By Rami Kanaan
The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data
There was a time when oil companies ruled the world. Oil was the world’s most valuable resource in the 18th century and the functionality key of everything from the government to local companies. But this important commodity may have a new replacement: Data.
In short, data are raw ingredients collected from various sources from which statistical, diagnostic and predictive analysis can be performed for different purposes. Over the past 30 years, data has been generating wealth at a breakneck pace. With the evolution of Internet, computers and many other devices, it has created a human reliance on technology, underlining the importance of data.
Data, more valuable than ever
Apple, Amazon, Alphabet Inc., Microsoft and Facebook are among the most valuable companies in the world that either directly generate profit from data or are empowered by data at their cores. They know more about our daily interactions with gadgets than we ever will. These companies are collecting vast amounts of data from probably even hundreds of millions of users every single day.
Who is producing data?
We’re all producing data. As you are reading this article, you’ve probably executed a couple of searches to land you on this page. Also I assume that you’ve typed a few queries into Google in the past few days and have several social media accounts. Each query you submit on the web is a new piece of data created.
Even with all the benefits we reap from mobile phones, they are a liability in the human life with the majority of social media usage growth is projected to come from mobiles phones. It is estimated that by 2023, there will be around 17 billion mobile devices in the world.
Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide and its accessibility through multiple mobile apps as well as its mobile website plays a large part in its success. It was founded in 2004 by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Primarily, the service was available only for Harvard students but later expanded to regional universities such as Yale and Stanford. During its fourth quarter in 2019, Facebook reported almost 1.66 billion daily active users.
In January 2020, 98 percent of active user accounts worldwide accessed the social network via mobile phone.
With these devices, we’re producing a huge amount of data, and we’ll be producing exponentially more in the near future.
Facebook generates billions of dollars of revenue, with most of it coming from advertising. The platform allow advertisers to target users at scale with an incredible precision, which is why Facebook is dominating the online industry.
Facebook generates the majority of its revenue from digital advertising, thanks to the data it collects from its 2 billion users. It accumulated an impressive $55.8 billion in annual ad revenues in 2018. Almost all of Facebook’s ad revenue is generated via mobile.
Mishandling data and privacy violation
Privacy has with time and technology become an illusion and a very personal and nuanced issue. Any application you use whether it is Whatsapp and/or Instagram, both applications purchased by Facebook for $1bn and $19bn respectively, or any other social media account, or any website you visit installs a cookie on your device which acts like a spy to track your every move and action on the web. While surfing the web, you are unintentionally leaving your digital footprints which tech companies can monetize your data. The same holds true when you click on an ad or spent time watching it on Instagram or Facebook. Facebook monitors your every move across the web, even when you log out. It keeps track of the sites you visit, when and what time you visit and shows the advertisements accordingly. This goes to show that data has become its most valuable asset.
While data is valuable, trust must be the greatest value. In late 2018, Facebook faced a huge scandal concerning data privacy in connection with Cambridge Analytica (CA), a London based political data-analysis that worked on the 2016 Trump campaign. The firm is being accused of improperly gaining access to more than 50 million Facebook profiles. The data was acquired via a third-party app called “thisisyourdigitallife” created by Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher at the University of Cambridge. The application was downloaded by more than 300,000 people that were required to take a quiz. In exchange for taking the quiz, users received a small monetary reward. But in order to take the quiz, users must login with their Facebook account giving the application access to your personal information including the posts you have liked and your friend’s list. At that time, Facebook’s platform API allowed developers to access information about you and your friends. Was Facebook in the wrong?
On the one hand, the method they developed to provide user data to corporations was potentially in violation of the law but on the other hand, some responsibility could be attributed to the user. When the service is free, the user is the product. Facebook would not have become one of the most valuable companies in the world if it didn’t have something to offer advertisers. When you sign up for Facebook, you have agreed to the Terms, Data and Cookie Policy, which most users ignore. It is up for the user to decide what to share or post on Facebook, most of them share personal information like where they live, where they are working, where they went to school, what they’re doing at any given moment. When you share any kind of information, the user must bear some responsibility.
In result of the scandal, Facebook saw an unsurprising 66% decline in users’ trust. Also Facebook began to block applications from accessing user data 90 days after non-use and access to information about your friends has became prohibited. For developers that did have access to all information about you and your friends, Facebook is going to demand that they submit to an audit or be kicked off the platform.
Data Ownership
So far, we have seen how data has become a very valuable asset to tech companies. But why must it only be valuable to tech companies? Aren’t we all producing the data that made these companies successful? Should it not be valuable to us also? Or are we just walking raw materials for those tech companies?
Data is extremely valuable but is controlled and owned. Facebook will continue to provide you its service for free in exchange for the right to collect and use your data for advertisement purposes. The public discourse is focused on the regulatory and privacy issue when it comes to data ownership.
But what if we look at data ownership in another way? What if we could benefit from what we create in the new digital economy?
Data ownership is a legal concept where you can create, possess, use, modify, share, destroy, trade or sell your asset at a price set by you. What if we give that same definition to individuals’ data, so individuals can use or destroy our data or we trade it at our chosen price? If you’re not willing to sell your data for any price, just to remind you that you’re already selling your data for free in exchange for a service if you’re connected to Facebook. If you control your data, you could either to donate your data to a medical research that is very meaningful to you or set a price tag for it for companies that would want to use your data.
There a tools that allow you to take back some control.
1. Brave Browser
Released on November 13th 2018, Brave Browser lets you surf the web without installing cookies that tracks and monitor your every move. You are protected by Brave Shields that blocks all data-grabbing ads and trackers and cleans your digital footprint that you leave behind. With Brave, your personal data is kept private and your attention is rewarded. When users opt in to accept ads, Brave rewards uses with “basic attention tokens” that can redeem content behind paywalls from publishers. Brave Ads do not collect information about you, you control the ads you want to see.
2. Universal Basic Data Income (UBDI)
UBDI helps people to make money by sharing anonymous insights through their data for companies that can use them for market research. Whenever a company purchases a study, the user get paid in cash and UBDI points to track their contributions for special rewards and voting rights. UBDI changes the game by protecting your data, respecting your choices, and making sure you are compensated for the billions of dollars being generated from every swipe, click and step you take!
3. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that does not store your personal information or follow you around with ads or track your personal browsing history. Instead it gives all users the same search results instead of based on your personal browsing records
Conclusion
Data is to the information age as is oil is to the industrial age, an immensely, untapped value asset. Oil has transformed the world into a better place by generating an extensive amount of wealth and prosperity. Oil was the key to the smooth functionality of everything. Data may holds the similar potential since it is responsible for creating companies like Facebook. However it needs to be ethically extracted, distributed and monetized. We’re in a digital economy where data is extremely valuable, without it progress would halt.
