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Calls Mount to Ease Big Tech's Grip on Your Data


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The corporate wealth of tech giants like Google and Facebook is built on harvesting and commercializing the information supplied by the online multitudes.

Academics, economists, technologists, and lawmakers are seeking to reimagine the current environment in which a few large technology companies have overwhelming control of their users' data.

Credit: CASEZY/Getty Images/iStockphoto

A growing number of academics, economists, technologists, and lawmakers are working—sometimes on different paths—to reimagine the current environment in which a few large technology companies, like Google and Facebook, have overwhelming control of their users' data.

Some people have done research to put a value on personal data, while others propose recognizing such data as a tradable asset in order to create an efficient market.

The rising calls for a better data bargain between companies and users come during an intensifying backlash against Big Tech and its handling of user data around the world.

Last month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) co-sponsored a bill that would require big Internet companies to regularly inform users of what personal data they collect and to disclose the value of that data.

From The New York Times
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Abstracts Copyright © 2019 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA


 

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