Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 199 posts

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#41

Post by criddell »

zubspace wrote: post #28

> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. I assume that this proposal is based on good intentions. But how they want to overcome the technical hurdles is a mystery to me. Who decides, how facebook should structu…

> Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data?

Facebook. As long as it's well documented the format isn't that important. The requirement should just be that if you take the exported data and reimport it, you get back to the original state (or at least reasonably close).

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#43

Post by ClumsyPilot »

azujus wrote: post #15

I believe we are helping to build part of that future in my current startup. People should own their own data and have a right to use it for their own benefit. (Startup: argyle.io)

I am happy to hear about your startup, but if you are going to promote it, at least outline what's your approach / why should I be interested.

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#44

Post by supercanuck »

buboard wrote: post #42

The users can already do that. FB and twitter do that , who doesn't actually? It's a good tactic that has been followed since blogs became a thing. Like when people could download their tumblr when it committed suicide.

maybe they want DRM for data

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#45

Post by ahartmetz »

zubspace wrote: post #28

> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. I assume that this proposal is based on good intentions. But how they want to overcome the technical hurdles is a mystery to me. Who decides, how facebook should structu…

The law will probably use words like "reasonable" and "common". While legal language is supposed to be as precise as possible, it is fine to be as vague as necessary, too.

In practice, I'd expect exporters to export in a format that doesn't cause them huge contortions, and importers to write the converters. Any lawsuits about unreasonably obfuscated formats would be quite messy, but maybe it's time for the legal system to handle questions of software adequately anyway.

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#46

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ghaff wrote: post #37
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is arguably, at least in part, actually in opposition to this Disagree. Today, questions about persistence and portability are made by companies. Users have virtually no say. Giving users say in the matter may mean some make bad portability decisions. But there is nothing fundamental to user-initiated portability that interferes with user-initiated deletion. Today, I can do neither with Facebook.

>Users have virtually no say. Well, that's true. Because once content by or about you is out there, neither you nor anyone else really has the power to force anyone to delete it. That's not so much a company making a decision but a collective decision that you don't generally have a "right to be forgotten." But that's not so much individual companies making an affirmative decision to always preserve data as no one pr…

> once content by or about you is out there, neither you nor anyone else really has the power to force anyone to delete it

If you port your data to every social network on the planet, an act tantamount to publishing, yes, your data will be public. That isn't an argument against granting users this right.

Social media companies distributed users' data when it was in said companies' interests. Letting users make that decision themselves may mean bad decisions will be made. But that's better than companies making users' decisions for them, with zero regard for what the users themselves want.

> a collective decision that you don't generally have a "right to be forgotten"

There is no right to be forgotten in America. (There can't be without gutting the First Amendment.)

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#47

Post by ClumsyPilot »

zubspace wrote: post #28

> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. I assume that this proposal is based on good intentions. But how they want to overcome the technical hurdles is a mystery to me. Who decides, how facebook should structu…

We have open banking API in UK, which is much more useful than having an export button. It allows for actual interoperability.

You could draw inspiration from that.

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#48

Post by buboard »

Mirioron wrote: post #27
godzillabrennus wrote: post #20

Good move. It’s data we create, we should own it.

You do own it. You can copy paste your posts around as much as you want. Does Twitter have to put in work to make it easier for you for no benefit of their own though?

Twitter -> Settings -> Your twitter data -> Download your data.

The option is already there. It has been for years

This is not a big deal at all

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#49

Post by DanielBMarkham »

ghaff wrote: post #19
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I feel this pain. This is kinda where we are on a lot of these issues, right? Like Net Neutrality? Ok, just make a law that all bits must be treated the same by pipe providers. Boom, you're done. But no, instead what's suggested is that the FTC start managing this stuff under Title 2. Right after that, you can bet we'll start hearing calls for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. Want users to own their data? Gre…

Or people don't really agree on what "fixing" means. To some of what you talk about, there is by no means universal agreement on whether you ought to be able to purge your content from the Internet.

I understand that and it's a fair point. But the law should be on the principle of the matter, I own my data, with the compromise buried in the details. (Perhaps I own the data in the same way an artist owns a copy of their music). Instead, the principles are compromised, and in a way that's not visible to the public, with the only thing left being a bunch of policy details.

That might be a great way to get a law passed, but it doesn't do much in the long run towards fixing the underlying problem.

Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

#50

Post by ysavir »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #4

Being able to take your data with you is good but most of the value in social media is due to the network effect. If you can't seamlessly being your connections with you, the incumbents will continue to have a huge advantage over newcomers to the market. In the context of social media, how could someone bring their connections with them to a new platform without compromising the rights of those connected to?

> most of the value in social media is due to the network effect Global network effects require consolidation. But there are many local network effects that add value with less scale. In the real world, these local networks emerge as friend circles, interest groups, block associations, companies and industry networks. These local networks are either subsets of or correlated with the global network. But they produce v…

Yes, but the question is how to achieve portability without infringing on others' privacy rights.

If I'm on facebook and want to export all my comments, that would require exporting all the status updates of the people who's posts I've commented on, which then also includes those contacts, too.

There's no such thing as exporting a single node in a network, you need the entire network.

Post reply on HN