When doing some research on what people are more or less likely to share, and under which circumstances, the idea that I, as a consumer, can actively share information about myself instead of waiting to be asked dawned on me...
Active information sharing
Instead of consenting to companies who want to know your preferences, you should be able to tell them what you think they should know about you!
Advertisement remains a source of annoyance to many of us.
In a consumer society, the war for attention is ever ongoing.
But with Solid, there might be an option to alter the paradigm a bit.
Now, a company buys adds on a social media platform that is tailored based on a set of parameters, most often demographics: age, gender, socio economic status then some.
Additionally, adds are based on recommender engines and pattern matching.
For the company selling the adds, it is not a bad thing that the adds are "not too personal", as that means the advertiser needs to buy a broader range of people to broadcast to.
As you probably already know, the Solid paradigm allows us to cut out the middleman: you can share all this demographic data directly with the companies they want.
This would be sub-optimal. A company can now ask more detailed information in order to get to know you better, and will ask some 'general' information to be shared, so it can see which adds it wants to send you.
But what if you could tell the company what you actually want?
If I could say that I am a fan of a certain brand of shoes, and will unlikely buy a set of shoes from certain other brands... That might be usefull information: For the liked brand, knowing the person is a fan (now) will allow much more interaction with them.
And other brands would know that their propensity to buy their shoes is very low and shouldn't bother wasting time (of themselves and the customer)
If I can also share when I want a new pair of shoes, I could open this information to the brands I want... I bet the fan-brand would be very eager to know this (but is not something it could ask before, or even now.... the signal needs to come from the customer)
So: what is it you want? Which companies do you think should know about it?
Instead of companies asking you permission for some general information, you can send the companies you think they need to know about you.
And serve you in a better way.
After all, Customer is King
.jpg)
