With all the talk about data privacy and the capturing of data, it may come as a surprise to some of you that some millennials are considering selling their personal information.
Real data ownership will mean having all your information from political ideas, to skin-care preferences and medical records in one place so you can decide who gets to access it and on what terms. That could mean selling it, granting limited use in exchange for a service (like Facebook), or simply keeping it private. The point is to have control. As part of this trend, Facebook is considering offering an ad-free version of its service to clients who are willing to pay.
According to Australian Financial Review, Alice Liogier wants to put a price on her data. The 23-year-old graduate student from Paris is researching the commercial use of personal information in the age of big data and she’s reached a controversial conclusion: If people really do own their data, then they should be allowed to sell it. Regulators from Brussels to Beijing are trying to curb the use of personal information and many Facebook users have been reviewing their privacy settings in recent weeks in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But Liogier argues that entrepreneurs, officials and executives who want to get to grips with the next phase of the big data era need to look further. It’s not about privacy, she says, it’s about ownership and control.
“The debate right now is focused on data protection and privacy – that’s where fears have crystallised,” Liogier says. “But selling data and data ownership is the next big topic, and probably the most important topic.”
Let’s be real here. We know that Facebook and Google’s online empires are built on data they signed away without any monetary compensation. The next step will be thinking about the alternatives, argues Liogier, who defended her masters thesis at Sciences Po in Paris last month and will start a management consulting job after the summer.
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