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

61–70 of 199 posts

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

#61

Post by Iv »

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…

All data should be exportable in a single file in a documented format with no encryption, no patents, no copyright or trademark claims attached to it.

I think this would solve all problems. An open standard would quickly appear and every platform would support it.

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

#62

Post by sp332 »

danShumway wrote: post #55

> 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. Facebook already has a data export feature. You have to manually navigate to that page and download a giant zip file. Cool. The much more important concept being propose…

Is that different from the API access Facebook already makes available to apps?

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

#63

Post by Mindwipe »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #51
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?

Are "connections" not also "your data"? It's a list of other users, curated by you.

What information is in the list?

I might have a photo of me on my Facebook profile. Does a friend of mine get to take that photo with them if they migrate to Gab?

I would regard that as a breach of my rights.

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

#64

Post by neuroticfish »

danShumway wrote: post #55

> 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. Facebook already has a data export feature. You have to manually navigate to that page and download a giant zip file. Cool. The much more important concept being propose…

>Beyond advocating for data-exports, we should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties.

IMO we should first and foremost be advocating for the right to have our data destroyed.

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

#65

Post by buboard »

duxup wrote: post #59
buboard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, facebook and twitter already have apis for almost all their functions. What's the goal of this legislation?

At least as far as Twitter goes don't they limit some of their APIs like how many users a given set of API keys can use or something like that?

Yeah they severely limit bots and ask for phone numbers and then they 'll ban your number if you use it twice. Who's responsible for that other then the media FUD about russian bots? I really can't blame twitter (and FB) for limiting their platforms here.

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

#66

Post by bilbo0s »

ethbro wrote: post #39
bilbo0s wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interoperability just gives more people potential access to your data. What most activists are trying to do is move towards fewer people having access to your data, as well as you having full and legal custody of your data. Interoperability is better for companies, particularly small ones. But the idea here is to help people prevent companies from accessing their data willy nilly. I'd think the goal would be to decre…

The counterargument is that regulation around collecting and permitting access to data simply widens the moat for incumbents. Facebook and Google can implement a 500-page law. A startup cannot. So I think it's important to keep "How are we encouraging competition in the marketplace?" in mind as these proposals go through.

I mean, as I said, "encouraging competition in the marketplace" is a separate discussion. If we start allowing marketplace needs to determine or even influence who gets to access a user's data, we're already moving away from the goal of the user being the final arbiter of who gets to access his data.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but letting marketplace needs influence who gets access to a user's data is how we got to this point in the first place. It's a separate discussion, and it needs to be kept separate. Besides, whatever people come up with in that regard, the commercial entities that want access to users' data can really have no reasonable objection to obtaining strict, explicit consent to access that data. With the concomitant legally binding and criminally enforceable rules attached.

Competition in the marketplace is good, but people are a society's priority. We can't lower the barriers to access on a user's private data in the name of, "this is good for business."

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

#67

Post by jagged-chisel »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46
ghaff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 d…

Honest question (I'm not making the connection on my own, so please help me out): how does giving me the ability to instruct a social network to delete my information (and a law to enforce that instruction) infringe on the network's first amendment rights?

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

#68

Post by buboard »

romaaeterna wrote: post #60
buboard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, facebook and twitter already have apis for almost all their functions. What's the goal of this legislation?

To break the Facebook and Twitter monopolies.

By doing something that is already possible, and has not broken their monopoly?

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

#69

Post by kickscondor »

ysavir wrote: post #50
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You certainly can export a single node - just depends on your expectations. For example, the Indieweb has already done this in a way that I find acceptable. My blog (kickscondor.com) syndicates all the comments to every post (including deeply nested ones.) And it also captures a copy of all posts that I respond to (all the way up the chain going backwards.) This is sufficient for me. No need to export anything - it's already there in my own storage. You could also say that you'd need a snapshot of the entire Internet to provide context - but that's Just unreasonable.

I think the a Web itself already has had a 'network effect' larger than that of Facebook or any individual subnetwork.

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

#70

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ysavir wrote: post #50
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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

The bill [1] is ambiguous on the definition of user data (§ 2(9)). There is latitude with this definition, from rich portability (as you describe) to bare-bones portability (simply metadata, e.g. X commented on Y's post on such and such data).

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

Graphs are divisible. My export need not contain every user in Kazakhstan's data.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968

Post reply on HN