• aleph@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Big tech companies making vast profits off of users providing data for free instead of paying workers wages in exchange for manufacturing goods is only going to deepen the disparity of wealth in society.

      What we desperately need is essentially a Digital Bill of Rights so that we can legally own our own data.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        you’d have to rally everyone against the most profitable businesses right now for this to happen.

        • aleph@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Private ownership ≠ capitalism. Monopoly is a critique of free market capitalism, which naturally leads to a concentration of wealth for those who hold all the assets. Giving people ownership of their own data would help redistribute that wealth in a more equitable way.

          No, it won’t fix the underlying problem of Capitalism, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.

          • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Private ownership ≠ capitalism.

            Right. It’s private ownership of capital; aka the means of production. You’re saying that data should be owned because it can be used productively. That’s exactly capitalism for capitalism’s sake.

            This is a typical economically right-wing approach. There is a problem, so you just create a new kind of property and call it done. The magic of the market takes care of it, or something. I don’t understand why one would expect a different result from trying the same thing.

            • aleph@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              The point of it is to redistribute wealth using the existing capitalist framework, which is a left-wing endeavour.

              • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                But it doesn’t redistribute wealth. To do that, you have to take wealth from somewhere and spread it elsewhere.

                • aleph@lemm.ee
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                  5 months ago

                  Right, so instead of big tech companies keeping all the profits made from utilizing user data, a big chunk of it goes back into the pockets of the users themselves. Like a cooperative organization that shares profits with its workers.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You already own everything by default unless you forfeit your rights by implicitly accepting terms and conditions of a specific service.

        • aleph@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          So basically don’t interact with 99% of online platforms, then?

          • Aux@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yes. That’s the whole point of them: you give away your information and most of your rights. Even if it’s something like Lemmy, open source, free, no ads, etc, you’re still forfeiting your rights. Because otherwise you cannot share anything publicly. Only private and inaccessible platforms can protect your rights. For example, a private Telegram channel protected by a password and with forced E2E encryption might protect your rights (I’m not sure about Telegram ToS, so I’m not 100% sure), but public platforms - never. They’re public, that’s the point.

            • aleph@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              That’s fine for the tech-literate minority of us, but totally unrealistic for the average citizen.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The amount is incredibly vaste. If we go by quantity no one here is getting a dime, and if we go by quality…it’s probably the same. Not to mention the logistics of getting everyone their penny or two.

      And the data right now belongs to everyone. For example, Reddit technically ‘owns’ it’s content, but anyone can use it for ml purposes.

      It’s why a lot of these campaigns about data ownership are being pushed. If the gov passes laws, it won’t be to the benefit of the individual but the data aggregators like Reddit, Shutterstock, etc.

      They are playing on emotions and manipulating people into thinking killing AI FOSS and erecting data barriers is in their interest.

    • zoey@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      Don’t mind my tipsy Friday rambling, but this is actually an interesting thing to think about. Kinda wonder how that would work, if it were to be real. Maybe there’d be a single centralized data broker, or we could choose from a list of vendors, like how sharing cookies works.
      Would it be per a specific amount of data, identifiable data, what if we just dumped 10 years of chats into it.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Maybe there’d be a single centralized data broker

        Hmm like a government office? With the power to adhere marks to ip that prevent copying and granting rights to people? Like a department of copy-right or something

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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        5 months ago

        But then think of how much money the big platforms wouldn’t have to bully around users.

    • Turun@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      I am watching a lot of YouTube. Premium would cost 13€/month, or 130€ if paid yearly. I use an ad blocker and don’t want any of the extra features that are provided to premium users. So until they manage to make unblockable ads, 130€/year could very reasonably be considered profit for the act of selling my data.