Paying for Clear Use

And not being the product sold to advertisers

I give a lot of data to Google and other service provides. We all do. It’s difficult to avoid it.

However, over the next five years, we’re going to see a renaissance of private services that offer many of the capabilities of Google, Amazon, and others but for a fee and with the bonus that all the data belongs to the users. Driving this renaissance will be users flocking away from major services as they perceive misuse of their data. The other trend will be users paying the larger companies to opt-out of ad-supported services so that their data is private and not used to manipulate them.

What might be further catalysts to this movement?

• A scandal involving a data breach by a provider where malicious agents used the data to harm users
• A scandal where the companies manipulated users in a way that was unexpected
• The emergence of a particular strong AI that can influence people so effectively that they become zombies to whatever ad is being shown to them.
• New AI being democratized to the point where smaller players for a fraction of the cost can offer the same services as big players

The benefit of paying is that we know what we’re paying for, more or less, whereas with the free models, well, we don’t really know how are data is being used to benefit the provider to cover the costs of the service. It’s not likely providing free service for altruistic reasons and those might not align with our desires or morals.