Blockchain and data market. The case of Wibson from a critical perspective.

YANSEN, GUILLERMINA

Blockchain and Web 3.0: Social, Economic, and Technological Challenges

Routledge

Lugar: London/NewYork; Año: 2019; p. 159 - 173

This chapter aims to characterize an extended way of using blockchain technology in the field of commercialization of user generated data focusing on the case of Wibson, a blockchain based app that intends to ?decentralize? the data market, by ?empowering individuals to profit from their data? (Wibson, 2017). This case is relevant because it represents a clear example of one of the most extended ways of blockchains usage in the context of informational capitalism. Also, it operates within one of the most profitable branches of the information sector, potentially challenging giant companies, like Facebook and Google. This branch has been subject to all kinds of debates about privacy boundaries and lack of transparency by corporations, and diverse concepts are involved (democracy, decentralization, transparency, etc.). We cannot analyze all of them. Instead we can put Wibson, and similar blockchain based apps, in their right place. First: within capitalism and in a period of increasing commercialization of digital information. Second, in between a process of substitution of one kind of centralization of data market (that which includes Internet giants) to another kind of centralization (the one that includes Wibson). The chapter is mainly theoretical and based on secondary sources in order to characterize Wibson.