Ethically sourced data

Ever heard of "ethically sourced XYZ"?, like ethically sourced diamonds, ethically sourced coffee beans, etc. The reason this exists is because of the nature of where these resources come from. Many of these resources come from third and second world countries that have minimal or non-enforced labor laws, essentially allowing slavery to take place. This allows international companies from first world countries to exploit the labor in these areas and sell at an incredible profit. Customer awareness has increased in the last decades and has created the rise of ethically sourced resources. Ethically sourced usually means that the labor conditions are the minimum standards of a first world country.

So what is Ethically sourced Data? It is the same concept but for data that has been created by humans. Almost anyone that interacts with some sort of internet connected software is created data that the software company is using either to sell to other organizations, or to improve their own product. Data for example from YouTube and GitHub is sold to other advertising companies or used to train AI, like in the case of GitHub Co-Piolt, which is then sold back to the same user base that created the data. I would consider this non-ethical data, although every user does agree to a Terms of Service that allows the company to sell the data, it is not easily descerned by the user that the data they are created is valuable. Making it a sort of business model dark pattern by exploiting their user base and created products that are built off the backs of your users and not sharing the revenue with them.

Data Dignity solves this problem though, by owning your data, we can ask you if you want to sell it to interested parties. Making it a clear transaction where all parties know what they data can be used for and why it was sold etc. This is ethical becuase the user has complete control over their data.