Stick your hand in your pocket
This article is originally published at https://robertgrantstats.wordpress.com
People are surprisingly relaxed about giving away their data. What doesn’t work well now (basically, everything that tech giants pass off as AI) will one day be very effective — and they will still have all the data you produced in the intervening years. A minority of people are increasingly interested in guarding against that unanticipated intrusion and manipulation. Your Roomba maps your house, Alexa listens to your conversations (probably, so does your Google Assistant, you iPhone, and everything else), and your Samsung TV watches you and listens to you. Creepsville. You’ll see articles around about the possibility of an intelligent (not paranoid) response to this sort of thing. But there is a different angle I want to mention here — money.
If you want to give every personal insight away to some 25-year old dude in Sunnyvale to dick around with, fine. It’s your choice. It just surprises me that nobody (that I know of) thinks to ask for money in exchange for data. Because it’s worth money to the recipient, right?
VODAFONE SMS: your views matter to us. Please take 2 minutes to complete the quick survey we are sending in the next message.
ME: OK, that’ll be 5 pounds please.
GUY IN SHOP: You’ll get an email asking about your experience in the shop today and how I did – I’d really appreciate it if you could fill that out, and you know, they only take 9 or 10 out of 10 as good.
ME: OK, that’ll be £2.50 please
COMPANY I SHOP WITH: Hey, it’s such fun shopping with us, right? Why not have even more fun with our app for your smart phone? All it needs is permission to read your files, photos, contacts, GPS location, wi-fi, messages, phone calls, and social media logins. Click here! We’ll have suuuuuch fun together!
ME: No.
You get the idea. I charge Vodafone more because they can afford more and because they are going to use the data against me in future (their raison d’être is to take my money and your money and give it to shareholders, and that is best done by ratcheting up my bill in a data-driven way). I think I can beat them at that game though, otherwise I wouldn’t offer the transaction at all, which is the case with the kick-me sign on your back that is known as installing an app for convenient shopping. The guy in the shop wants to gets a raise or promotion one day; well, how about a little down payment on that sweet cash flow, brother? I generally get looked at like I’m a callous weirdo (which may also be true but doesn’t follow logically from the evidence, and yes, I really do ask for money; I’ve not got any so far…). But if everybody said it… Here arises the idea of data unions, which as far as I can tell only exists as a bon mot that Pedro Domingos chucked out the other day:
but it’s a good idea. Suppose we shop entirely in cash, but you could block-buy our shopping lists for just 10p per shopping trip. 50p if you want home address postcodes attached. We deactivate our phones’ GPS, but carry basic trackers. You want the data? That’ll be £175 per person per year. All proceeds to me and you. Whaddya say?
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This article is originally published at https://robertgrantstats.wordpress.com
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