At Money20/20 USA, Brittany Kaiser highlighted a striking statistic: each user generates Facebook $48 per quarter, over $500 billion annually. This staggering figure underscores a significant imbalance in the data economy—one where tech giants massively profit from user data, while those who generate it get nothing.
This imbalance raises critical questions: how can the value of data be unlocked for the people who create it, and why is it important to do so in the first place?
The Value of Data
Data is invaluable because it drives decision-making, fuels innovation, and powers problem-solving by revealing patterns and insights about behaviors. Unlike finite resources like oil, data is both renewable and scalable. These qualities amplify its value, powering technological advancements without depletion.
This potential has transformed data into a multi-trillion-dollar global asset, surpassing traditional commodities like oil in economic significance, further illustrating why data ownership matters.
The Disparity in the Data Economy
Despite data’s tremendous value, its benefits remain unevenly distributed. Tech companies like Google and Facebook capture user data and leverage it to generate billions of dollars in advertising revenue, while those generating that user data are cut out of the transaction and left without clarity, control, or compensation for the value of their data to these other parties. This disparity highlights why data ownership matters.
People pay to generate this data by investing in devices, internet access, electricity—all necessary to participate in the digital world—yet they see no return on their investment.
As CEO André Vellozo explains, “If we are paying to process 50% of the data of the planet, we have the rights to at least 50% of the value it can create.“ But instead of addressing this inequity, recent regulations have focused on the red herring of ‘data privacy’.
Moving Beyond Privacy to Ownership
Privacy laws don’t address the core issue: solely regulating data processors, brokers, and buyers still excludes individuals from the data value chain. Ownership rights offer a more comprehensive solution—granting everyone the right to their data as personal property, and thereby fully control and benefit from its value.
Change is already underway. Wyoming set a critical precedent in 2018 by passing legislation that recognizes digital assets as intangible personal property, supporting individuals with the legal basis necessary to claim the value of their data.
Complementing this legislative progress, tools like DrumWave’s dWallet® and Data Savings Plan empower consumers to control, save and monetize their data. Such frameworks pave the way for individuals to move beyond mere protection toward participation in a fairer data economy.
The Future is Data Ownership
For too long, companies have disproportionately benefited from a data economy reliant on user data. Data ownership creates a more equitable system—one where everyone can harness the value of their data to enrich their lives and businesses.
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