You Are Worth 753 Dollars

Note: This post has been adapted from a talk given in person.

You are worth 753 dollars.

I don't mean your intrinsic value as a human being; I'm talking about the value of your data, your digital self. Companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft collectively make hundreds of dollars by collecting, buying, and selling your personal data.

Every click, every scroll, every visit, every purchase, every place you visit in real life, is taken without your consent and sold to the highest bidder. And its price keeps going up. Your data is the crude oil of the 21st century. And… you can't do anything about it. Or can you?

Now, you might think, “Shit, there's no way fucking Facebook knows when I buy shoes online, like I don't even have a Facebook account or anything...”

But they do. Even if you've never made a Facebook or Instagram account before, Meta still knows exactly who you are, along with every other big tech company. How? Most websites you visit have hidden trackers: cookies, pixels, and scripts, visible or otherwise.

For example, if you purchase that pair of shoes from an online retailer, without even logging into Facebook, the little hidden trackers can send a signal straight to Meta, saying, “Hey, User4726 just bought some running shoes.” Now the only ads you get are for protein powders and Strava.

And this practice is profitable. In 2023, Meta made, on average, 210 dollars a year on each of you. Google? 460 dollars. We've all been reeled in by the promise of free; free social media, free search engines, free everything.

Last year, Consumer Reports did something brilliant. They rounded up about 700 volunteers who downloaded their Facebook data to see where exactly your data is being sent to, and what they found was...


unsettling, to say the least.


Those 709 participants had their data collectively shared with over 186,000 companies. The average person was being tracked by 2,230. Some were tracked by over 7,000. The most prevalent company was a company you've probably never heard of: LiveRamp, which appeared in 96% of all respondents.

But what's arguably more concerning is the names of some of these companies. Some you'll recognize, like Home Depot, Walmart, and Amazon. However, there are also companies with completely nonsensical names. These companies deliberately obscure their identity to make it basically impossible to exercise the limited privacy rights you do have. Like, who do you email to opt out of data collection from 100130874778177, or MZXCVBNQ1 limited.

I think Consumer Reports themselves put it best, quote,

“It is virtually impossible for even motivated consumers to understand who is tracking and targeting them.”

And this extends much deeper than just advertising and tracking you everywhere.

The information these companies collect isn't just about predicting what you'll buy; they're trying to predict what you'll do. And more importantly, trying to 'nudge' you in a direction that they think is best. Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff defines this as 'surveillance capitalism': the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations.

It started with Google realizing that your 'data exhaust', your usage, location, behaviour, and user interactions, even hovering your mouse over a link, was used to predict user behaviour. Then more companies started doing it. Then some other companies decided they, too, needed to know what you had for breakfast. And it spiralled from there.

The goal is no longer to serve you personalized ads; it's to manipulate the way you act for pure profit. In Zuboff's words, quote:

“Surveillance capitalists now develop 'economies of action,' as they learn to tune, herd, and condition our behaviour with subtle and subliminal cues, rewards, and punishments that shunt us toward their most profitable outcomes”.

Tune.
Herd.
Condition.

This is your silent loss of free will. Your personality, your greatest hopes, your fears, your anxieties, your insecurities, gleaned from hundreds of thousands of sources. Your autonomy, your 'right to the future tense', as Zuboff calls it, is chipped away day by day.

So, what do we do? Now, if you recall, I stated at the beginning that you can't do anything about this. This was kind of a lie. While it's a bit unrealistic to shred your phone and fuck off to Timbuktu, there is a battle happening: a global 'battle of the internet', between you and companies that know more about us than we know about ourselves.

Laws like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation and Canada's proposed Consumer Privacy Protection Act are pushing back. They're built on 'data minimization'; companies collect strictly what they need, and the ability to truly opt out of data collection, giving you, the consumer, back your control.

But this isn't enough. Vote for regulations targeting consumer privacy and rights. Use privacy browsers like Firefox. Use privacy tools like DuckDuckGo. Tell your MP that privacy is a human right, not something for Google to step over.

And finally, we have to change our mindset. We aren't mindless data spooling slaves, we are humans, and we deserve the same rights online as we do offline.

With that, I'd like to end with 1 more question.

How much is your life worth to you?