I've had this discussion with people before. It both sounds good and not depending on the viewpoint. The good is already spoken about in the article - I generate data that a company is in turn using to make money. The analogy I have used before is imagine if I owned land and ate apples on that land. If the apple seeds I spit out grew, I'd have apple trees. It would be bothersome to me if the state came in and sold all the apples the tree grew and I never saw a dime. Refraining from political discussion, I'm upset someone else is profiting off my work. No different than using my uploaded picture to train image processing systems.

Now the bad, how much am I REALLY worth? Online surveys pay out pennies at most for my "opinion". I'm a middle-class, white, male, computer scientist - the market is literally flooded with data from people like me. My data is only worth something if I was, say, a single Hispanic mother or some other niche demographic, and that's only because of their rarity.

Now, this is where the discussion typically leads to science fiction. I think this would be a great use of blockchain currency and let the market drive the value of your data. If there's a shortage of, say, beach pictures (because why not), then you're Instagram data might be of value. Likewise, the GPS locations of an underrepresented demographic is suddenly worth a more because its hard to get that kind of data.

But I think the major issue still falls back to how much its all worth. The article says $20,000, which nicely would support arguments for a living wage. I generate the data that runs the world, so pay me enough to live it in. However, what if the data isn't worth $20k?