The image above was created with stable diffusion using the prompt 'Mediators of Individual Data.'
Working on the wanttoknow.info newsletter this week, I ran across an Atlantic article titled 'How to Fix Twitter—And All of Social Media' by the father of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier. The piece considers the question of content moderation from a novel perspective. First, it suggests that individual free speech and top-down control of online speech are both equally leading us into an unhappy future. Then it introduces the idea that a new form of online group could provide a better alternative. Here's a quote:
"The groups I’m talking about, sometimes called "mediators of individual data" or "data trusts," are different: Members would share both good and bad consequences with one another, just like a group shares the benefits and responsibilities of a loan in microlending. This mechanism has emerged naturally to a small degree on some of the better, smaller subreddits and even more so on the software-development platform GitHub."
A Harvard Business Review_ paper by Jaron Lanier and E. Glen Weyl supports the Atlantic article and provides more detail on the idea. Here's a quote from that paper, titled 'A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society':
"We call these organizations "mediators of individual data," or MIDs. A MID is a group of volunteers with its own rules that represents its members in a wide range of ways. It will negotiate data royalties or wages, to bring the power of collective bargaining to the people who are the sources of valuable data. It will also promote standards and build a brand based on the unique quality and identity of the data producers they represent. MIDs will often perform routine accounting, legal, and payment duties but might also engage in training and coaching. They will help focus the scarce attention of their members in the interest of those members rather than for an ulterior motive, such as targeted advertising."
One thing I learned from this paper was that workers have historically received about 70% of their companies' incomes, but today that share has fallen to between 5% and 20%. The MIDs envisioned would theoretically operate at the more equitable 70% level. This all sounds great, until you realize that the goal is to financialize all online activity, turning literally everything into paid services. Although it is true that the internet is basically all private property already, I question the wisdom of proceeding down such a path.
The paper lists 8 principles for MIDs:
Fiduciary duty. A MID should be a true fiduciary for individuals who create data or from whom data is measured, in a legal, economic, and structural sense.
Quality standards. MIDs will foster decency, high standards, accountability, and acknowledged achievement in terms that they will largely define themselves.
Inalienable provenance. While a MID should facilitate the efficient flow of data to high-value uses, it must not allow data (especially sensitive personal data) to be permanently sold or alienated from the control of its members. While intellectual property may be licensed, authors cannot sell theirnmoral interest in their works.
Benefit sharing. MIDs will become vital parts of the society and economy.
Competence and professionalism. A MID must have adequate expertise to accomplish its mission. It must possess sufficiently discreet management so that it can credibly engage in negotiations with data customers and be entrusted by those customers with confidential business details necessary to put the two parties on a position of parity. It will require technical expertise to build systems that support its unique attributes.
Biological realism. MIDs should strive to create outcomes for members that reflect the true nature of a human life cycle, and not just aim for a quantitative deal measured as “fair” against some imaginary, robotic worker who doesn’t age and whose needs don’t change over time.
Cognitive realism. We can’t saddle MID members with impossible-to-understand terms and too-complex decisions. Vast terms and conditions, or choices so large and complex that members concede to whatever they are presented with, will not work.
Longevity. MIDs should not be designed to last forever (like a nation, for example), but to last longer than a human lifetime (like an insurance company).
I have several thoughts about all of this. For starters, as a free speech absolutist, I find it problematic to consider individual free speech an undesirable thing. Free speech and censorship are not two equally bad propositions. But I feel like the article was maybe just making a point with the false equivalency. The ideas described seemed like they'd reasonably accommodate free speech.
If I understand correctly, Lanier and Weyl are proposing that we create a new layer of the internet, wherein organizations called MIDs mediate all of our online activity and pay us for our data. Each of us would belong to a wide variety of specialized MIDs, and there would be measures in place to ensure that these MIDs operated legally and equitably. In theory, data royalties accrued over a lifetime could possibly fund retirements.
Complex data harvesting and leasing schemes would replace the current surveillance advertising model. A new legal framework would come into being to regulate the new type of entity, unless MIDs simply adopted established corporate structures. Many formerly free web services would become paid. And we'd all receive something like 500-1000 USD annually for our participation.
Right now on Hive, I earn a similar sum, own my data, help elect network operators, and post my ideas without censorship or feed manipulation. I enjoy these benefits without the substantial cognitive load of membership in many MIDs. I wonder where Hive fits into the envisioned scheme.
It is possible that MIDs are the future. And maybe we do need an intermediate layer between us and Big Tech. Yet I'm concerned that the implementation of this paper's ideas would leave much to be desired. I'm picturing HOAs, but for online activity. If we're going there, okay, but I'm not super excited about it.
Read my novels:
See my NFTs:
