How might we fairly trade personal information and make the internet better?
By: Paul Mosca
Tags: Internet of Things, Design Thinking, Data, Personal Data, Cooperatives

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

You did it, dear reader. You and many others have generated most of the world’s data in the past several years.

Forecasters estimate that your personal data information creates a 203 billion dollar market opportunity for businesses(Nicole Lindsey with CPO).) Some you are familiar with Amazon and Facebook, who trade your personal information for advertising. What did you earn from your personal data?

Accessing the world’s knowledge is a simple search function. It’s so common that we expect access to the internet to be free. But there is a catch. If it’s free, you are the product.

The advertising business model of most internet companies has transformed the internet from an open-source information and community platform into a platform for infinite consumerism.

The cost isn’t just personal privacy. There are broad ramifications across all sectors of society.

How might we fairly trade personal information and make the internet better? Is it worth pursuing a viable market solution?

Scope:

The objective of the product design began with an overview of the current academic and thought leadership from luminaries like Jarron Lanier, Jeff Turow, and Shoshana Zuboff. The internet we know today is not democratic, open, and free to access. I love Jarron Lanier’s description from You are Not a Gadget, “I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of empathy and humanity in that process.”

The group interviewed over ten people between 20–74. The largest demographic population was between the ages of 20–43. The geographic regions extend to the USA and Europe. We needed multinational conversations given the expansive reach of personal data privacy, corporation, and legal complexities.

We extracted needs statement from the interviews and then rewritten into design statements. It’s quite a conversation starter when you ask a person how much their personal data is worth.

We defined interview participation if people owned a smartphone and used the internet on a daily basis.

Key Insights

Is it Real?

“I feel abused”. “They are going to take my information anyway.” “I either don’t buy the product or agree to the terms. There is nothing I can do about it.”

There are big emotions as a result from this power imbalance. Over and over again people expressed frustration when being coerced through complicated user agreements. The summary feeling is that their data is taken and that there is nothing they can do about it. In his academic research Joseph Turow, summarized that people essentially feel “resigned” to sharing their data (Turow, Hennesy, and Draper).

At times, the trade for personal information was fair but lacked a meaningful connection or quality of life improvement. One person shared a story about working remote at their in-laws. After they returned home pop-up adds inundated them with ads for lawn furniture. Evidently, her in-laws were searching for new patio furniture. The result didn’t help the furniture company make a sale. And confused the family for a few days. It’s a benign example. But speaks to the less than helpful customer experience

The word privacy evoked fear, and anger. Overwhelmingly people felt manipulated when accessing the technology with the only remediation being to completely abstain to take extreme protection measure. Some employed VPN, use alternative search services like Duck Duck Go, or abstained altogether from some services.

Is it Worth It?

You are interesting. Individually your personal data is not. Your information is just kind of ordinary. However, bundle your personal data with others into a tidy little package, and it’s something extraordinary. To explore pain points of internet users and look for advertising conduits. We conducted customer journey maps to identify potential zones of opportunity.

Our solution designed a subscription model cooperative market place could be created where subscribers pay a monthly subscription service in exchange for access, control, and fair compensation for their personal data in exchange for a user agreement insurance policy and rights of fair use can be granted.

Personal data cooperative that pays members a percentage of their data earnings.

We forecasted a net present value model charging $30 per month with an investment $130,000 would give a 25% return in two years.

Is the concept worth exploring. Yes.

However, current market research shows a growing number of businesses solving personal data frustrations with similar exchange places. And new services rapidly emerging.

Can We Win it?

Creating a personal data market place now has the advantage of inviting our stakeholders to decide on the market priorities that they need for a fair, open, and equitable market participant. Launching this kind of platform requires technical expertise and a team. It’s not on my challenge list for 2021 to pitch and launch a personal information cooperative. With the right teammates, I would be thrilled to make a run at the solution.

Next Steps

A paper and pencil lo-fi prototype will help ideate solving for a more open, fair, and safe internet experience. We will want to consider the internet of things. Discussing our lo-fi prototype with secondary personal data companies like Acxiom will test true viability of the market place. We will consider this step a gate to proceed or revisit the problem space.

Unanswered Questions

The internet of things presents its own set of opportunities. What personal data arrangements will provide a high quality of user experiences customers demand and will be commercially fair companies? What tradeoffs will companies like Acxiom one of the largest in the secondary data market place accept? Is there a value to providing those companies with higher grade personal data bundles? It is also worth exploring open source data repositories like Data World. Does a partnership with those organizations offer more opportunities?

The goal is to strike a balance without cutting off useful personal data. I believe we can create a solution that is fair for the customer and helps build an open and thriving internet of the future. Like Jaron Lanier says, “value yes, manipulation no.”

Many thanks to the very talented Team Ten, Daniel Wolfskehl, Jill Van Gavere, Unmesh Ullas, and Hernan Torres.