For the past 20 years or so, we have become too accustomed to the idea of a “free internet.” Search engines, social media, email, maps, translation services—all of it seemed free. Or at least, it felt that way.
But in reality, nothing was ever free.
We were paying not with money, but with data. Names, interests, location history, purchase records, sleep patterns, social connections, facial images—all of it was handed over as “payment” to sustain business models.
The problem is that we paid more than we needed to.
Did using a map really require disclosing our family structure? Did translation apps really need to track our location history? We never truly scrutinized how much information was being asked of us—or whether it was justifiable.
Worse, we no longer remember what we gave away.
This may, at some point, become a social issue we recognize as “data overpayment.”
Data overpayment is not a single event or sudden incident.
It is the slow accumulation of loss over years, even decades.
By the time we notice, we may no longer know what we’ve already lost.
But as we enter the age of AI, that structure is starting to shift. A new set of questions is emerging around our personal data—how it is used in model training, who has control over it, where it’s recorded, and how transparent that process can be.
What if we could know where our data is used? What if we could choose how it is used? What if we had the right to retract the data we shared in the past?
If that were possible, then the economic, legal, and ethical meaning of “data” itself would be dramatically redefined.
Data is not something to be sold off. It’s something to be licensed for use.
Data is owned—not traded, but governed through conditions.
If this perspective becomes more widely accepted, we might finally begin to correct the overpayment that has built up over the past two decades.
It’s time we start treating our data as something that truly belongs to us.