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Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies

Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.
  1. Jathan Sadowski

    1. Jathan Sadowski is a research fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab in the Faculty of Information Technology and in the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society in the Faculty of Arts, both at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

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  2. Salomé Viljoen

    1. Salomé Viljoen is an academic fellow at Columbia Law School in New York City, USA.

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  3. Meredith Whittaker

    1. Meredith Whittaker is the Minderoo Research Professor at New York University and co-founder and faculty director of the AI Now Institute in New York, USA.

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A few decades ago, if a researcher wanted to ask how bad weather affected commuting patterns — the transport modes people use, the routes they take, the times they travel — they might have surveyed hundreds of people and counted cars, buses and bikes at major junctions.

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Nature 595, 169-171 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01812-3

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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