Can “Conscious Data Contribution” Help Users to Exert “Data Leverage” Against Technology Companies?

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Tech users currently have limited ability to act on concerns around the negative societal impacts of large tech companies. However, recent work suggests users can exert leverage using their role as contributors of valuable data, for instance by withholding their data contributions to intelligent technologies. We propose and evaluate a new means to exert leverage against tech companies: “conscious data contribution” (CDC). Users who participate in CDC exert leverage against an offending tech company by contributing data to technologies operated by a competitor of that offending company. Using simulations, we find that CDC could be highly effective at reducing the gap in performance of intelligent technologies between an incumbent and their competitors. In some cases, just 20% of users contributing their data to a small competitor could help that competitor get 80% of the way towards best-case performance. We discuss the implications of CDC for policymakers, tech designers, and researchers.