Business & Education

Dollars for Data

By Cardiff Garcia,

Published March 26, 2018 at 3:24 PM CDT

When you get directions from Google Maps or post a photo of the sunset on Instagram, it may not cost you any money but you are paying with something else: your data. Tech companies get to know where you go, what you like, and who you're with.

You may think that's a pretty good trade off, but economist Glen Weyl thinks it's about time we started getting paid for that data. He envisions a world where your posts and likes could be converted into dollars and cents.

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Business & Education

Cardiff Garcia

Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.

See stories by Cardiff Garcia

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith