Data or privacy? Businesses can have both, MIT Sloan research finds

According to MIT Sloan, a team of researchers conducted multiple studies[1] on who benefits from the data economy and how trade-offs between protecting and sharing personal information affect the value of data.MIT Sloan says that the researchers, led by Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of IT at the MIT Sloan School of Management[1], set out to test the belief that regulation-mandated data protections reduce the economic benefits of consumer data.Acquisti told MIT Sloan that under conventional wisdom, a world with more data and a world with more privacy have "almost antithetical outcomes."[1] MIT Sloan reports that Acquisti's research shows that it's very possible to balance both.[1]MIT Sloan notes that when the U.S. Census Bureau employed[1] differential privacy, critics raised concerns about the integrity of census-guided democratic processes[1]. According to the school, Acquisti and his research colleagues made the case that the trade-offs around differential privacy mask deeper uncertainties in census data.[1] news and media websites found no negative effect of the GDPR on quality and quantity of content.[2] In that article, Acquisti said much of the GDPR's economic harm is "short-term in nature."[2]Acquisti told MIT Sloan, "We can use tools to protect privacy and still benefit from data."[1]