Wealth, the Middle Class and the Shape of Networks

Many argue that the internet has destroyed more jobs than it’s created, and that as such our information economy has obliterated the middle class. The common “solution” proposed for this problem is to create systems that pay users for their data. If you join Twitter or Facebook (Meta) then you should somehow be compensated since it’s your data that make these companies successful. This is the argument Jaron Lanier makes in his book Who Owns the Future. I will argue that compensating users for data is a non-solution because of the way networks convert user data into product features. I will argue that rather than compensate users for their data it makes more sense to change the network topology such that more people can create lucrative enterprises under the current model.

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