My bank statements are private. My health records are protected by HIPAA. My tax returns are confidential. These feel obvious—of course that information belongs to me. I decide who gets to see it.
But somewhere along the way, we've been conditioned to accept that everything else about our personal lives is fair game for technology companies. Where I go, what I search, who I talk to, what I buy, how long I look at something—all of it captured, packaged, and sold. We've built an entire economy on the assumption that personal data is a commodity. Not something to be protected, but something to be extracted.
I don't think this is backwards. I think it's broken. And it's wrong.
Social media platforms have raced to the bottom to capture our time and attention by any means necessary—outrage, addiction, rage baiting, mind-numbing content—simply to harvest and sell our data. Their incentives aren't aligned with what you want or need. They're aligned with keeping you engaged as long as possible. Not by being useful, but by being addictive.
Here's where I think it should go: You own your data. Period. That's the starting point. It's literally your data. You're just using a service. You decide who gets access, what they can do with it, and when they can see it.
Companies should earn your information by providing real value—not by burying consent in a 47-page terms of service agreement.
This isn't about being anti-business or anti-advertising. It's about building a foundation of trust that makes everything else work better. When users feel respected, they engage more authentically. When brands earn access through value, the relationships they build are worth more.
Every platform I've built—The Jump, Creator Space, Team Scout—starts from this premise. What if we designed technology around what users actually want, instead of around what we can extract from them?