value being stolen from them.
You can't build a car without paying for the nuts and bolts. The people who make nuts and bolts don't know how to build a car, but they're still paid a fair value based on the fact their product can be used in cars.
We don't know how to do anything with our data, but we should be paid based on the value derived from it by those that do.
This problem affects everyone, including the people who make laws. It is entirely feasible that we can get enough people on side to change things and make it more fair. Incumbent businesses won't like that, because it will reduce their profits (100% down to 30%), but what they're doing now is absolutely wrong. They'd still be taking the piss at 30%, but at least that's more in line with other industries.
That critical mass will never come because people don't feel the data has been stolen from them.
Rather, it's traded in exchange for whatever online services they use.
And to them it's a decent trade.
I think that's fair if the service is free. If I'm paying for it then they shouldn't be double dipping with my data as well.
But that's the thing, that isn't what's happening. The website is provided free of charge.
Then, the website tries to shoehorn in another, separate transaction and hide it in the fine print, where you give up your data free of charge.
There is a huge amount of deception involved. The whole point of my comment here is to try and dispel that deception, by putting hard numbers to it to show that there is significant value being taken.
I don't want their money. I just want them to leave me alone. Now, the politicians? They would love their money. And I'm sure big tech lobbyists are already giving them some
That would be nice, I agree. However, like you say, the data is already being used, and it's much harder to put the cat back in the bag. Rather than trying to do so and ban all data collection, it's much more practicable to embrace it but ensure that people are at least fairly compensated.