Your clicks cost you nothing.
Except maybe everything.
A new study says UK internet users generate up to £194,00 of commercial value for tech giants over a lifetime. Not cash in hand. Commercial value. But it is still money. Big money.
The Web3 Foundation ran the numbers. They looked at every scrap of data we drop while surfing the net. Search queries. Location pings. The stupid photo of your cat you uploaded at 2 AM. It all adds up.
Used to be this data just bought you ads. Targeted ones. Now? It trains AI.
People do not realise that asking a question to ChatGPT or picking a spell-check fix feeds the beast.
Bill Laboon from Web3 says this. He is right. Most people think of privacy in terms of targeted ads for running shoes they looked at once in 2019. That is the old game.
The new game is different.
Your data builds the models that power the next wave of computing. It is the lifeblood of AI. And yet, the person providing the blood doesn’t see the dividend.
Take Amazon. Meta. Alphabet.
They earn roughly £1,00 a year from each user. That is per person. Globally, that number explodes. Nvidia hit five trillion dollars. Apple and Microsoft passed four. The valuations are insane because the fuel is free. Or so they pretend.
Laboon calls it urgent. He wants a user-led internet. A system where we keep control. Right now? We are excluded from the very systems our data built.
Does it feel like theft when no money changes hands?
Probably. But the law hasn’t caught up. The value sits with the servers. Not with us.
