  We live in an era in which the most valued services are not paid for in
money, but in personal data. Every day, service providers collect the personal
information of billions of individuals, information that sustain their
infrastructure by marketing profiles labeled with this information to personal
data consumers, such as advertisers. Not all uses of this personal data are for
marketing; data consumers can also include, for instance, public health
authorities tracking pandemics. In either case, individuals have undergone a
process of Personal Data Gentrification, as data ownership has shifted from
individuals to service providers and data consumers, as if the data is worth
nothing to the individuals; these new owners then harness the data to obtain
large profits. Current privacy-enhancing technologies are beginning to allow
individuals to control and share less information. However, not sharing
individuals' personal information at all could lead to Personal Data Blight, in
which the potential of personal data in applications that benefit all of
society remains forever latent. In this paper, we propose Personal Data
Enfranchisement as a middle ground, empowering individuals to control the
sharing of their personal information to shift the business flows of personal
information. Based on these insights, we propose a model to gradually and
incrementally make a shift from our current situation towards one of Personal
Data Enfranchisement. Finally, we present a roadmap and some challenges towards
achieving this bold vision.
