Safer Internet Day Special: Is Data Dignity the Way Forward for Privacy?

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

Safer Internet Day promotes responsible, respectful, and positive use of online and digital technology on the internet. In an era where consumers are becoming increasingly anxious about their privacy, how can marketers be respectful toward their data and build trust? Data dignity could be the answer. Let’s explore.

February 11 is Safer Internet Day this year. It is a global celebration to inspire conversation around internet safety. The occasion promotes the safe use of digital technology and working toward a positive internet experience.

Why Is Privacy Now a Cause for Concern?

With the digital revolution came purpose-driven collection and use of data. This data is a combination of granular details such as contact information, online browsing and session history, social media consumption, location history, and shopping behavior. It could also track patterns in what you read, listen to, order, and so on.

Data is the fuel that has powered digital engines to craft precisely personalized messages that can give consumers a better online experience – this includes relevant content, marketing messages, entertainment, shopping, etc. Whatever a consumer does online is collated with her past data and present context to serve what interests her the most.

As data collection and personalization increased, users felt that data harnessing, processing, accessing, and sharing was bordering on manipulative. Most users know that their data is being used. However, many remain clueless about:

  • How their data is collected and stored
  • How and by whom is it used
  • How (or whether) they can control their data
  • Can they take economic action around their data
  • How do they protect their data
     

This lack of knowledge and choice over their data causes users to undervalue their data and it creates anxiety about privacy, which fuels distrust. Growing surveillance, tracking, and monitoring by governments and companies have also made privacy a burning issue.

Nuala O’Connor, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, writes about restoring digital dignity for NewEuropeOpens a new window , “the current US legal structure on personal data simply does not reflect the reality that the internet and connected services and devices have been seamlessly integrated into every facet of our society. Our schools, workplaces, homes, automobiles, and personal devices regularly create and collect, and, increasingly, infer, intimate information about us. Everywhere we go, in the real world or online, we leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs that reveal who we know, what we believe, and how we behave. Overwhelmingly, this data falls in the gaps between regulated sectors.

An i-SCOOP articleOpens a new window describes the problem as “With the digital devices, channels and tools people have – generating content and data – they like to be more in control. Not just for the sake of control (alone) but mainly because they have been let down. By businesses, governments, organizations. By decades of dictating them how to buy, consume, communicate, look like, behave and be.

On Safer Internet Day, let’s talk about privacy and data protection.

Learn More: Data Privacy Day 2020: How to Safeguard Customer Data to Build Trust & LoyaltyOpens a new window

How Can Safeguarding User Privacy Benefit Marketers?

Here is why safeguarding privacy and protecting customer data needs to be the marketer’s responsibility:

  1. Controlling one’s data is everyone’s right. When a customer has autonomy over how she creates and manages her data boundaries, she feels more confident about sharing her data with you.
  2. Lack of knowledge on how data is being used can cause customers to get irked by marketing messages that could sound intrusive and manipulative. However, transparency helps users form trusting bonds with brands. This trust helps amplify the impact of your marketing message.
  3. Ensuring data protection and customer privacy can help you avoid marketing blunders that could otherwise lead to legal trouble and fines.
     

Learn More: Advancing Data Privacy: A Collaborative Approach to Better RegulationsOpens a new window

What Is the Way Forward for Privacy?

Strong privacy laws in the US, EU’s General Data Protection Law (GDPR), new privacy regulations in Argentina and Brazil, and India recognizing privacy as the constitutional right are steps towards giving individuals’ control over their data.

Nuala O’Connor further suggests in her article on NewEuropeOpens a new window , “A baseline law should also enshrine the right to know how and with whom personal data is shared.  Where feasible, these rights should apply not only to data that users have shared with a company, but also to information that a company has observed or inferred about users, such as their location, web browsing information, and advertising categories they have been placed in.

The way forward is greater autonomy of personal data and enabling people to be able to negotiate the terms of their data usage, i.e. with whom and how they want to share information and communicate. It is analogous to how people establish boundaries in their personal ‘physical’ space. It is about data dignity in the online space.

