The Free Data Buffet Is Over: If Our Content Creates Value, We Should Share in It
A while ago, I started a petition asking a fairly simple question:
If Nextdoor can create economic value from information neighbors provide, why shouldn't the neighbors who provide it participate in that value?
Today, I'm expanding the question.
This isn't only about Nextdoor anymore.
It's about social media platforms, websites, apps, advertising networks, and other digital businesses that collect information about what we read, click, search, recommend, review, discuss, and buy.
My message is becoming simpler:
Our information isn't free anymore.
At least, I don't think it should be.
We Keep Supplying the Raw Material
Think about what people give digital platforms every day.
We write reviews. We recommend restaurants. We tell neighbors which plumber showed up on time. We answer questions. We upload photographs. We comment. We click. We search. We like things. We tell platforms what interests us.
Then there's the less obvious information: cookies, device identifiers, IP addresses, browsing activity, clicks and other event data.
These aren't all legally or technically the same thing, and different privacy laws and platform agreements govern how different types of information may be collected and used. I'm not claiming that placing a cookie on my browser magically means somebody owes me a royalty check.
I'm making an argument about economic value.
Because individually, one click may be almost meaningless.
Multiply those clicks, posts, recommendations, and behavioral signals across millions of people, however, and suddenly we're talking about an extremely valuable resource.
Nextdoor Makes the Point Particularly Well
Nextdoor increasingly describes itself in terms of neighbor-generated knowledge. Its 2025 Transparency Report described the platform as containing “neighbor-generated content and locally relevant information,” while Nextdoor's newer AI-powered Ask product draws upon nearly 15 years of conversations among verified neighbors. Nextdoor
That's valuable.
And who created those conversations?
Neighbors did.
Nextdoor built the platform.
Nextdoor paid engineers.
Nextdoor created the infrastructure.
Nextdoor developed the advertising business.
Nextdoor has every right to try to build a profitable company from those investments.
But neighbors supplied an enormous amount of the raw material that makes the platform useful.
Nextdoor itself says almost 30% of its content consists of organic recommendations and has talked about tens of millions of “Faves” associated with millions of businesses. Nextdoor Blog
That's nothing.
Cookies Are Part of the Bigger Conversation
The same principle makes me think differently about tracking.
Nextdoor's own data-processing documentation identifies things such as cookie IDs or similar identifiers, IP addresses, user-agent information, and event data such as clicks or installs among categories of personal data involved in certain advertising-related processing. Nextdoor Legal
Again, this isn't uniquely a Nextdoor issue.
It's an internet issue.
We've spent years becoming accustomed to clicking:
ACCEPT ALL COOKIES
Maybe we should start thinking more carefully about what we're accepting and what companies receive in return.
If information about my behavior helps improve targeting, train recommendation systems, develop products, measure advertising, build audiences or otherwise contribute to commercial value, I think it's reasonable to have a larger conversation about what the person generating that information receives in return.
Welcome Back to My Very Lonely Petition 😂
My petition hasn't exactly become the Boston Tea Party of user-generated data.
Last time I checked, it had one signature.
Mine.
😂
I already know what that guy thinks.
But perhaps my original message was too focused on Nextdoor.
Because this question is much bigger.
My updated message isn't:
Destroy social media.
It isn't:
Stop using the internet.
And it certainly isn't:
Companies shouldn't make money.
It's this:
If our participation creates commercial value, let's start talking about sharing that value.
That could take many forms.
Direct compensation for opt-in research. Contribution credits. Subscription benefits. Revenue-sharing pools. Advertising credits. Payments for particularly valuable content. Rewards for reviews or recommendations that generate measurable commercial activity. Stronger controls over commercial reuse. Clear choices about whether content can be used to develop AI products.
I don't pretend to have the perfect economic model.
That's what the conversation is for.
Until Then, We Can Stop Supplying Some of the Commodity
That's the other part of my petition.
Participation is voluntary.
If I don't like the economic arrangement, I can reconsider what I voluntarily contribute.
That doesn't mean withholding information about a missing child, dangerous weather, a lost pet, a fire, an emergency, or something that could protect another person.
Human safety comes before my argument about data economics.
I'm talking about the routine commercial material platforms benefit from:
Which roofer should I hire?
What's the best restaurant nearby?
Who installed your HVAC system?
Would you recommend this dealership?
Which insurance company do you use?
Every answer adds another tiny piece to a valuable database.
Maybe we should stop automatically assuming that contribution costs $0.00.
The Internet Made Us the Product, the Customer and the Workforce
That's what fascinates me.
We can simultaneously be the audience viewing advertisements, the customer purchasing products, the creator producing content, and the source generating behavioral data.
That's an extraordinary business model.
For the companies.
Maybe it's time users become more conscious participants in the economics too.
And I'm not suggesting that users automatically have a legal right to payment for everything they post or every cookie generated. Platform terms, privacy laws, and individual choices matter.
