Data-Market · Frankfurt Research Data Service

In the digital economy, there is a significant imbalance in access to data. A few major US-based Tech companies, such as Google, Meta, and Amazon, collect large volumes of granular data about consumers, but do not provide much information about this data. Consequently, the European Union reacted. Particularly, the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) forces major Tech companies to provide European consumers access to their data, such as enabling them to export their information. This data covers, among others, the consumers’ search history (Google, Amazon), browsing activity (Chrome), app usage patterns (Apple, Google), social interactions (Meta, TikTok), purchase history (Amazon, Apple/Google App Stores) and streaming activity (YouTube, Prime).However, consumers hardly export or use this data. Therefore, consumers do not benefit from the economic value of their data, and researchers and the public do not know much about this data, resulting in a huge uncertainty about what major Tech companies know about consumers.I aim to solve these problems by building the “Frankfurt Research Data Service” (FRDS). FRDS should provide a data market, i.e., a research platform and data management service that (i) compensates consumers for providing researchers with their data and (ii) enables researchers to conduct ground-breaking research using a novel and rich data source. This platform uses European consumers’ portability rights (because of the DMA) and novel technology to enable consumers to get access to their data from major Tech companies. Consumers can then consent to monetize their data by providing researchers with at least pseudonymized data and receive compensation from researchers. Researchers can then use this novel data to tackle new research areas that should result in a large step forward towards more transparency about consumers’ real-world behavior and insights regarding what major Tech companies know about consumers.