Krystian Łukasik

I’m happy to share that I’ve started a new position as a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Science, Technology and Society!

19. The article is paywalled, but this link should work until September 10: t.co/IQAClop53p

Regular link: t.co/eWUBBMumT4

At 2 PM, tune in to Światopodgląd on TOK FM, where I’ll talk more about this research.

18. Our study confirms people take privacy seriously. Nearly 80% of respondents disagreed with the statement: I don’t care what online service providers do with my data. 87% believe that large online service providers know too much about us. 88% think tech companies should be more strictly regulated

17. Another issue in the case of Google: search is a basic function of the internet, essential for social participation. Not everyone can afford to pay for a “no-tracking” option.

Finally, privacy can also be understood as a human right—not something that should be commodified.

16. A few caveats:

Platforms can still collect data and offer subscriptions - Facebook has already done this.

The “choice” between paying or being tracked can legitimize surveillance.

The privacy paradox: people declare they’d pay for privacy, but rarely do in practice.

15. Users value privacy even more than the absence of ads. This suggests companies could keep ad revenues by offering privacy-friendly solutions or less invasive advertising strategies, such as contextual targeting.

14. Understanding privacy preferences could also help platforms adapt services to user demand - turning privacy-enhancing initiatives into a competitive advantage.

13. Even from the platforms’ perspective, the study shows that alternative business models (e.g. subscriptions instead of data exploitation) could improve welfare while still compensating operators for potential losses.

12. What does this mean? From a purely economic perspective, stronger online privacy protection could bring a net positive welfare effect.

11. For Facebook, the revenue from data is actually lower than the amount users are willing to pay to stop the company from collecting it. For Google, the case is more complex - details are in the article.

10. How much do platforms earn from our data? Facebook’s average ad revenue per Polish user: 2.59 PLN. Google’s: 3.65 PLN

2.59 EUR may sound small. But multiplied by Facebook’s user base in Poland and then by 12 months, it’s over 681 milion PLN annually from Polish users’ data for just one company.

9. In our discrete choice experiment, users said they’d pay on average 3.89 EUR/month for Facebook not to access private data (like location), and 3.08 EUR/month for Google not to access such data.

8. For no profiling (e.g. platforms not “guessing” our sexual orientation or political views), users would pay 0.94 EUR/month on Facebook and 0.5 EUR on Google. For no ads at all: 0.89 EUR/month on Facebook and 0.98 EUR on Google.

7. Most importantly, the status quo option has negative value. In other words, in today’s situation, where platforms collect as much as they can, profile us, and show us targeted ads, users would expect compensation.
(Statistically significant only for Google.)

5. The core finding: our empirical results suggest that online data protection is important for Polish users, and the benefits of stronger privacy may exceed the platforms’ revenue losses.

4. But is the problem important enough for users to actually pay for stronger privacy? Or, despite concerns, do we accept the loss of privacy as the price for valuable services like Google Search or Facebook?

3. The rise of business models built personal data exploitation has sparked debates about threats to privacy and about the addictive architecture of digital services.

2. To answer this, we examined whether the benefits of increased user protection outweigh the revenue losses for the platforms. We estimated how much users value their data protection, and how much profit platforms generate from Polish users’ data.

An article by M. Bylicki, E. Zawojska and myself has just been published in Technology in Society.

We ask: Can stronger privacy protection for Facebook and Google users improve social welfare in Poland?