Greenwash and Greenwashing: A look at the claims of government and big business showing how they manipulate the truth and mislead us with false and unverifiable claims.

Individuals have undergone a process of Personal Data Gentrification, as data ownership has shifted from individuals to service providers and data consumers, as if the data is worth nothing to the individuals; these new owners then harness the data to obtain large profits. In this paper, we propose Personal Data Enfranchisement as a middle ground, empowering individuals to control the sharing of their personal information to shift the business flows of personal information. Based on these insights, we propose a model to gradually and incrementally make a shift from our current situation towards one of Personal Data Enfranchisement.

Your data is more valuable than you might think. You have the right to know how your data is used. Get started by asking five questions of the companies whose digital services you use.

Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.

Thousands of companies buy and sell consumer data with other companies. Most recently, hundreds of business plans have been prepared, which essentially revolve around the idea of consumers selling their own data to monetize it. Probably neither of these models is a sustainable business. But what about consumers starting to pursue data from companies and public sources? Could it turn the perspective around?

The Age Appropriate Design Code – now the Children’s Code – has caused huge global changes. Not that tech platforms want to admit it.

People surveyed by KPMG reported feeling increasingly uneasy about the data collection practices of corporations.

From location tracking to federal law: These firms could track whether you've visited your therapist's office or your ex's house. And without regulation, they're a threat to democracy.

There currently isn’t an adequate vocabulary to describe people’s experiences in the digital world, which impedes understanding and conversations around what’s actually happening, and what harms are lurking. The Me2B Alliance has developed a set of terms to help bridge this gap. Central to the vocabulary is the concept of Me2B Relationships, which are the relationships people (Me’s) have with purveyors of products or services (B’s), and the concept of Me2B Deals, which are exchanges of value between a person (Me’s) and a business (“B”).

How communities generate value and how content creators are profiting from it.

Big scandal in France around personal data use in the context of health. Pharmacists are selling without consent data of their clients (for 6 EUR/month for the entire shop!) to an entity that is supposed to act in the public interest, but seems to be engaged in marketing as well.

Great pitching skills and interesting pointer's of valuation and business models for personal data.

The tech giants have developed a new vocabulary to use when they want to assure the public that they care deeply about developing AI responsibly—but want to make sure they don’t invite too much scrutiny. Here’s an insider’s guide to decoding their language and challenging the assumptions and values baked in.

Nesta’s Mapping Career Causeways project, supported by J.P. Morgan, applies state-of-the-art data science methods to create an algorithm that recommends job transitions and retraining to workers, with a focus on supporting those at high risk of automation.

Your online profile is less a reflection of you than a caricature. It is shaped by technology companies and advertisers who make key decisions based on their interpretation of seemingly benign data points.

But how do Americans feel about data privacy? According to Pew Research, they do not trust governments and companies to do the right thing with data. A 2019 survey found 81% of people feel they have very little or no control over data collected by companies, while 84% felt the same about government.

Australia is presently embroiled in two major showdowns with superpowers. One is with China. The other is with Google and Facebook.

New technologies empower citizens to impact society on an unprecedented scale. Yet the technological innovation environment, in its current form, mainly brings in profits for private companies rather than society’s benefit. While promising social innovations exist, they struggle to reach a critical mass that can match the scale of society’s challenges.

The World Economic Forum captures in this paper replicable learnings and practices from organizations leading the way in ushering in a new business paradigm for data that empowers stakeholders, is grounded in ecosystem partnerships and creates sustainable value for all. It provides a starting point for an ongoing programme to develop new playbooks for executive action and share lighthouse innovations.

Following a series of 2020 research initiatives, GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation) has invited stakeholders from across the digital economy to engage in a cross industry development program to create an ecosystem and credential governance framework, together with a technical supporting infrastructure, for a verifiable LEI (vLEI - verifiable Legal Entity Identifier), a digitally verifiable credential containing the LEI.

Competition regulator wants Digital Markets Unit to have power to levy huge penalties if firms abuse code of conduct

Salesforce has agreed to buy workplace messaging app Slack for $27.7bn (€22.3bn) in what would be one of the biggest tech mergers in recent years.

Abstract: In recent years, critical scholarship has drawn attention to increasing power differentials between corporations that use data and people whose data is used. A growing number of scholars see digital data and information commons as a way to counteract this asymmetry. In this paper I raise two concerns with this argument.

User-centric data model opens new opportunities with data, and opens the gate for creativity and innovation in this space.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) orders the credit reference agency Experian Limited to make fundamental changes to how it handles people’s personal data within its direct marketing services. The enforcement notice follows a two-year investigation by the ICO into how Experian, Equifax and TransUnion used personal data within their data broking businesses for direct marketing purposes.

Companies collecting data for pubs and restaurants to help them fulfil their contact-tracing duties are harvesting confidential customer information to sell.

One of the biggest concerns, given data is an intangible and valuable asset, is how business models can be structured so that stewards remain incentivized to serve the interests of individuals and communities, and do not use the data for their own ends. Data is a complex resource, and to understand potential revenue models of a steward, this paper studies resources or assets which embody the complexity of data and the accompanying ethical issues of protection.
You may also want to have a look at "Understanding data stewardship: taxonomy and use cases" from the same source.

McKinsey's perspectives on the coronavirus outbreak, the twin threats to lives and livelihoods, and how organizations can prepare for the next normal.

Covid-19 has shown how companies can work together to solve problems.

This is a brilliant resource for business owners to help with COVID planning and impact minimisation.

A recent extensive whitepaper from the Norwegian Consumer Council that demonstrates the need for alternative ecosystems to connect merchants with consumers.

Study of people across six countries finds German users would charge most for sharing personal data. This article is based on this paper: How Much is Privacy Worth Around the World and Across Platforms?.

Companies discover data ethics as part of their corporate communications: IKEA promises to embed data ethics into all their processes.

This week emails were sent out: “Datacoup is shutting down operations and will be decommissioning all of our servers. Any data you previously added to the platform was never sold. If you received payments in the past, they were coming from the Datacoup treasury account.”

Sharing data altruistically on digital platforms in the health sector or in research-related environments is seen as contributing to the common good, according to a new report by the Esade Institute for Social Innovation entitled My Data, My Rules: From data extractivism to digital empowerment. The study focuses on digital empowerment and analyses 13 case studies in which people have control over their personal data, with particular emphasis on the experiences of Digital Estonia, Cozy Cloud and MIDATA.coop.

Operations management: Visuals and plain language make an adversarial process more constructive

It is disappointing—but regrettably unsurprising—that the Chrome team is cloaking Google’s business priorities in disingenuous technical arguments.

A new approach to training artificial intelligence algorithms involves paying people to submit medical data, and storing it in a blockchain-protected system.

The next big technological shift is to a world where every individual can manage and (optionally) monetise their personal data. Companies like Facebook and Google already make billions because they know everything about us via our online habits. What if we could take a cut? What if we could own and sell our data directly?

...and both are called Open GDPR. Though unrelated, the initiatives reflect some of the ways the ad and marketing industry is organizing itself around its personal data responsibilities.

They took your data. Then they took control. The Great Hack uncovers the dark world of data exploitation through the compelling personal journeys of players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal. In select theaters and on Netflix July 24.