YOUR DATA, YOUR CHOICE

Interlokit believes in a world of informed consumers and responsible companies, and we are willing to work for that, for you.

Have you ever had a conversation with friends over a bottle of wine about the eccentricities of the Amazon Echo only to have an ad for—you guessed it—the Amazon Echo pop up on your Facebook feed as you scroll by your great-aunt’s incendiary political comments?

Your information is taken from you in ways you don’t even know, and you are certainly not being compensated for the billions of dollars the tech giants in Silicon Valley have made off your information.

In a groundbreaking three-part Op-Ed in the New York Times, self-described “Renaissance Man for the 21st century,” computer scientist, artist, composer, writer, etc. Jaron Lanier, along with his colleague Glen Weyl, proposes giving consumers autonomy over their own data—a term he coins “Data Dignity.”

Lanier suggests that tech companies should have to effectively purchase the right to utilize their users’ information. Subsequently, as these websites implement our information into their algorithms and sell information to advertising companies, etc., money would return to us.

And why not? These companies profit off you signing away your information, your privacy—remember the hullabaloo with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to explain the social media giant’s inner-workings to our elderly senators?

Instead of a rambling, convoluted “Terms and Conditions” that no one reads (or at least I don’t take the time to), it should be simple: accept that we will use your information and you, beautiful consumer, will make a profit from the money we make.

Lanier believes that the average American household would earn an extra twenty-thousand dollars a year (20K, twenty grand!).

Lanier also explains that supporting “data dignity” would create a stronger environment of healthy competition, a level playing field, rather than a shrinking battlefield that, somehow, Disney will eventually own (only joking, Walt).

Your data is your online signature, your mark in the infinitesimal sea of ones and zeros, and even if it may be insignificant in the billions of lines of code streaming out in the ether, a company should only profit off of it by your behest—and why shouldn’t you make some money at the same time?

At Interlokit, we will work to return power to you. At Interlokit, we prioritize the human over the tech.