A single user cannot negotiate with Facebook over how their personal data is used – Facebook may provide the user with a range of options they can opt in or out of, and may allow the user the freedom to provide more or less information about themselves, but individual users have almost no power to influence what is and isn’t up for negotiation; as russia rcs data academic Shoshana Zuboff writes, “who decides, and who decides who decides.”
In recent years, the idea of collectivisation on platforms in the form of data trusts has emerged. For instance, we might imagine something like a data-centric data trust.
A Data-Centric Data Trust
Figure
Under this model, users do not individually provide data to a data service (platform), but instead collate their data into a large dataset independent of the data service called a data trust.
The trust – again, in much the way trade unions operate – then negotiates access rights with the data service in exchange for additional value which the trust then distributes to users. Value is an ambiguous term – it could be financial, or it could be additional user rights such as negotiated opt-outs, advertising bans or privacy rights.