I'm saying something much simpler:
We can ask for a different deal.
Nextdoor, You're Still My Test Case
Nextdoor remains particularly interesting to me because its product depends so heavily on what neighbors know.
Without neighbors, there are no neighbor recommendations.
Without neighbors, AI has no years of neighborhood conversations to search.
Without neighbors, there are no local experiences to organize.
Without neighbors, advertisers have far less reason to want access to those neighborhoods.
Nextdoor says it wants every voice to have value. Nextdoor Business
Great.
Let's talk about the economic value too.
Nextdoor built the container.
Neighbors keep filling it.
So I'm Updating the Invitation
To Nextdoor.
To social-media companies.
To websites.
To apps.
To companies collecting behavioral information.
And, most importantly, to the people creating all of it:
Stop thinking of your digital activity as automatically worthless simply because nobody has historically written you a check for it.
Ask what you're providing.
Ask how it's being used.
Read the privacy controls.
Decline unnecessary tracking when you prefer not to.
Think before voluntarily providing another commercially useful recommendation, review, or piece of content.
And if enough people decide the current exchange isn't good enough?
Companies will have an incentive to offer a better one.
My petition may still have only one signature.
That's okay.
Every movement has a first person willing to look slightly ridiculous standing there alone.
I'm already bald. I've survived worse. 😂
Our information has value.
Our content has value.
Our recommendations have value.
Our attention has value.
Our time has value.
The question isn't whether digital companies should be allowed to create value.
The question is whether the people supplying so much of the raw material should be part of it.
I think that's a conversation worth having.
👉 Sign the petition: https://c.org/GkNWmffgg9
👉 Follow the continuing case study: NielFlamm.com/blog
🌎 Aisha on Grounding: Sometimes We Need to Reconnect With the Earth
Today’s post at A Godd3ss3s Cr3ation is about grounding—taking off your shoes, feeling the Earth beneath your feet, slowing down, and reconnecting with the present moment. 🌎💚
If you need something spiritual today, give it a read:
A Godd3ss3s Cr3ation Blog
https://www.agodd3ss3scr3ation.com/blog
Thirty Years of Talking Crap—and Showing Up
Most Tuesdays and Fridays, a core group of us guys gets together on Zoom. If you’re picturing thoughtful discussions, mature reflection, and dignified conversation… you’ve got the wrong Zoom.
Most nights, we talk crap about each other.
For some of us, this started more than 30 years ago. And apparently, we still have material.
Sure, there are moments when we get serious. We talk about life, the hard stuff, and whatever somebody is going through. But most of the time, these calls are a chance to escape life's pressures and just have fun. For a little while, we get to laugh with people who knew us long before our current responsibilities did.
Last night, though, something happened that made me appreciate these friendships a little differently.
A few of the guys go to New York Comic Con every year. It’s an event. It’s expensive. It’s crowded. I’ve never been, but I’ve seen the pictures, and the costumes are clearly part of the experience. That’s cosplay, for anyone unfamiliar: dressing up as a character from a comic, movie, game, or whatever world you want to step into.
One of our guys is going this year with his 15-year-old son. Their first time.
Naturally, we asked if he was going to cosplay.
He was against the idea.
Naturally, that did not end the discussion.
With AI being what it is, I used his likeness and his son’s to put together some costume suggestions. Real possibilities, presented in a PowerPoint. Because apparently, this is what decades of friendship have prepared me for.
He looked through it with his son.
Then his son wanted to join our Zoom.
His dad told him to go away.
Now, before anyone gets caught up in that last part, let’s appreciate what happened: a 15-year-old wanted to hang out with us.
Us.
I took two things away from that.
First, we’re still cool enough for a teenager to want in. Or we act like 15-year-olds often enough that he recognized his people.
Some of the time, anyway.
Okay. Most of the time.
But the second thing stayed with me.
He got a glimpse of what a lasting friendship can look like. A group of guys who, across time, distance, race, and all the ways life can pull people apart, still make room for each other.
We weren’t trying to teach him anything. We were doing what we always do: making fun of one another, laughing, and showing up. Yet somewhere in that, he saw something he wanted to be part of.
That means a lot.
Friendships like these don’t sustain themselves. People get busy. Priorities change. Life gets complicated. Keeping a connection takes effort, even when that effort looks like logging onto Zoom to hear the same guy tell the same ridiculous story again.
It isn’t always easy. And I know what we have is rare.
I hope his son finds his own version of it. People he can grow up with and grow older with. People who will listen when life gets heavy—and give him a hard time when he needs a laugh.
And to everyone reading this, I hope you already have friends like that. If you don’t, I hope you find them.
Thirty years from now, may you still be showing up for each other.
And still have plenty of crap to talk.
The Hinge Experiment: Apparently My Date Reads My Blog
Well, The Hinge Experiment™ has taken an interesting turn.
Yesterday, I celebrated that after weeks of absolutely nothing happening on Hinge, I finally had a new match.
