Apparently, people in the European Union expected a payout from Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica data fiasco. “This was clearly a breach of trust,” the social network said in a statement to Reuters. “However, it’s important to remember that no bank account details, credit card information or national ID numbers were shared.” As a result, there won’t be a payout to the 2.7 million users whose accounts were affected. Unlike the US, Cambridge Analytica didn’t sell information on EU users, Facebook admitted.
This idea of royalty payouts for data use has floated around for a bit, given the billions that Facebook makes selling ads based on the data you provide via your profile and browsing history. When we asked a law school professor about how this type of payout would work, we were told, in so many words, it wouldn’t.
“You can’t control data,” Nancy Kim, of the California Western School of Law told my my coworker Edgar Alvarez. “It’s not like I give out something tangible and I say every time you rent that tangible thing out, you give me a royalty, a certain payment.”
Source: Reuters
