CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR SAYS USERS DESERVE DIVIDEND FROM ONLINE DATA
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has set off a flurry of speculation after he said the state’s consumers should get a piece of the billions of dollars that technology companies make by capitalizing on personal data they collect.
The new governor has asked aides to develop a proposal for a “data dividend” for California residents but provided no hints about whether he might be suggesting a tax on tech companies, an individual refund to their customers or something else.
“Companies that make billions of dollars collecting, curating and monetizing our personal data have a duty to protect it,” the Democrat said in his first State of the State speech Tuesday. “California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data.”
Tech companies, for example, sell the data to outside businesses that target ads to users. The European Union and Spain’s socialist government last year each proposed taxing big internet companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Common Sense Media, which helped pass California’s nation-leading digital privacy law last year, plans to propose legislation in coming weeks that would reflect Newsom’s proposal, founder and CEO James Steyer said, without providing details.
Starting next year, California’s Europeanstyle privacy law will require companies to tell customers upon request what personal data they have collected and why, which categories of third parties have received it, and allow consumers to delete their information and not sell it.
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, ranking
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, predicted in November that California would consider legislation that would “send a shiver down the spine” of tech companies.
He described the proposal as returning 25 percent of the value of an individual’s data. It wasn’t clear how the calculation would be made.
Warner’s office said Wednesday that he made the comment after speaking with Steyer.
Steyer said in a statement that Newsom is “spot on” about consumers having the “right to share in the profits that companies are making off them.”
Axios calculated that the average Facebook user is worth $7.37 to the company, while a Twitter user is worth $2.83, and a Reddit user, about 30 cents. The calculation basically divided the companies’ annual revenue by their monthly active users.
California-based tech giants Facebook and Google did not immediately comment.
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said Newsom “is off to the wrong start” on protecting consumer privacy.
“They shouldn’t be tricked into giving away their privacy for a small discount,” he said in an email. “Selling it for a few bucks isn’t the answer and will make the problem worse.”