The conventional internet, Web 2.0, has become a mirror image of predatory capitalism. It is also called the platform economy, because a handful of Big Tech platforms set the rules of the market. Their wealth rests on our attention, which we users hand over in the form of our data, entirely for free.

At its core, the conventional economic system has simply extended itself into the digital space, and its principle is extraction. Only now it is we who are squeezed dry with our data, just as nature is sucked dry by the conventional economy. Zuboff called it surveillance capitalism. I call it plain sucking dry. Greed, ruthlessness, irresponsibility, algorithmic levelling and the disenfranchisement of the users on whose backs the wealth of the few is built. These are the negative values lived out in practice.

I hold the view that every user should own a share of Big Tech. After all, user data is the resource behind Big Tech's wealth — LinkedIn's, for instance. Microsoft reported for the 2026 financial year 1.3 billion members and 19.8 billion dollars in revenue. Divide that among everyone and you land on roughly fifteen dollars per head per year. The figure is so small that it is almost an insult. And that is precisely the irony. For the user it would be about fifteen dollars. For Big Tech it is a torrent of billions, fed by the unpaid life-data of billions of people. A peanut at the small end, an ocean at the large end.

Here is the thing: if users stopped using Big Tech, Big Tech would be worth very little. It is the user who in fact decides the economic success of the tech giants. The user is the raw material supplier who has never once been paid for the delivery.

But what if a data profile carried the value of a share, and with it a say?

Then everything tips. Because whoever holds the majority of the votes decides the direction. Today a single company holds 100 per cent and 1.3 billion people hold nil. Yet it is the user who creates the value. Microsoft should be paid for its servers and its code, like any other supplier. But the structural majority would sit with the users, who co-decide through their data.

This is, of course, a thought. Nobody is distributing these shares. But the logic behind it is not far-fetched. It tells me that wealth is being created here whose data owners were never once asked. The irony is that Big Tech only became Big because its infrastructure could be financed with our data property. And the user then pays a subscription on top, just to be handed back their own data.

Rather a lot of sucking dry, this platform economy, wouldn't you say?

Thanks for reading.

© Helga Bruderer 2026