Get Paid for Our Data
Over the last decade, there’s been a profound shift in the fundamental underpinnings of our economy. Today, the commercialization of our personal data accounts for 7% of our economy - and growing. In New York, that equates to more than $160 billion generated by the sale, transfer, and commodification of our data: our personal traits and characteristics, our clicks and our likes. But companies that profit off our data - and the labor we perform to create data - don’t compensate us for it.
Every day, tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and countless others, capitalize on the commercialization of personal data and the unpaid labor of billions of people to create their products and services through targeted advertising, advanced artificial intelligence, and research studies, among others. Through these practices, data is collected, processed, and sold in a variety of ways - real-time bidding, the aggregation and access of anonymous user information, as well as the
creation of scores connected to individual credit, health risk, and more.
The Data Economy Labor Compensation and Accountability Act
My Data Labor Compensation and Accountability Act would properly compensate the general public for the value of their personal data and the data they create by creating the Office of Consumer Data Protection, setting up a system for required data activities, such as the quantity of data, collected, and average revenue per user, and implementing a 2% tax on all revenues generated from the sale of New York residents' data. The tax revenue would be invested into programs to improve digital literacy, workforce development, and funding for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) programs.
The data economy reaps enormous profits from our information and our online labor. Just like we’d expect factory owners to pay their workers for their labor, and energy companies to pay for the value of the resources they extract from the environment, it’s time for us to be compensated for the value we create in the 21st century data economy.