[robotnikman]

>what “my data” means

It makes me wonder, if everyone 'owned' their own data, I wonder if it could be used as a form of UBI. Everyone has data from using services, everyone owns it, everyone can sell it to make a living just doing whatever they are doing everyday.

This is only just a shower thought I had the other day though, there are probably many pitfalls when it comes to such an idea.

[chgs]

Like adverts in general the value of your data or your attention is tiny.

The average American spends $200 (via higher costs for products) for TV each year and receives how many hundreds of hours of adverts in return?

The superbowl for example gets $5 for every viewer, for about an hour of adverts. What’s the average hour of time worth?

Facebook might suck up your data and flog it for a few cents, you’ve probably got more cash down the back of the sofa.

[maest]

If my attention is so cheap I would definitely like to pay $5/ year to not have to see ads.

[inetknght]

...what about paying $5/year to "not" see ads, and also still see advertisements targeted to you?

[xboxnolifes]

Unlikely. I'd think the most valuable data is generally the type that can be used to extract money from you. Targeted ads and such. So, your data's value would increase in proportion with your spending power.

[marcelluspye]

This idea is the subject of the 2013 book "Who Owns the Future?" By Jaron Lanier.

[fragmede]

I don't support UBI but that's a fascinating idea. Unfortunately the data is worth micropennies in the individual, so only worth something in aggregate, like a class action settlement where you end up with a cheque for $0.34 for damages which makes it not even worth your time, it'd only be good as the backdrop for a science fiction novel or as an experiment by a YouTube video by a well known creator to see how little money it would make. I would read the hell out of that book and watch that video tho!

[numpad0]

Connecting information to that kind of personal gains sounds dangerous. There is probably non-negligible abuse potential, like college kids legally printing money at weird scale.

[amanda99]

You will never generate enough money from information about your consumption to fund your consumption. Obviously there's other data, but you get the point.

[mulmen]

UBI isn’t meant to fully fund consumption. It’s “basic” income such as rent or groceries. I will accept that consumption data doesn’t cover consumption and that the value is already priced in but I don’t accept that it has no value or that UBI is meant as complete income replacement.

[amanda99]

I guess I was responding to this:

> everyone can sell it to make a living just doing whatever they are doing everyday

[BobaFloutist]

Honestly the path to "UBI" is probably just socialized/subsidized basic needs.

Build masses of government housing, make a healthcare public option with sliding-scale costs, and you're 90% of the way there - food and decent low-end broadband are frankly already cheap enough for the government to cover with maybe some "Don't gouge Uncle Sam or else" clauses and that's about everything.

[TeMPOraL]

IDK, I think almost all interesting data has no obvious single owner, because it gets created as a side effect of an interaction between two or more parties.

Take the transaction information from example above. The record of you buying products X, Y, Z for total t=x+y+z at time T, with card C - both you and the store could argue they're entitled to it. It's about you and money you spent and products you received, but it's also about them and the money they received and the products that were taken off their inventory. Then the card issuer will interject saying, "hey, the customer uses a card we provide as a service, so we're at least entitled to know which card was use to pay, to whom, when, an what the total amount was!". Then both yours and stores' banks will chime in, and behind them, also the POS terminal provider.

Truth is, they all have a point. We like to think that paying for groceries with our watch is like a medieval peasant paying for fruit with metal coins at a town market. It's not. Electronic payments always involve multiple steps handled automatically, in the background, by half a dozen service providers linked by their own contracts and with their own legal reporting requirements, and each of them really do need to know at least some details about the payment they're participating in.

A simpler example: this comment. It's obviously mine. It's also a response to you, and it only makes sense in context of the whole subthread. Should anyone reply to it, they'll gain a stake in it, too - and then, arguably, everyone following this discussion have a right to read it, now and in the future. After I hit the "Reply" button, I can't in good conscience claim this comment is mine and only mine. This is why I'm personally against the practice of unilaterally mass-deleting of comments on open discussion boards, like e.g. plenty of people do on Reddit, forever ruining useful discussions for the public.

(It's also why I like HN's approach to GDPR, which is, you can get your account disassociated from your comments, and you can request potentially identifying content be removed, but the site won't just mass-delete your comments automatically.)