In Towards a new digital ethicsOpens a new window , Giovanni Buttarelli, European data protection supervisor, shared, “Privacy and data protection are part of the solution, not the problem. For the time being, technology is controlled by humans…Policy makers, technology developers, business developers and all of us must seriously consider if and how we want to influence the development of technology and its application. But equally important is that the EU consider urgently the ethics and the place for human dignity in the technologies of the future.

Learn More: In the Age of 5G, Is Privacy Just A Myth?Opens a new window

What Is Data Dignity and Could It Be the Way Forward?

Jaron LanierOpens a new window , a visionary, a computer scientist, and an interdisciplinary scientist at Microsoft, describes data dignity in his interactive videos shared on The New York TimesOpens a new window , “People have moral rights to every bit of DATA that exists because they exist, now and forever.” Lanier shares how consumers have been ‘tricked’ into giving away their most valuable assets (data) for free and that for a better and safer internet, users be paid for their data.

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corp, calls for the world to recognize data dignity, while speaking at a panel hosted by Charles Schwab, Chairman, World Economic ForumOpens a new window . He said, “Data dignity goes one step further than privacy. Data you contribute to the world has got utility – for you, for the businesses giving you service, and the world at large… The next level of work we need to do is how users can control at a granular level to control how data is being used as a utility for themselves, world, and the causes they care about.”

Both Lanier and Nadella proposed identification and setting up new business models that can define how data can be ethically collected and shared by respecting one’s right to privacy. These value exchange models define how people can monetize control and tweak what, how, and when to sell their data.

The Art of Research shared some business modelsOpens a new window about how people could buy and sell their data at the RadicalxChange conference last year. The talk focused on the following:

  1. Economic autonomy: An individual has complete control over her data and decides what gets shared or not and is paid accordingly. While some may choose to share complete granular information like moods others may choose not to share anything at all.
  2. Value-based data monetization: Data can be an investment where its value is linked to how important it is. For instance, data on trending topics may have more value as compared to data that has been available for a while.
  3. Symmetric buying selling market: Here, buyers and sellers both have room to grow. For instance, listeners sell their data to a music app about favorite genres, singers, albums, etc. Musicians sell data about the music they prepare, their instruments, target audience, etc. Buyers purchase this data to uncover trends and serve listeners better, share competitor insights to enable musicians to perform better, and everyone wins.
  4. Data as a source of income and value addition: As technology takes over data selling can become a new source of income, providing economic security. Captured human inputs and skills can help technology learn (think AI/ML) and evolve to perform at tasks it is intended to perform better.
     

Another data dignity model that Microsoft is working on is a Data Bank. According to an article by ZDNetOpens a new window , “Microsoft is working on a project codenamed “Bali,” which is designed to give users control of data collected about them. The project is a Microsoft Research incubation effort and seems to be in private testing at this stage… The “About” page for Bali describes it as a ‘new personal data bank which puts users in control of all data collected about them… The bank will enable users to store all data (raw and inferred) generated by them. It will allow the user to visualize, manage, control, share and monetize the data’.”

Summing Up

Data dignity is beyond the nature of data, its ownership, consent, and purpose. It is more about making the ‘unknowable’ known and deriving symmetric value from it.

Data dignity, therefore, encompasses the following aspects:

  1. To know how it can benefit individuals or put them at risk.
  2. To help users objectively determine the benefits and risks associated with their digital presence.
  3. To put users in charge of who derives benefits from their data.
  4. To let users negotiate the terms of use of their data.
  5. To give users complete autonomy and the right to be found, analyzed, or forgotten, apart from the fundamental right over their data.
     

Based on this, marketers should now find ways to ensure data dignity for customers. This Safer Internet Day marketers can move toward creating an internet that pays consumers back for the value they give and form symmetric relationships of data and value exchange.

Do you agree with the world moving towards data dignity? What models, according to you, are best to implement data dignity? Tell us on Twitter,Opens a new window LinkedIn, oOpens a new window n FacebookOpens a new window .

Vandita Grover
Vandita Grover

Contributor, Ziff Davis B2B

Vandita is a passionate writer and IT enthusiast. She is a Computer Lecturer by profession at the University of Delhi. She has previously worked as a Software Engineer with Aricent Technologies. Vandita writes for MarTech Advisor as a freelance contributor.
Take me to Community
Do you still have questions? Head over to the Spiceworks Community to find answers.