I've been paying Google with my data since long before youtube started. They've certainly been collecting it and profiting from it without writing checks to me. Maybe when youtube stops collecting data and they delete all they have they can start asking for money, but ultimately I'm not going to worry about how the trillion dollar multinational corporate giant which has been exploiting us since at least the 2000s is going to keep stuffing their pockets with cash. They've done pretty damn well for themselves so far, even though ad blockers have always existed. They'll figure it out.
The whole point is that there is no moral/ethical way to enter a “contract” with a party who has been knowingly siphoning (read “stealing”) your and everyone else’s data without being upfront about it since time immemorial. Oh you want to enter a contract with me? Send me an invoice at the end of every month about what data you collected from me and how you used it to pay for the services. Otherwise, there’s no way they won’t be double dipping.
Or they can drop the adtech business or spin it out as a separate company. But either way currently there is no way to fairly deal with ad tech companies with thinly veneered “free” services on top.
Somebody should tell that to the multi-billion dollar a year industry that sprung up over the buying and selling of the most mundane details of our lives. Or maybe they should ask why basically every company everywhere spends so much time and money collecting, storing, and managing far more data on their customers (and anyone else they can) than they actually need to conduct their business. Companies don't usually like spending a bunch of resources for zero reason. The idea that "your data isn't worth anything" is demonstrably false. Your data is so valuable that it's making companies money hand over fist, and most of it that is at your expense.
You have an extremely weird idea about the relationship between “how much something sells for in the market” and “how much something is worth”. Could you answer how you view this relationship for the following things?
1. Your kidneys, or heart, or any vital organ.
2. Weapons grade Plutonium.
3. Falcon heavy.
4. A single grain of rice, 100 million times.
What you are saying implies “we don’t have a good marketplace for user data”, which is pretty obvious. But I have no idea how “thus it is worth nothing” follows from there.
