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Data Dividend Project

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70 pointssnake1179 comments

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23601333.

Normally we'd have merged the other way, since this is the canonical source and was posted earlier, but people are complaining about not being able to read the site.

> Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator.

Cutting off entire countries at the level of firewall rules seems almost dehumanizing.

Got the same message. Seems like people are more interested in paying for restrictions to others than restricting their own data intake.

Ironic that they are (apparently) geofencing this, given that Californians being geofenced out of websites is a likely unintended consequence of their proposal.

I wonder why in the current year™ this isn't considered racist too.

EDIT: I'm getting downvoted and I don't know why. When Trump issued travel ban on citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen it was considered racist. I don't see how banning users from other countries using some other arbitrary measures is any less racist.

It will be just give it time.

At previous positions I've banned entire countries like China from our backend. The truth is some companies do zero business in Country X, so it makes sense to outright ban them to avoid the headache.

You should see the traffic I would get from people in china trying to hack in our backends. The funniest bits were seeing people trying to hit /phpmyadmin

Same here. Looks like wall fetishism has become a common theme in US presidential campaigns.

Unable to access this site in Hong Kong: "Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator."

For anyone else with this problem, here's an archive link: https://archive.is/h3PWJ

The online "user data" business model is identical to the highway, or the magazine, or the mall, or the airport business model. You create traffic by providing access at or below cost, and make money by selling ads to all the traffic you create. Should highways, airports or magazines pay users money from the revenue they generate by selling ads around their high traffic properties?

Another consideration is about the proportion of an ad's cost that can be attributable to the data these companies have, which depends on the degree to which the ad is targeted or not. For example, are keyword-tied search ads and the money Google makes from them related at all to any data they may have on you?

Furthermore, any attempt to account for the "price" of used data (basically just something to id you online) should be matched by a valuation of the true value this companies offer in compensation. In the case of google: what's the value to users from having fast, accurate search; petabytes upon petabytes of free content (from the mundane to the educational) on youtube ($5 - $9/mo if you go by Disney+/Netflix prices); and entire office suite ($5 - $12/mo looking at many SaaS/Office 365) kept up to date; a quality email client ($99/yr for Hey); a free OS for your phone and computer (Android/Chromebooks); a high quality global mapping service w/ turn-by-turn GPS ($300 devices back in the day?); a Calendar ($3 - $9/mo looking at competitors), 15GB of cloud storage; unlimited storage for all your photos in the cloud (say the average user has 50Gb of photos, thats $3 - $9/mo).... and I could go on. In the case of Facebook I believe there is genuine value in having a directory of all your friends/acquaintances/family, and a repository for memories either there or on instagram.

I see the techlash and policies like this data-dividend as a very natural impulse from society to get a spoonfull from the honeypot these companies created. Just because it is natural doesn't mean it is right. Our economic model is premised on the idea that the fruits of your labor/property/ideas are yours to keep, however spectacular they may be. Keep in mind that this policy does nothing to change the way this companies operate, or question their overall effects on society.

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