It’s a nice idea, but will it fly? Richard Buchanan, a freelance ad creative, has launched what he is calling the “Facebook Users Union” and he wants you to join to apply pressure on the social network to give to good causes.

According to a website and Facebook group that Buchanan has set up the 500 million of us now using Facebook are “effectively working for free, creating wealth for the shareholders of Facebook”.

He’s borrowing from social history and the former tools of trade unionists and framing it in a modern context. It is no longer worker solidarity, but user solidarity. Users of the world unite, you have noting to lose but…

“User solidarity is a powerful tool which can be used to protect our interests now and in the future as we continue to enjoy the benefits of social networking. As more and more social networks are acquired by larger conglomerates their ability to leverage their size increases.”

His point that we pay for using Facebook with the supply of our personal user data is an interesting one and valid considering the power that user data represents. Marketers increasingly want to know more and more about us. We are data mined top to bottom and sold to on the basis of what we give and don’t give away. Without that personal data social networks and marketers have very little, but by the same token we have less as well – Facebook might be data poor if we stopped using it, but we would be connection poor. Maybe that is where the trade off is.

Buchanan argues we should be asking ourselves how much we are worth to Facebook and how much we generate in revenue and then use that as leverage to pressure Facebook to give back.

“Imagine what could happen if Facebook donated 10% of your annual value to a good cause every year? It may be a small amount but it adds up when scaled into the half billion. Thus we, the users, should have a say in how the profit gets distributed. We should be able to donate some the annual value WE GENERATE to good causes right. I mean we created it didn’t we?”

The revenue only comes significant when you have hundreds of millions of individuals and similarly a union only has power in large numbers. So far Buchanan has 115 (including us) members, it’s a start but he is going to need one or two more.