As feds prepare antitrust case, Facebook and Google face a billion-dollar question: Does your data have value?
Billion-dollar industries are built around the collection, compilation and protection of consumers’ personal data — from social-media platforms to e-commerce sites to data brokers.
When Facebook, Instagram and Twitter TWTR, +0.77% sell this data to advertising companies — in the form of billions of dollars a year in collective revenue — users get nothing in return except the free use of the social-media platform. The value of data to companies and hackers provides insight into the contradictions on how much that data is actually worth.
Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, is drafting a bill that would make companies like Facebook and Google inform users on the value of their data. Government lawyers will want to know any court consensus on the worth of someone’s data if they ever opt to file antitrust lawsuits and have to convince a judge that Big Tech needs a breakup.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is calling for a ‘data dividend’ that could make businesses pay consumers for the personal data they provide. Indeed, the antitrust matters in the news might never turn into any cases at all. Facebook, Amazon, and Apple did not reply to a request for comment and a Google spokesman declined to comment. On Tuesday, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, told CBS News CBS, +0.10% that government scrutiny was fair, but “we are not a monopoly.
‘Tech companies have exploited uncertainty around whether data has economic value. They basically use this ambiguity to collect this data.’ Katharina Pistor, Columbia Law School The dismissal bid was “cynical,” according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. They said Facebook denigrates the personally identifiable information it coaxes consumers to provide, but then monetizes that data to generate billions of dollars in revenue, asserting that this information lacks any value to hackers.
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