Forget the EU: How to really empower users on privacy

In the fight to determine who dictates online privacy standards, web users are like a child caught in between a bitter custody battle, or a chew toy at risk of being torn asunder by two competing dogs. But the best ones to decide who does what with personal data are the very users who are currently trapped between Google, Facebook and other websites on one side and lawmakers on the other. The answer lies somewhere between the choice that web companies provide and the axe-like control mechanisms that government regulations seek to provide, in the form of creative solutions that help — or force — websites to compete on privacy.

Here are some rough ideas for how such solutions might look:

• A paywall of sorts, similar to what the New York Times has in place, but users pay for privacy instead of access. Platform providers could perhaps offer an a la carte contract that lets users pick what features they want for free (i.e., what data they’re willing to hand over to advertisers) and what features they want to pay for (i.e., what data they want to keep private).
• Third-party-run collectives that operate like insurance companies (or labor unions), only instead of dictating what they’ll pay to hospitals, they dictate what privacy requirements they’ll accept for their members. We have 400 million users signed up (the threat might be) and you’ll either give them these terms or we’ll find someone who will. Conventional wisdom suggests this should be a nonprofit operation, although users might be willing to pay a small premium for guaranteed results.
• Monetary credits that reward users for sharing. In Facebook’s ongoing right-to-publicity lawsuit, for example, a major issue is how much more Facebook can charge for Sponsored Stories (i.e., ads that appear in a user’s news stream when a friend interacts with participating companies) than for regular ads. If users don’t want to pay for privacy, and if sites don’t want to stop using user data, perhaps the answer is to give users a piece of revenue pie that’s created by their data.