Those of us who are well-aware of data harvesting still forget about it all the time; it isn't at the forefront of our attention when we're shopping on Amazon or watching videos on Youtube. at a store you pull money out of your wallet, all the elements of the exchange are at the top of your attention, and when it's over it's over.

data collection is constant, has far-reaching effects on the future, and we have no intuition about the manipulation we're opening ourselves up to.

data commodification is very materially different from exchanging a currency for a physical good; and i think it's wrong to lose that distinction with a metaphor that's too simplistic.

I see your point but we are commenting on an article that is talking about "data dividends" :)

If FB gave people a rebate in the amount of their net profit, the whole transaction would round out to FB operating and people getting it for free, so it's not obviously that bad of a deal for users, at least not with profit as the metric.

As anecdata, if you offered me instagram without ads for $10 / year I wouldn't even blink before accepting it. Yet I've also bought a half dozen things from their ads for > $50 over the last few years, which is likely more valuable to them. Or more specifically, makes their ad platform more valuable to their ad-buying business customers.

Also keep in mind that some percent of that revenue is from other things (ads for example). They could still make ad revenue on paid users, just marginally less.

i worked with a company that tracks you and your facial expressions as you move thru the store. they analysed that data to show new products and move things around.

There are a couple problems with this that I can see. First, given that the transaction is not exchanged using dollars, we don't know if we are getting ripped off. One of the useful signals that money sends is uniform price discovery. Maybe we as consumers are leaving a lot of money on the table.

Second, it's a gray economy that escapes taxation. If Google can conduct a significant fraction of its business in an untaxed gray zone, while General Motors must account and pay all suppliers for the taxes they must pay to the government, then that's a market distortion in favor of Google. This is why bartering at large scales is illegal, unless of course you're an internet company.

You don’t walk around all day evaluating the rest of your purchases based on COGS, you do it based on the value you receive in return.