In order to share some of the captured value from data collection, a monetary value would need to be determined. This is problematic because data collection practices are synonymous with privacy—assigning a value to privacy undermines the notion of privacy altogether.
Further, a data dividend normalizes and even encourages exploitative behaviors by the largest data collectors. The groups that will gain the most from the small amount that would be shared (low-income, mostly communities of color) could be encouraged to provide even more data to try and maximize the dividend. This policy would therefore have the opposite effect of promoting privacy to the most exploited groups.
Read the article from the EFF.
See also:
- Privacy is the right to be imperfect, would a data dividend indirectly increase the pressure to be perfect?
- A data dividend fits into the more general framework of social cooling
- The internet has American values encoded—if the US passes laws that discourage privacy in favor of a dividend, other countries will follow.
Links to this note
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Legitimized Client-Side Scanning
The reaction to the recent announcement that Apple would begin scanning iCloud photos for CSAM was not just because of privacy concerns, but because it legitimizes other service providers to do the same.