Meta will apparently now "respect people’s choices about how their data is used" in the UK. How should that conversation go? And why it needs data unions.

Meta folded on the right to opt-out of targeted ads before the case got to the High Court. Here's how a conversation with platforms about use of data ought to work

Dalle - “Image: a black and white ink outline drawing of david vs goliath, where david is a 30-something mum and goliath has some resemblance to a well-known social media magnate.”

Three cheers to Tanya O’Carroll, the UK-based activist who just got Meta to agree, in an out of court settlement, not to track her or send her personalised ads when using Meta products. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had backed O’Carroll’s case, and has said apropos the case: “People have the right to object to their personal information being used for direct marketing and we have been clear that online targeted advertising should be considered as direct marketing. Organisations must respect people’s choices about how their data is used.”

That is an admirable principle, so good to have it almost - not quite, but almost - recognised by the High Court. Not quite, because Meta settled out of court. They gave Tanya everything she was asking for - access to Meta products without personalised ads or tracking. And as she said (as reported by TechCrunch) “It’s a bittersweet victory [...] In lots of ways I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve — which is to prove that the right to object exists, to prove that it applies exactly to a business model of Meta and many other companies on the internet — that targeted advertising is, in fact, direct marketing. And I think I’ve shown that that’s the case. But, of course, it’s not determined in law. Meta has not had to accept liability — so they can still say they just settled with an individual in this case.”

So let’s assume that, as many are reporting, this leads Meta to offer an untracked option with subscription in the UK, as is available in the EU. How much should that subscription be? Well … let’s go through how much we currently pay for these platforms. And yes … we do pay. No, we’re not “paying with our data”, as is so often said … we are paying hard cash with our wallets. The International Advertising Association estimates the online advertising in the UK was worth about £30bn in 2023. Conveniently, there are about 30 million households in the UK, so, very roughly, each household is paying £1000 per year for our “subscription” to the ad-based web.

Wait … How so are we paying? Well … all the companies spending on that £30bn need to recoup their costs. Ultimately, they have one way to do that: by charging consumers for the cost of finding consumers. So the ad-based web is “free at the point of access”, but it is very much not free in terms of our wallet. And how much of that is our payment to Meta? In 2018, the CMA estimated that display was worth about 1/3 of all online ad spend, so let’s say £10bl, and that Facebook had 50% of that, so £5bl. Amongst 30m households, that is £166 per year per household. Just for comparison, Netflix (without ads) is £150/year. Interestingly, the EU price for an ad-free Facebook is E150/person/year … which, of we assume an average household size of 2, looks about double what our rough and ready calculation says Meta is making out of its advertising model. [Edited in light of comment from Singe below. Still not reconciled to Facebook’s paltry $56 per user per year … but who knows where that number comes from…]

Now the fact is that if I were presented that bill by Facebook, for a non-tracking version, I would probably pass up the opportunity. And yet I very strongly believe that I want to have a grown up negotiation with Meta about what I do and don’t want, and what they can and can’t use my data for. The fact is that I find various aspects of Facebook very addictive. Instagram even more so, and therefore have tried my hardest not to form a habit. When I installed TikTok to get a sense of its power, I got hooked very fast and had to uninstall it immediately. Indeed, as a young adult I had to get rid of the TV because I spent too much time on it. It is only the revulsion at the idea of making money for its owner that has relieved me of a serious Twitter habit. I am very susceptible to these products, and I have to protect myself from them. (I wrote about a previous version of my Facebook addiction, in a previous age of the product, over here, at a time when I still believed that antitrust could do something about these issues). And yet, as with so many addictive experiences, there is some real good in there to be enjoyed. The latest on Facebook is that I have started practising the guitar again after years of neglect. And Facebook has discovered that, and has sent all sorts of pleasurable tutorials and tips my way. I have even bought a charming young guitarist’s ebook of Mauro Giuliani’s 1780 Arpeggio Studies, convinced that will get my fingers agile again. Thank you Meta. That book was a personalised ad from someone making a decent living from self-publishing, and by clicking through and buying, I am supporting a bit of the Internet that is, I think, unreservedly good.

But. There is a big BUT, and it does boil down to how Meta is using my data. In that grown-up discussion about the relationship I want with Meta, here is my wishlist:

• Don’t use my data to optimise my feed for stickiness

• Update my feed only once per day, making it much more magazine-like: I know there is a new feed that will drop at 7pm, and I can spend a half hour enjoying it; I want a feed whose quality degrades after 30 minutes - things should get very repetitive after that point, to bore me

• Don’t use my data to make other people’s feed stickier - I really don’t want to be contributing to the generalisation of screen-based idiocracy

• Don’t use your tracking of my behaviour across other websites and your knowledge of my interests (which I know you do today), to place ads on the so-called free web, because I want to do my bit to change cyberspace towards a much more intentional web-advertising system, one in which we announce what we are interested in and set the terms for access to our attention

• On my feed, do show me personalised content, including ads like the Arpeggio Studies

• If bona fide health researchers with all the right accreditations want my anonymised data, please hand it over to them

Now, Meta, in our grown-up conversation, tell me how much you will charge for that. As the ICO says, you “must respect people’s choices about how their data is used”. And respect, it seems to me, means at least having the conversation with an open mind to doing a deal. That is my choice, how much will it cost me? At £30 a year, you might have a customer.

Of course, life is too short for me, and negotiation with each of billions of customers is too expensive for Meta … and the shoe is on the other foot - if I individually find some other way of dealing with Meta’s deafening silence when I try to express my choice about how my data is used - maybe exit, maybe some rough and ready tech that deals with the worst of my problem, like these - then Meta will not notice any adverse effects from ignoring my miniscule voice.

That is why I sent off to Meta the email suggested by Eko, the campaigning organisation that’s been helping Tanya. (If, like me, you found their mailto tag did not quite work in your setup, you can copy and paste my version of the email over here). I sent it off because if lots of us do so, they will start to listen. And I want them to get very used to listening to us.

You can probably see where I am going now: we need to aggregate our voice so that we have the power to make Meta listen and therefore make good on the ICO’s principle that data users “must respect people’s choices about how their data is used”. That is the role of data unions, and it is a role that FIDU - the First International Data Union - is aiming to fulfill.

So as I think about the pieces that need to be put in place, I have naturally been drawn to the question of how FIDU will itself elicit from members what their preferences are over how their data is used. Very early thoughts here, but I would love any feedback on this 2x2 matrix:

The vertical axis goes from being pretty chill about who knows what about me at the bottom to wanting a great deal of control over who knows what. And the horizontal axis goes from “I want myself to be the main beneficiary of data about me” on the left to “Data about me should do social good”.

Would you be able to place yourself in the quadrants? Do they make sense? Do drop me a line with any comments & suggestions.