The online economy — from search to email to social media — is built in large part on the fact that consumers are willing to give away their data in exchange for products that are free and easy to use. The assumption behind this trade-off is that without giving up all that data, those products either couldn’t be so good or would have to come at a cost.
Do Tech Companies Really Need All That User Data?
A new study suggests privacy rules don’t mean worse products.
September 21, 2017
Summary.
The online economy — from search to email to social media — is built in large part on the fact that consumers are willing to give away their data in exchange for products that are free and easy to use. But a new working paper, released this week by Lesley Chiou of Occidental College and Catherine Tucker of MIT, suggests that the trade-off may not always be necessary. By studying the effects of privacy regulations in the EU, they attempt to measure whether the anonymization and de-identification of search data hurts the quality of search results. “Our results suggest that the costs of privacy may be lower than currently perceived,” the authors write.
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Excel in a world that's being continually transformed by technology.