It shouldn't be up to you to say yes or no to Facebook

Meta will use your Facebook and instagram posts to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

In response, the Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance will Karianne Tung (Ap) make it easy and say yes or no to the use of data, The Green Party (MDG) will have temporary Facebook ban and Inga Strümke threatening to delete her profile.

But neither more focus on consent, prohibition, or individuals deleting Facebook does much for our privacy.

Structural problem

It's not new that Meta feeds their AI models with your data. Meta's business model relies on recommendation algorithms trained on user activity to tailor advertising. Nor is this an issue that is isolated to Facebook. Google, TikTok, and Grindr have all recently been in severe weather for lack of privacy.

Time and time again, companies violate our data rights. And profit from it.

The problem is structural. Today it is up to each of us to screen our data. Politicians like Tung view data protection as a problem for the individual. As long as the user can make an active and informed choice, all is well.

But such an individualistic approach to data policy has several problems.

Social infrastructure

First of all, it is not right that the individual should be able to give consent to the sharing of all data about them. Data about you is not just about you.

If you share that you are on a family vacation, there is also data that your family is on vacation. And whether or not your brother takes a DNA test, the company that supplies such tests will know quite a bit about your genetics.

Facebook has become a social infrastructure. Families, football teams, housing associations, after-school clubs, dance schools and student associations are organised through Facebook groups, Facebook events and Facebook Messenger messages.

By leaving Facebook, you lose touch with useful features due to the role Facebook has played as a social infrastructure.

The cost of being the only one to leave makes us act against our true interests. Studies shows that young people don't want to quit if everyone else stays, but is willing to pay money for everyone to stop using social media. Thus, leaving Facebook difficult can be said to be a real choice for the individual.

Data as Shared Ownership

Threatening to leave the tech giants is also futile. Your data alone has virtually no value. It is primarily large amounts of data that are valuable to Meta. Individuals therefore have little bargaining power when it comes to the use of your personal data.

It is also not possible to hide from the telecom giants. Their prediction models make it possible to find out things also about people they don't have data about.

Even if you leave Facebook, Facebook will continue to get better at understanding people like you and therefore also you.

If we don't escape Big Brother's eyes anyway, what can we do? One solution is to stop viewing data as individual property and rather see it as community property.

We can do this by using a trade union model that negotiates the rights and compensation for the group's data.

Or one could imagine that the state could manage the nation's data in the same way one manages other natural resources. It also allows for the possibility of taxing the use of our personal data.

If we take collective ownership, we will also be stronger in the face of the tech giants. It makes it possible to make demands on what the service should offer.

What should we wish for?

One obvious thing we should want is less addictive content. Another is to make it easier for users to leave the platform.

Facebook, for example, made it possible to import all users' contacts directly from other services. Yet today they refuse the same if you want to leave them for another service.

We can also force them to do this, as telephone operators are not allowed to refuse you to bring your number if you were to switch.

If we believe that Meta's use of our personal data is problematic, then it benefits us all if we all have a real opportunity to hold Meta and similar companies accountable.

The technology giants' use of data concerns us as a society. We don't get real privacy by only giving individuals more consent.