• aleph@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Big tech companies making vast profits off of users providing data for free instead of paying workers wages in exchange for manufacturing goods is only going to deepen the disparity of wealth in society.

    What we desperately need is essentially a Digital Bill of Rights so that we can legally own our own data.

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      you’d have to rally everyone against the most profitable businesses right now for this to happen.

      • aleph@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Private ownership ≠ capitalism. Monopoly is a critique of free market capitalism, which naturally leads to a concentration of wealth for those who hold all the assets. Giving people ownership of their own data would help redistribute that wealth in a more equitable way.

        No, it won’t fix the underlying problem of Capitalism, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.

        • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Private ownership ≠ capitalism.

          Right. It’s private ownership of capital; aka the means of production. You’re saying that data should be owned because it can be used productively. That’s exactly capitalism for capitalism’s sake.

          This is a typical economically right-wing approach. There is a problem, so you just create a new kind of property and call it done. The magic of the market takes care of it, or something. I don’t understand why one would expect a different result from trying the same thing.

          • aleph@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            The point of it is to redistribute wealth using the existing capitalist framework, which is a left-wing endeavour.

            • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              But it doesn’t redistribute wealth. To do that, you have to take wealth from somewhere and spread it elsewhere.

              • aleph@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                Right, so instead of big tech companies keeping all the profits made from utilizing user data, a big chunk of it goes back into the pockets of the users themselves. Like a cooperative organization that shares profits with its workers.

                  • aleph@lemm.ee
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                    5 months ago

                    Yes, and legislation that forces companies to pay higher wages (or in this case, royalties given back to users) is itself a form of wealth distribution that can help to reduce income inequality.

                    We can talk about the overthrow of capitalism, if you like, but that’s a whole separate issue.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        you mean theres no infinite growth and eventually it would lead to overextracting wealth from the people? just preposterous.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s almost as if you could look at countries containing 1/6 of the world’s population and see where all of this is going.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      You already own everything by default unless you forfeit your rights by implicitly accepting terms and conditions of a specific service.

      • aleph@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        So basically don’t interact with 99% of online platforms, then?

        • Aux@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yes. That’s the whole point of them: you give away your information and most of your rights. Even if it’s something like Lemmy, open source, free, no ads, etc, you’re still forfeiting your rights. Because otherwise you cannot share anything publicly. Only private and inaccessible platforms can protect your rights. For example, a private Telegram channel protected by a password and with forced E2E encryption might protect your rights (I’m not sure about Telegram ToS, so I’m not 100% sure), but public platforms - never. They’re public, that’s the point.

          • aleph@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            That’s fine for the tech-literate minority of us, but totally unrealistic for the average citizen.