The Germans and their complicated relationship with data protection

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The human being on the Internet is a contradictory being.

People on the Internet take and take and take - information, services, advice, help in life - and give their data in return.

This is the valid, but largely unspoken deal between companies that offer their products online and users who take advantage of them.

Gladly for free, of course.

However, people on the Internet are reluctant to create an account in order to be able to access services or to take out a paid subscription, such as for a news service.

According to a recent study by the polling institute YouGov, so-called payment barriers "frustrate" users, and an impressive 84 percent of German online users are "annoyed" when they are asked to pay for a subscription in order to activate content.

This formulation of the results of the survey, which was commissioned by the tech company The Trade Desk, requires some interpretation.

Do these people get angry

because

they are supposed to give something;

Data that is worth money, or even money directly - or are you annoyed by

how

this transfer is conveyed to you or not?

The previous reading was more that Internet users want to act on the principle that they want to keep their cake and eat it at the same time.

The idea, which is immediately understandable in real life, that money is bartered for service, has at least been watered down on the Internet, if not a bit lost.

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The argument that the conclusion of a paid digital subscription, for example, is not carried out because a user is concerned about the use of personal data (and not because he is used to using information or services free of charge) could at least be in in many cases.

Because: The use of Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and other platforms continues to be high, for example the data scandal surrounding Facebook did not damage the company significantly.

Users continue to give these companies data on a daily basis that they monetize by selling advertising that is tailored to individual user interests.

This barter is either tacitly accepted, because what do you have to hide?

Or at least not rejected, although, as is well known, there is very little trust in the willingness of large platforms like Facebook to protect their users' data well.

Loss of control?

The large number of websites that ask users to enter their declaration of consent to the use of data, because the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has stipulated it for several years, is not without consequences.

According to the YouGov study, 71 percent of Germans “have the feeling that they have lost control over how their own data is used on the Internet”.

And also 71 percent are of the opinion "that the information they receive about the use of their data on the Internet is difficult to understand".

Understanding creates trust

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That seems paradoxical.

First of all, the GDPR has heightened consumers' awareness that barter is actually going on in the background.

Nonetheless, a provision that actually strengthened data protection does not appear to lead to happier consumers.

This probably also has to do with the fact that queries after opening a page, which allow a choice between direct consent and a confusing list of setting options, do not immediately improve understanding and trust, but in the worst case confuse them.

In the end, is it primarily a problem of mediation?

72 percent of Germans are more willing to create an account for an offer on the Internet, "if this provides clear information about the use of their data," according to the results of the survey.

The client of the study, an American company that offers advertisers a technological solution for purchasing digital advertising, advocates “speaking openly about how data is used”.

Users simply needed more control over their data.

That sounds sensible - and yet the question arises as to how the concern of consumers about the use of personal information, which has been repeatedly expressed in many surveys on the subject of data protection, fits with the continued high use of many offers on the Internet.

Nobody forces people to use these offers - but in many cases they make life much more convenient.

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In his book “The Necessary Revolution”, Eric Dolatre, the co-founder of the German web portal GMX, refers to a significant experiment.

A Finnish security company wrote the following sentence in the terms of use of a public hotspot: “By using this service, you agree to leave your first-born child.

The time and type of use are determined by the company. ”This experiment, which is of course not meant to be serious, describes the paradoxical attitude of many people towards data protection quite precisely.

At the same time, the big platforms, which primarily benefit from data capitalism, have now understood that they can use the user's concern about data protection for their own purposes.

The search engine company Google recently presented a new project called "Privacy Sandbox", which is officially intended to improve data protection for users of the Chrome browser.

Specifically, it should then no longer be possible for third-party providers (such as publishers, for example) to “track” the behavior of users via Chrome, that is, to track them in order to create behavioral profiles for their advertisers.

This could then only be done by Google itself via the Chrome browser, which has the largest market share in Germany. What initially comes across as a consumer-oriented measure can also be seen as an attempt to monopolize user data, as it was in an analysis in the specialist journal " Horizon "was called.

The Google project shows: The fact that data protection and the goal of “informational self-determination” of consumers are important goals cannot hide the fact that, in the end, only large “data octopuses” benefit from measures that are supposed to lead to more control.

While they continue to receive a lot of user data, companies that are exposed to well-intentioned restrictions on the Internet ultimately receive less data.

An already existing imbalance is further intensified.

Experts advise that, above all, the use of data must be regulated.

The client of the study itself advertises a "better identity solution" that protects privacy and yet does not block digital business models.

The collection of data would accordingly have to be less stigmatized, insofar as it should be conveyed why collecting data can be meaningful and in the truest sense enriching, if the data treasure itself is handled responsibly.

This does not even need a reference to the corona pandemic, which could also be better analyzed and brought under control with the collection of more data.