Empresas como Google e Facebook ganham milhões de dólares processando uma matéria prima que elas obtêm gratuitamente: nossos dados pessoais. As pessoas não se importam em deixar no Facebook indícios de suas preferências , pensamentos, atitudes e amizades. Mas isto vale muito dinheiro depois de processado por softwares de extração e análise de dados. Agora começam a surgir pessoas que acham que as empresas que usam nossos dados deveriam pagar por eles, como mostra o texto publicado pelo professor norte-ameircano Tim Wu, da universidade Columbia, de Nova Iorque.
Para quem lê inglês, transcrevemos a seguir os três primeiros parágrafos do artigo do professor Wu:
The most valuable innovation at the heart of Facebook was probably not the social network so much as the creation of a tool that convinced hundreds of millions of people to hand over so much personal data for so little in return.
Not long ago, Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist who studies social media, wrote that she wanted to pay for Facebook. More precisely, she wants the company to offer a cash option (about twenty cents a month, she calculates) for people who value their privacy, but also want a rough idea of what their friends’ children look like.
In return for Facebook agreeing not to record what she does—and to not show her targeted ads—she would give them roughly the amount of money that they make selling the ads that she sees right now. Not surprisingly, her request seems to have been ignored. But the question remains: just why doesn’t Facebook want Tufekci’s money? One reason, I think, is that it would expose the arbitrage scheme at the core of Facebook’s business model and the ridiculous degree to which people undervalue their personal data…..
O restante do texto está disponível em : http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/facebook-should-pay-all-of-us