Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

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I think the basic premise is that the status quo of transactions (free service for user data) has resulted in an imbalance of power for tech companies, and that by increasing the cost of acquisition, users have a means to collectively negotiate better "market rates" from the tech companies for services rendered. It can be regarded as similar to "unionizing" the users.

It would be interesting to get some preliminary guidance on what tech companies would do in response (start charging for premium services? only give premium services to the most valuable users?)

Andrew Yang has also mentioned in prior podcasts on UBI (Freakanomics, etc.) that probably the best way to fund such a program would be proceeds from increased taxation on tech companies.

I for one would love to see cable companies turned into public utilities. But that goal is not mutually exclusive from the goal to give the consumer some more power over the big tech conglomerates.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, opinions my own.

> only give premium services to the most valuable users?

Almost certainly. What people often miss in this discussion is that advertising is progressive--it's a transfer of value from richer people who can and will pay for both the service being used and the product that is being advertised to poorer people who cannot.

By convincing them to buy shit they don't need. Very progressive.

You can have a condescending attitude about it if you want, but the reality is advertising-backed business models make services available to people who would not otherwise be able to afford them.

The ramifications of creating barriers to advertising is ultimately taking these services away from the poor.

Within that statement is an ideological assumption that the only way to provide services to people is through a for profit venture. We worship market based solutions except we have things like taxes to build public infrastructure without a profit motive.

I'm not making an ideological assumptions there. I'm just referring to the status quo. The proposals I've seen are along the lines of "let's ban or add obstacles to advertising-based models", not "let's build a publicly funded Google search". I'm not saying the latter is an impossibility, but it's a much larger undertaking, and if you do the former without the latter, the effect will be as I said above--the poor lose access.

Regarding the "market rates", you're right, it does sound like unionizing. I suppose it shouldn't be as much of an issue if there was more competition so that companies would need to offer "better free services" in exchange for data. With network effects, that's hard to achieve, though.

Something where a switch is easier and doesn't cut you off from the old platform would be nice, similar to how domains or phone numbers work: you own your profile and all the data, but you can switch platforms at any time without losing contacts or abilities, keeping the competition between platform-providers alive. I have no idea how that would work out though. Does FB have actually any value besides the fact that everybody you know is there? If you were able to connect with them while they're on FB and you're not, would a lot of people decide to stay in FB because it's such a great platform?

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