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Comment by citilife | Hacker News Reader

These companies use your data to make money. Paying you would mean they'd have to make more than they pay you from the addition of said data.

Today, I suspect the benefit of having said data is probably unknown. This data is probably only valuable in aggregate to determine trends.

Showing you a random advertisement vs an advertisement based on the page info vs an advertisement with your data included. I suspect an advertisement based on the page info is 90+% of the value.

That being said, they can't truly pay you meaningful amounts for your data and answer to their shareholders. That's why it's not really done yet.

Plus, they dont' need to in many cases. The whole internet is designed to collect all this data from you, without your consent being necessary.

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> Today, I suspect the benefit of having said data is probably unknown. This data is probably only valuable in aggregate to determine trends.

One of the biggest purchasers of this data is private bounty hunters. It’s definitely useful to them, both in real time and “recent time”.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43z3dn/hundreds-bounty-hu...

> Paying you would mean they'd have to make more than they pay you from the addition of said data.

> This data is probably only valuable in aggregate to determine trends.

I disagree with this data point only because their current profits are being generated because they do not have to pay their data producers. And while I agree with the sentiment that the data is only valuable in aggregate, this doesn't mean my data is worth $0.00. Its still worth pennies, so maybe instead of $20, I earn $5, or less. The point is I'm paid for it. An analogy I had while I was driving over this comment is the equivalent to, say, an orange tree. A single orange is not as valuable as an "aggregate" of oranges.

In the current data economy, companies have maintenance expenses for their "orange harvesters", but not for the oranges themselves. Again, this has often brought up points of "you are using their service, its their data", but I'd say a) this bill clearly shows that some people do not agree with that sentiment, and b) (to continue with the farm analogy) this is where something like share farming [1] would be a usable model.

[1] https://dairy.ahdb.org.uk/technical-information/business-man...

> "This data is probably only valuable in aggregate to determine trends."

Aafaik, when the data is available on the free market that means anyone can buy it. Anyone includes your favorite three-letter intelligence agencies.

Imagine that. Your personal data without a wiretap or other legal authorization.

No thanks.

The value of a targeted ad is a lot higher than just +10%

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