How Online Data Is the New Oil
In the new network empire, there’s only one commodity that counts: data. The more time you spend online, the more your data is collected, which, according to Niall Ferguson, is just as valuable as oil in our modern economy.
Segment – Episode 2 “Winner Takes It All”
Premieres Tuesday, March 17 from 8-11 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org and the PBS Video app.
Read Transcript
- In the new network empires, there's only one commodity that counts and that is data.
Their business models increasingly center around harvesting users' data and that in turn means maximizing user engagement.
Because the more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads you're likely to see and the more lucrative data about your personal preferences you're gonna generate.
(futuristic electronic music) That means that social media companies and other network platforms will only survive and thrive if they can keep us hooked.
In 2009, Facebook came up with this brilliant way to captivate our helpless brains with hits of dopamine, the like button.
You may not realize it, but every time you like or comment on a post, you're giving the network platform some of your data.
Do you think the people, engineers, working at the big tech companies consciously knew that they were setting out to create addicts?
- Certainly in some cases, I think people were intentionally trying to drive up engagement.
In some cases, people were just trying to build a product that people liked.
Until a couple years ago, there was very little idea of people could like our product too much.
- [Ferguson] One way of thinking about data in the modern economy is to call it the New Oil.
These two valuable commodities, one pumped out of the ground, one pumped out of us, have been the bases of economic revolutions and each one became the foundation of enormously profitable monopolies.
(ominous synth music)