Are the Best Things in Life Still Free?

Ever thought of your data as currency? When was the last time you read the privacy policy when you signed up to an online service? Who has the time? And what are you going to do if you don’t agree? It’s not easy to opt out of a social media network when your friends, family, school and even employer all communicate there.

Professor Maurice Stucke argues that what we all thought was free, is still actually costing us – it’s just not taking our money. Coining that now pervasive aphorism, in the digital world the currency is data and we may well be handing it over without knowing its true value. This is just one of a series of economic, political and social harms associated with the rise of large data-driven business models highlighted by Professor Stucke.

In this episode of Competition Lore, Maurice Stucke explains how our data is powering digital platforms and outlines a regulatory and enforcement agenda for governments to keep a check on their power.

The episode is available here.