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

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

#131

Post by npo9 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

neuroticfish wrote: post #64

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.

Don’t we have this right for a large portion of the population? GDPR and CCPA both include “the right to be forgotten.” Many companies will honor GDPR delete requests for non-eu users. CCPA includes a programmatic delete option and I’m sure the most common decision will be to allow it for all users not just California users.

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

#132

Post by bilbo0s » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #120

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…

> we should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties From my PoV, for my purposes, as a technically minded user I might agree. But thinking about the numpty-on-the-street, this could be a privacy nightmare with people being easily conned into allowing a random application full unrestricted access to slurp their data. This can happen already, of course, but the provider…

Again though, all that needs to be done is to make sure that the liability for leaked data falls on the user. That's the other part of it right? You delegated access to your account, so InstaFaceTwitter is no longer responsible for what happens to the data on that account. They are only responsible for making sure they give anyone presenting the keys you authorized access to edit and read data on your account.

I mean, there are obviously responsibilities that naturally come with having delegated that access. And word will get around. The first GDPR violations because some user delegated access to their account and the entity that was authorized slurped up all of that user's contacts' personally identifiable data without the contacts being notified, will undoubtedly set the tone. That's still likely a GDPR violation. This doesn't change any of that. The only thing that changes is that the consequences for the GDPR violations now fall on the entity that was authorized, or maybe on the user who authorized the entity? (Not sure which?) But it obviously would not fall on Twitter since it is only complying with the law.

It's important that legal and criminal liability is matched to authorization or delegation. In practice, it will be the threat of legal liability that ensures data security and data privacy, so that needs to follow delegation to ensure incentives are always aligned properly.

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

#133

Post by giancarlostoro » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

silon42 wrote: post #73

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…

> should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties Not just third parties, but themselves (aka, write/use your own client for messenger/discord/...). This is the only way to get rid of having to use dozens of clients for various networks (apart from total standardization and federation which isn't happening anytime soon)

Pidgin would thrive once again!

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

#134

Post by buboard » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #115

buboard wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thhis isnt even about theft, but that people give their permission willy nilly to bad actors. Thats not a solvable problem

> Thats not a solvable problem Well, we're not trying to " solve " the problem. We're just trying to clarify that Twitter has no legal liability for the problem. If you delegate access to your account and someone proxies it; or there are all of a sudden all these GDPR violations flooding in because you gave away access to your contacts' private information when you delegated access to your account; etc etc; that liab…

That’s what platforms already do - yet they are being slandered for not saving their users from themselves.

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

#135

Post by jonfw » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

dependenttypes wrote: post #121

neuroticfish wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The concept of data ownership is a very anti-freedom/pro-copyright concept.

With such a shallow view of freedom, physical property ownership is a very anti-freedom concept as well, is it not? Ownership of a house is an infringement on the freedoms of other poeple who want to live there?

Intellectual property is no different than any other sort of property. The right to own property is invaluable, and serves the purpose of maximizing freedoms in the long run.

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

#136

Post by robomartin » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

What's missing here is the ability to ERASE all of your data from any service at your desired level of granularity.

In other words, I ought to be able to tell Facebook to only keep a one month history on me and truly delete everything else, including from backups. If

I want a 100% erase of everything, I should be able to get that too. It should be a simple single button operation with suitable confirmation.

Perhaps I want all my pictures erased. It should be easy.

How about all of my facial recognition data for myself and my children? That too.

In other words, these services should not be allowed to store data on you that you don't want them to have. We should not toss out privacy just to protect someone's business model.

I had an interesting experience with Turo.com. It's a P2P car rental service. I decided I wanted to try it. To sign-up I had to give up what I would call deep personal info: Name, address, date of birth, credit card, driver's license and maybe a few more things (don't remember). I ended-up not using it even once. It just didn't fit my needs.

I contacted the company with a request to cancel my account and delete all of my personal information from their database. They refused. Well, they wanted to have the account go dormant at first. I pressed and they agreed to cancel the account. No data deletion though. I said: What possibly justification do you have to keep such sensitive information in your database and backups when I am not a customer and don't want to use your service? Well, long story short, they agreed to delete the data. My guess is they lied to me. Without a court order I have no way to verify that my data isn't sitting in multiple backups ready to be hacked or used by another company if they sell the company or go bankrupt and the database is sold as an asset.

The consequences of having your data stored in databases forever could come years, decades later, when an event lands your data in the hands of someone with nefarious intent or someone who might accidentally and without intention cause you and others harm.

This is just one example.

We really need a law that says our data is ours and we get to decide who can keep it, what they can keep, for how long and under what conditions. This isn't hard and it is common sense. Put a different way: Just because a 15 year old in a garage decides to launch an internet business it doesn't mean that 15 year old is entitled to own our data and do with it as he or she pleases.

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

#137

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #114

sasasassy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are different kinds of websites.

and that s why they are "monopolies" - they each dominate a format. It's like saying IRC is a monopoly - which it is, just not owned by a central entity. It's not really going to work with people having 2 facebook-like accounts - they 'll eventually gravitate to one. What will work, is if there are viable , better open source and decentralized alternatives.

So if we granular defined monopoly - HN could be defined as a monopoly.

But the fact that people have LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc accounts does show that people will use more than one service.

How many people are in multiple Slack groups.

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

#138

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #120

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…

> we should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties From my PoV, for my purposes, as a technically minded user I might agree. But thinking about the numpty-on-the-street, this could be a privacy nightmare with people being easily conned into allowing a random application full unrestricted access to slurp their data. This can happen already, of course, but the provider…

The solution I think that the PDS2 "open" banking system has come up with is that all the API integrators are also subject to regulatory approval. So you can't just spin up a shadowy data-slurping shell and connect it to people's bank accounts.

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

#139

Post by codetrotter » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #132

dspillett wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties From my PoV, for my purposes, as a technically minded user I might agree. But thinking about the numpty-on-the-street, this could be a privacy nightmare with people being easily conned into allowing a random application full unrestricted access to slurp their data. This can happen already, of course, but the provider…

Again though, all that needs to be done is to make sure that the liability for leaked data falls on the user. That's the other part of it right? You delegated access to your account, so InstaFaceTwitter is no longer responsible for what happens to the data on that account. They are only responsible for making sure they give anyone presenting the keys you authorized access to edit and read data on your account. I mean…

> all that needs to be done is to make sure that the liability for leaked data falls on the user

I don’t think that was the point of what the parent commenter was saying.

As I read it, they were talking not about liability but the likely negative side effect of having more people be conned out of their private data that will then be abused.

Who is liable is a secondary concern. The main problem is the fact that people’s private data end up in the wrong hands.

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

#140

Post by r00fus » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

Who asked for this, exactly? I know plenty of users who would like to delete their data--I can't think of too many that want to port it over somewhere else. Is the idea that this would fuel competition by allowing people to migrate their history over to decentralized/federated alternatives?

> Republican Josh Hawley and Democrats Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal

Are they thinking in defensive terms - I mean how can this be weaponized?