What If Social Network Could Pay You For Post?

I have been asked ample of times that will social media be able to pay us for our data in future? And look, what’s coming up next? Social networking has been considered as one of the most popular online activities happening across the globe. For Facebook users especially the ones who are still furious about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, there are currently two options to protest and protect your data. There are two options available:

First, stay and have little control over your data privacy

Second, leave and forfeit the convenience and connectivity social media brings

But what if there was a third option? What if the companies profiting from user-generated data had to pay you for it? And what if each user got to decide whom to sell their data to and at what price?

Who owns your data?

At its core, data ownership is not a privacy issue- it’s an economic issue. Personal data is sold, bought, and traded among companies all the time, often without the individual’s consent or awareness. By allowing individuals access to the market, we could allow users to translate their outputs into economic goods.

By doing this, people could control over their data from both a financial and privacy perspective. The thin line between private and personal is nuanced, and that boundary represents different trade-offs to different people. For example, millions of Chinese business owners who can’t get microloans from traditional banks might be quite happy to offer their personal data to gain a fast grant from machine-learning-empowered micro-lending businesses like Dumiao. However, many European users with less restrictions might feel more reluctant to give their personal data away for this purpose.

Rapidly developing blockchain technology is offering methods for us to be able to trade our data. Some pioneering companies are building infrastructures to allow individuals to trade personal data, while others are creating tokens with clear economic values as an incentive to collect specific types of data.

• Wibson and Ocean Protocal are building a decentralized data marketplace that would allow individuals to sell their personal data anonymously and securely.
• Protocols such as IOTA and Moeco are specifically built to enable a more decentralized ecosystem for data collection, usage, and exchanges.
• Nano Vision, a startup founded by Steven Papermaster, who served US president George W. Bush as a tech advisor, is creating a token to incentivize molecular data collection through microchips.

Nishtha Singh works as a Presales Manager with a software development company named TatvaSoft UK. She relishes writing about various technology trends, management and much more.