Data was a hot topic at MIT Sloan Reunion 2026.
Both Alessandro Acquisti (T Wilson (1953) Professor in Management) and Miro Kazakoff, MBA ’11, (Senior Lecturer, Managerial Communications) discussed data in their faculty sessions. They covered all sorts of questions, like how is personal data collected, monetized, and distributed? Are privacy and data antithetical? How do we use data to communicate effectively?
Alessandro Acquisti (T Wilson (1953) Professor in Management) presents his research on data privacy and collection at MIT Sloan Reunion 2026.
Credit: L. Barry Hetherington
The choice between economic value and personal freedom
Acquisti, who addressed the first two questions, compared arguments about the economics of privacy and personal data. The common conception is that more data allows for economic benefits, efficiency, and innovation, and more privacy allows consumers to enjoy autonomy, dignity, and freedom. Those assumptions naturally pose this question: Does privacy protection imply economic harm?
“Both here and in the [European Union], the economics of privacy has had an interesting impact on the way we think about privacy in policy circles as well as in the public domain,” said Acquisti. “Essentially, I see more and more policy debate oriented as an alternative between either more data or more privacy.”
But Acquisti’s research has challenged that conventional wisdom, as well as the notion that we must choose either data (economic value) or privacy (personal freedom). For instance, some of the work he presented on the economic impacts of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework challenged the belief that privacy protections are economically damaging.
The GDPR is a comprehensive data privacy law created by the European Union (EU). It governs how companies collect, process, and protect the personal data of individuals within the EU and European Economic Area (EEA), giving consumers greater control over their personal information.
“If you want to find evidence of [economic] harm of the GDPR, yes, you’re going to find it. What I’m going to claim, however, is that much of the harm is short-term in nature,” he argued.
In fact, Acquisti’s research, which focuses on longer-term provision of free, quality content by EU versus United States news and media websites, found no negative effect of the GDPR on quality and quantity of content. He and his co-authors analyzed factors like the amount of news being produced, quality of articles, interactions of visitors with those articles, how many visitors there were, and whether they were interacting with the content by sharing it online on social media.
“Economically speaking, we confirmed that there was no difference between the two.”
Developers must also adapt to regulation. To show what happens with industry intervention in the privacy space, Acquisti referenced Apple’s ATT framework. ATT is a privacy initiative that Apple introduced in 2021 that forced third-party apps to require explicit consent from users before collecting and tracking their data.
Critics accused Apple of threatening the very existence of the free internet. Requesting explicit consent was considered an imposition. Yet again, examining long-term effects suggests no long-term harm from the ATT framework on the provision of free, high-quality apps on the Apple Store.
Both here and in the [European Union], the economics of privacy has had an interesting impact on the way we think about privacy in policy circles as well as in the public domain. Essentially, I see more and more policy debate oriented as an alternative between either more data or more privacy.
Using data to communicate
Where Acquisti’s talk focused more on the policy debate as it relates to data privacy, Miro Kazakoff examined how to effectively communicate with data.
He began by defining communication as encoding and decoding information. Encoding is the process of choosing which information to communicate and how to represent that information. Decoding is the process by which our brains convert visual input into information.
Encoding is the same for everyone. We all see the same thing. Decoding depends on the individual, which is why it is important to be familiar with your audience.
“Start where the audience starts,” said Kazakoff. “The density of ideas you can get through is very sensitive to how familiar is the audience with the topic.”
Audiences also conserve cognitive energy to minimize cognitive load, which means communicating clearly is essential. What can sometimes get in the way of simple communication, Kazakoff warns, is the curse of knowledge.
The curse of knowledge can be defined as the struggle to remember what it was like before you knew what you know now. It gets worse the more you know about your subject, and it is especially prevalent when communicating data and graphs.
“I’m not saying knowledge is a curse. Sometimes, people challenge me on that,” Kazakoff noted. “It’s just meant to be a scary term to remind us that having knowledge blinds us to how we sound to other people without that knowledge.”
Acknowledging perspective—both your own and your audience’s—is an essential aspect of communicating with data.
How does one fight the curse of knowledge? By aiming for simplicity. Kazakoff says the goal is not to get rid of the core of your communication, it's to strip away all the excess that doesn't need to be there. Aim for one idea at a time, identify the point and write it down as a headline, and visualize all data explicitly. Instead of thinking about what you can add to a slide, think about what you can take away to make it clearer.
You cannot make good choices about what to say and how to say it without deep knowledge of your audience.
Beware of behavioral targeting
Data privacy indicates fewer targeted ads, but companies who gain revenue from the ads would argue that the consumer benefits from seeing relevant products. This circles back to both Acquisti’s argument about privacy versus economy, and Kazakoff’s point that knowing your audience and their interests is essential for selling your point—or in this case, your product.
“You cannot make good choices about what to say and how to say it without deep knowledge of your audience,” warned Kazakoff.
Behavioral targeting assures that ad placement displays content that consumers are likely interested in, and studies have shown that behaviorally targeted ads have much higher click-through rates than random ads or contextual ads.
What you click on dictates what you’ll see next.
Acquisti studied prices and vendor quality in behaviorally targeted products versus products found via search engine organic results and found that targeted ads have worse quality vendors and more expensive prices for the same product than if the consumer were to just search for a product on Google.
“One out of five vendors in ads were F-rated, suggesting much lower quality of vendors in ads,” said Acquisti.
The gist? Think twice before clicking on those targeted ads.
Both Acquisti and Kazakoff demonstrated that data is all around us, whether we are aware of it or not. People consume data in many ways, from presentations at work to online shopping and social media scrolling.
Data is a powerful tool, if we know how to use it—and how it may be used against us.
Check out the MIT Sloan Reunion 2026 website to see more highlights and videos.
