[PRESS RELEASE] The Commercial and Political Value of Our Data | Digitalk #39

Yogyakarta, April 25th, 2020 – The era of digital transformation has made data as an important aspect of our daily activities. Various questions related to the use of our data and its implications for daily life also arise, such as how much is the ‘price’ of our data and how it is being monetized. To dig deeper into the relationship between privacy rights and the era of digital transformation, Center for Digital Society (CfDS) together with the Goethe Institute is holding the 39th Digitalk series, which is also the second series of Goethe Institute’s Digital Discourses conference. This program was broadcasted live via YouTube on Saturday (25/4), by inviting various panelists from several countries, who are interested in data and privacy issues, including Michael Seeman (Germany), Katharina Nocun (Germany), Jun-E Tan ( Malaysia), and Alia Y, Karunian (Indonesia).

Data Protection Regulation: Is It Enough?

According to Katharina, data protection regulation allow companies to store data for specific purposes, but do not allow companies to sell and make use of the data without the consent of users. Users must have a choice, and there must be international law governing data privacy so that companies do not take advantage of the practice of using data without the user’s knowledge. On the other hand, Michael also argues that there is a very limited data protection approach in the existing data protection regulations, where the approach is very centered on the individual, such as what rights individuals have and what kind of individual data must be secured. This limitation is one of the mistakes that arise when we talk about data and individuals, bearing in mind that there are other aspects such as the company’s power to conduct a ‘monopoly’ of the data (both in terms of data access and the volume of data stored). “Although the existing data protection regulations are quite good, there are no data protection regulations that have enough power to intervene the companies in their data management process,” said Michael.

The Commercial and Political Value of Our Data

User data has commercial and political value, one of which is through the presence of digital advertising feature on social media. Regarding the effective use of advertising based on data on social media, Alia believes that the effectiveness is difficult to be examined because the company does not share ad transparency, so she cannot learn how advertising features on social media target a ‘market’ based on aggregated user data. This then emphasizes the importance of data protection regulation, which hopefully can provide control over how companies utilize the user data they store. “For example, the website’s obligation to notify the users about the use of ‘cookie’ in the website also proves that data protection regulation play a role in limiting power imbalances in large technology companies in targeting advertisements to users,” Alia added.

Data Privacy Awareness for Users

In choosing what approach to take so that users are more aware of their data, Katharina suggests that we need to use both collective and individual approaches, and connect them with each other. This creates a campaign for data privacy that accommodates the viewpoints of all internet users, who collectively fight monopolistic practices on the internet. Jun also added that users can create a story to make the wider community understand what is the danger of using user’s data without their consent. If these companies continue to collect data without any restrictions, it will pose a serious and vulnerable risk of misuse of user’s data. Therefore, information related to data use is power and regulations related to data protection are tools to control that power.

Writer: Firya Qurratu’ain A.
Editor: Raka Wicaksono