Microsoft Says Elite MIDS Should Govern our Data

Quite an interesting piece, certainly not obvious, a proposal for what are called MIDs or 'Mediators of Individual Data'.    I excerpt a short piece below, but the total document is quite long.   I believe in simple solutions, and this is very far from that.  An elite academic solution that is very unlikely be adopted.   Read it if your dare.  Sounds like Soviet Central Planning.  Uprooting democracy and capitalism?  Who governs these groups, influences them?   Beware an imminent nightmare. 

A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society   In the HBR  By Jaron Lanier and Glen Weyl  (both from Microsoft)

For individuals and platforms, the future requires a fundamental economic shift.

Digital transformation is remaking the human world, but few are satisfied with how that’s been going. That’s especially true in media, where the dominant model of targeted advertising derived from data surveillance and used to fund free-to-the-public services like social media and search is increasingly viewed as unsustainable and undesirable.

Today, internet giants finance contact between people by charging third parties who wish to influence those who are connecting. The result is an internet — and, indeed, a society — built on injected manipulation instead of consensual discourse. A system optimized for influencing unwitting people has flooded the digital world with perverse incentives that lead to violations of privacy, manipulated elections, personal anxiety, and social strife.  ... " 

" ... For data dignity to work, we need an additional layer of organizations of intermediate size to bridge the gap. We call these organizations “mediators of individual data,” or MIDs.
A MID is a group of volunteers with its own rules that represents its members in a wide range of ways. It will negotiate data royalties or wages, to bring the power of collective bargaining to the people who are the sources of valuable data. It will also promote standards and build a brand based on the unique quality and identity of the data producers they represent. MIDs will often perform routine accounting, legal, and payment duties but might also engage in training and coaching. They will help focus the scarce attention of their members in the interest of those members rather than for an ulterior motive, such as targeted advertising. ... " 

Jaron Lanier is Office of the Chief Technology Officer Prime Unifying Scientist (OCTOPUS) at Microsoft, a musician, and the author of several books, including Who Owns the Future? E. Glen Weyl is principal researcher at Microsoft Research in New York City and teaches economics at Princeton. His most recent book, coauthored with Eric Posner, is Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. ....