Elettra Bietti (Harvard University, Law School) has posted Locked-in Data Production: User Dignity and Capture in the Platform Economy on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
As public attention around data governance grows, a number of proposals are emerging each purporting to lead to a more just data ecosystem. Most prominent amongst these seem to be solutions that seek to compensate individuals for their data through monetary rewards. These range in scope and aim from the creation of private ownership rights over personal data, to the creation of a new market for trading personal data with platforms, to the creation of a technical layer which would enable consumers to better control information about themselves. This paper argues that a normative misdirection underlies these proposals. Taking a market-based mechanism that compensates individuals for their data contributions as being the primary means of correcting the data economy’s harms – surveillance, commodification, exclusion – is not just impossible but perpetuates harm. The distribution of economic benefits is inextricably linked to how other rights and harms are being shared and to the way the relationship of dependency between users and platforms is structured. The former cannot be justified without a prior deep understanding and scrutiny of the latter.
Highly recommended.