About: “The Data Dividend Project is a movement dedicated to taking back control of our personal data: our data is our property, and if we allow companies to use it, we should get paid for it. The DDP is the brainchild of former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Its primary objective is to establish and enforce data property rights under laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect on January 1, 2020.
Every day, people are generating data simply by going about the business of living in an ever connected and digital world. Unbeknownst to most people, technology companies are tracking their every move online, extracting this data, and then buying and selling it for big money. The sale and resale of consumer data is called data brokering, which is itself a $200 billion industry.
For example, technology companies can extract location data from your mobile phone and sell it to advertisers who can then turn around and post local ads to you in real time. Until recently, the data collector – in this case, the technology company – was deemed to own the data. As the owner, the technology company could sell that data and profit handsomely. Meanwhile, you generated the data but received no share of those profits. DDP plans to change that.
Until this year, you, as the American consumer, had little recourse against technology companies who were profiting off your data without your consent or knowledge. Now, under the CCPA, Californians are endowed with a collection of unalienable data rights: the right to know what information is being collected on you, the right to delete that information, and the right to opt-out from technology companies collecting your data. These rights, however, are ignored and abused by technology companies. And unfortunately, individual consumers don’t have the leverage to be able to go up against these companies. That’s where DDP comes in….(More)“