New research finds Andrew Yang's plan for social media firms to buy users' data would cost Facebook 'a whopping $250 billion' — and that many users wouldn't sell at any price (OKTA, FB)

Andrew Yang

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang wrote Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times that social media companies should pay users for the use of their data.
New research on Wednesday that polled 2,000 Americans on their views on privacy found that would cost Facebook 'a whopping $250 billion' — given that 31% of respondents would want $100 or more for a company to access their social media data.
The survey from identity-protection company Okta also found that 71% of Americans don't trust the government with their data, the highest level of distrust among six nations surveyed.
The survey also found 84% of Americans are worried that data collection for COVID-19 containment will sacrifice too much of their privacy.
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One day after former presidential candidate Andrew Yang floated a plan for consumers to sell their data to big social media companies, research that includes a survey of 2,000 Americans flatly finds that "consumers aren't buying it."

On Tuesday, Yang wrote in an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times that the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the state's recent privacy legislation, "makes it possible to create a union of consumers that can collectively set a price for the use of their data, negotiate with tech companies and ensure that compensation is passed on to consumers in a data dividend."

Data Americans are willing to sell and at what price - Okta

But a survey released Wednesday by the $24 billion identity-security company Okta shows 31% of Americans want $100 or more for a company to access their browsing history or social media data. "These price tags don't bode well for companies trying to make a policy like this work. Facebook, for example, has 2.5 billion users. Paying each of those users $100 comes out to a whopping $250 billion," the survey said.

And that's not to mention that 37% said that they wouldn't sell their personal information at any price, with another 27% unsure about the prospect. And users are willing to draw lines in the sand: 76% of respondents said that there's at least one type of personal information they wouldn't sell. 41% of respondents wouldn't sell their social media data in particular at all.

Yang floated the idea previously, and the survey zeroed in on the issue championed by the Democrat and former tech executive, noting "Yang proposed this type of system during his campaign, suggesting that consumers should 'receive a share of the economic value generated from [their] data.' Consumers aren't buying it."

Yang did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"At first glance, Andrew Yang's privacy policy seems like a great idea – companies get the data they need to innovate and consumers get paid for it," said Okta CEO Todd McKinnon in an interview. "But even when lured by compensation, many Americans are uncomfortable with sharing their data, and those who are comfortable with it aren't going to be convinced by a couple of bucks. I fully support passing a federal privacy law that gives consumers more control over their data while also empowering businesses to innovate, but Yang's model isn't the solution."

Touchy subjects

The survey also focused on other pressing social issues at what Okta says is a difficult time. "When you have stress and when you have a lot of uncertainty in the world, that affects people's views on privacy, and these are important issues," McKinnon said. "Contact-tracing of COVID-19 could be a life and death issue. Trust in the handling of voter information is fundamental to democracy. The issues don't get much bigger. But oftentimes people don't even know how their data is being collected, or what their rights are."

The survey – which polled 2,000 people each in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and France –reflects Americans' distrust of government data-handling. Seventy-one percent of Americans don't trust the government with their data, the highest level of distrust among the US, UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and France, the report found. Meanwhile 23% of Americans believe the government tracks their offline conversations, by far the highest level of mistrust among the six nations. And 84% of Americans are worried that data collection for COVID-19 containment will sacrifice too much of their privacy.

At the same time, the American public is largely unaware of what data is being collected about their lives. Nearly four out of five Americans polled (78%) don't think a consumer hardware provider such as Fitbit (in the process of being acquired by Google) is tracking their biometric data. Fitbit collects data to provide users with content and for other purposes that users can configure as described here. 75% of Americans don't believe streaming services are collecting information about their online media consumption. (Read the details of Netflix's viewing history controls here.)

The combination of crucial privacy issues and contentious issues such as contact-tracing – using technology to track who has been in contact with the COVID-19 virus – and online voting makes dialogue and policy-making about privacy controls more difficult, McKinnon says. "In that environment it's even harder to get a balanced education and constructive dialogue about what to do with data," he said. "We can't even agree on wearing masks."

New York privacy attorney Jim Koenig of the firm Fenwick & West says Americans have a lot to consider related to handling of their data right now. "Recent events aren't so much introducing privacy as a major concern, but rather underscoring its criticality and accelerating the development and implementation of controls to protect it," he says. Americans are being asked to contribute to the fight against COVID-19 by releasing data on their health and location. "On the other side, there has been a call to limit the capturing and of sharing of individual information given the privacy and security protections that individuals want as we head into the upcoming election and consider changes in law enforcement techniques."

The Okta research report also touches on the handling of voter information. "The complications related to proving one's identity take their toll on democracy," the report says, finding that 14% of Americans say they don't vote because of complications with the registration process.

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