Airica.
We started talking. We discovered some things in common. She lives about an hour and a half away, which I don't consider a major obstacle. Most importantly, we started making plans to meet on Sunday.
So naturally, I did what I do.
I wrote about it with her photo.
And this morning, I discovered one tiny detail I probably should have considered more carefully:
Airica saw the post.
Oops.
Time for a Mea Culpa
I had to do a little mea culpa earlier today.
Airica was shocked that I'd posted about her and our Hinge match.
And you know what?
I totally get it.
She's a private person.
I am...
Well...
Have you met me?
I have a website with my name on it where I document my life regularly.
I write about dialysis.
I write about my prosthetic.
I write about eye surgery.
I write about scams.
I write about family.
I write about dating.
I once turned having zero Hinge matches into multiple blog posts and gave an imaginary iguana named Steve a recurring role.
Clearly, privacy and I have a somewhat unconventional relationship.
But that's my choice.
Airica didn't necessarily sign up for the same thing simply because she matched with me.
That's an important distinction.
My Life Is Public. Hers Doesn't Have to Be.
This was actually a good reminder for me.
I'm comfortable putting a lot of my life online.
Airica isn't.
Neither approach is wrong.
But when another person becomes part of one of my stories, particularly someone I'm just getting to know, I need to remember that my comfort level doesn't automatically become theirs.
So I apologized.
No excuses.
No:
“But I'm a blogger!”
No:
“But that's what I do!”
No attempt to convince her that she shouldn't have been surprised.
She was surprised.
I understood why.
Mea culpa.
Lesson learned.
And hopefully, lesson remembered.
But Here's the Good News...
Despite my apparently irresistible ability to create complications before the first date even happens, it looks like we're still on for tomorrow.
Yes.
Tomorrow.
The Hinge Experiment may finally produce an actual date.
Two people.
Same geographic location.
At the same time.
Intentionally.
I'm almost afraid to type that sentence.
Given the history of this experiment, I'm waiting for Hinge headquarters to send someone to my house and say:
“Sir, there's been a clerical error.”
But as of this writing...
We're on.
There's Just One Tiny Problem
Now I need to figure out what we're actually doing.
Details.
Apparently, announcing you're going on a date isn't the same as planning the date.
Who knew?
She's about an hour and a half away, so I'd like to come up with something that's worth the drive but also relaxed enough that we're not trapped in some elaborate four-hour romantic extravaganza if we discover within the first 20 minutes that we have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
That's the strange thing about meeting someone from an app.
We've talked.
We've messaged.
We've seen pictures.
We've read profiles.
But we've never actually been in the same room.
There is still that moment when two people meet and discover whether the digital version translates into real life.
I'm looking forward to finding out.
And Maybe I'll Try Something Radical
Perhaps tomorrow I'll do something completely outside my normal operating procedure.
Experience the date before writing about the date.
Revolutionary.
I know.
And if Airica prefers that parts of her life stay private, I can respect that.
The Hinge Experiment can still be my story without making every person I meet a public character.
Although Steve the Iguana remains fair game.
He signed a release.
Probably.
Current Hinge Standings
After weeks of watching an empty match screen:
Matches: 1.
Woman I'm actually talking to: 1.
Potential date tomorrow: 1.
Distance: About 90 minutes.
Mea culpas issued: 1.
Dates actually completed: Still 0.
That last number could finally change tomorrow.
First, however, I need to answer the most pressing question in The Hinge Experiment:
What the heck are we going to do?
Stay tuned.
Well...
Maybe don't stay too tuned.
I'm learning. 😂
Holy Moses: A Pregnant Nun, West Texas and… a Cow?
Every once in a while, the algorithm drops something in front of me that makes me ask:
How the hell did I get here?
This time, it was the short film Holy Moses, starring Amanda Seyfried.
It's only about 15 minutes long, but somehow it connects a pregnant nun in 1960s Ireland with a man at a gas station in West Texas in the late 1980s.
And what ties these two worlds together?
A cow.
Yes.
A COW.
The premise was strange enough that once I started watching, I needed to know where this was going.
Amanda Seyfried plays Mary, the pregnant nun, and the story jumps across decades and thousands of miles through what is described as a peculiar miracle.
It's weird.
It's religious.
It's mysterious.
And it's ambiguous enough to make me wonder what exactly I watched after it ended.
But unlike sitting through a two-hour movie only to discover I have no idea what happened, Holy Moses asks for about 15 minutes of my life.
I can make that investment.
And I actually found it interesting.
It feels less like a traditional short film and more like someone opening the door to a much bigger story, letting me look inside for a few minutes, and then closing it again.
Apparently, that isn't entirely accidental. Writer-director Eli Powers created Holy Moses as a proof of concept with the possibility of expanding the idea.
I'd watch that.
Because now I have questions.
Lots of questions.
And most of them somehow involve...
THE COW.
🐄 Watch Holy Moses here: