Hand Me the Paper #7
A newsletter that chomps through PDFs and brings you the hottest content from the very niche world of tech-academia. Bite-sized.
I do a fair bit of reading. I read 52 books last year and am doing it again this year.
Starting this year, I also plan on reading more academic papers around tech and policy. Recording my readings and (sometimes, observations + annotated copies on this newsletter). Please do recommend papers and share your insights!
What I Read This Week:
The Economic Consequences of Data Privacy Regulation: Empirical Evidence from GDPR, by Guy Aridor, Yeon-Koo Che, and Tobias Salz in the National Bureau of Economic Research. [Link, Link with my comments].
What You Should Know:
It has been a while since the GDPR came into effect, and we are now in a better position to understand how it impacts user preferences and data collection practices by platforms.
Before the GDPR, privacy-conscious consumers were using less efficient, browser-reliant privacy protection practices, such as cookie deletion to opt-out of data collection.
Such practices created noise in the data being collected by platforms as artificial short browsing histories were mixed with ‘genuine’ user data.
Since the GDPR’s consent requirement gives users the power to opt-out of data collection practices, privacy-conscious users have used their rights instead, leading to less noise in data collected.
As a result, the average value of the remaining users has increased for advertisers.
Data Sufficiency (from the source):
TL;DR- Post-GDPR consent is more powerful and a lot more functional.
What I Have Been Reading:
Music to My Ears:
This talk at Google featuring Aswath Damodaran. I have a passing interest in valuation and Prof Damodaran’s lecture is the best possible starting point I could have hoped for. If you do watch this, please take a moment to appreciate the simplicity and enthusiasm in this video.