-
I am increasingly doubtful of our valuation of individual user data. This is one of the fundamental supporting arguments in the discussion about how to deal with surveillance advertising and I think it goes unchallenged too easily....Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 4 Retweets
❤️ 27 Favorites
Mood 0
-
The argument usually goes like this: "paying users makes no sense as a regulatory measure or internal control because the individual user's data is worth, at most, $5 and this isn't even where the fundamental value comes from. The fundamental value comes out of aggregation."...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood +3 🙂
-
But without realizing it, Zuboff re-frames this valuation when she talks about the "data surplus". This valuation assumes, like she does, that the data surplus comes out of the creation of new products on the back of user experiences. Hwang abstracts it as financial products...On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
But when we talk about surplus in the capital system, it's often to note that it is created by the difference between the labor's compensation and its actual value as extracted by the capitalists at the top of the system. This frame provides a different method of valuation...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +2 🙂
-
What if the model for valuing an individual user's data was built on the same model as valuing an individual laborer's contribution to a car, by looking at the excess of cost, including all the contributing expenditures to increase that cost like sales...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood +3 🙂
-
It's even a better model to understand the extreme wealth of big tech. They do not pay for the labor that creates user data (that's the work we do on platforms through negotiating systems intended to intervene and push us to create valuable user data) and...Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood +7 🙂
-
under the auction system of advertising they do not actually pay for the labor that sells their product either. So the user's share is not and should not be calculated on their individual production, but on their value-added PLUS surplus-value...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood 0
-
What is the new value? I'm not sure, but I suspect if we were to change the valuation process to reexamine individual users not with the manufacturing cost of data products but instead the manufacturing cost PLUS a fair share of the yield that wouldn't be possible w/o them...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
The result would be that when we talk about how much an individual's data is worth, the number would likely be much higher. It's weird we don't approach it this way, when we talk about the fair share for labor this give & take between manufacturing cost and yield is a big factorPermalink On twitter.com
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood +4 🙂
-
In order to follow this particular calculation you have to accept Zuboff's concept of data surplus but reject the idea that Google has somehow created a non-continuous version of the means of production that is an all new economic method, which seems reasonable to reject.Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -1 🙁
-
Maybe I'm misreading my economists here but it does seem like a reasonable model built on preexisting work, one that I haven't seen anywhere yet. Curious if anyone has?Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +3 🙂
-
(Also, you have to reject the concept that your data is "raw material" as Zuboff claims and Hwang implies, but instead is the result of labor, just in case that wasn't clear)Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood 0