Better Idea: Create a fund for startups that are building new social media platforms specifically to compete against Fb/Twitter/Reddit/Etc. Create pathways for them to compete and enter the public domain. Give them free national advertising slots. Only companies with less than 100M users can apply.
U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
141–150 of 199 posts
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#142Earlier 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…
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.
Then we'd have to apply for website licenses at the California Department of Cyber Vehicles. I hope my website is up to the Cyber Building Code. Yikes.
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not your data - it's theirs (the respective persons)
No it's not. If someone gives you their physical business card, would you expect to lose access to it if you move houses? Once they give you their contact info, you should have a copy of it forever. Otherwise it's completely useless.
No. Because that's the same argument FB could make.
No. Your data remains your data, even if you allow someone else to look at it. You should be able to allow others to look at it, or even delete it after having allowed others to look at it. Now in practice, you can't. I get that. But that doesn't mean that it's not your data.
Certainly your contact info is your data. I shouldn't be able to give a girl's contact info to some other guy without her consent. One, that's douchey. Two, it's not my data, so doing so violates her privacy.
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hn and reddit are the same format. And linkedin could easily merge with facebook. But facebook and twitter don’t mix
> How many people are in multiple Slack groups
Aren’t they using a single app?
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#145How would/should permissions work in this if my friend moves to a new service? Do I also have to accept a TOS in order for them to continue to see my stuff?
The email analogy fails for me because it is clear that once I send an email, that data now belongs to everyone I sent my email to. Is the same true for a tweet or photo I post?
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A bill written by a bunch of clueless lawmakers to legislate technology This has been Silicon Valley's party line for why we can't be regulated by governments, and should instead be left to self regulate. While I agree with that for start-ups, it's patently failed with Big Tech.
And look at what happened when California tried to regulate Uber to force them to treat drivers as employees. Now freelancers in other industries who don’t want to be employees are having to jump through hoops.
> look at what happened when California tried to regulate Uber to force them to treat drivers as employees
I agree, it's a mess. But the solution isn't to bar all regulation ex ante as illegitimate.
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#147Earlier 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…
> What most activists are trying to do is move towards fewer people having access to your data It seems to me like there are two important issues currently. There's access to data, but there's also how influence works and who controls that. Right now, social media companies decide what rises to the top of your feed. The current situation is that if you want to be part of the Facebook community (for lack of a better w…
The main concern though is keeping the user as the final arbiter of his own data. He wants to delete it? Bam! It should be gone. She wants to allow someone else to see it, that other entity should be allowed to see it. But that other entity should not be allowed to delete her data. Nor should it be allowed to let anyone else see that data.
The user being in control of access to his/her own data is not a concept that should frighten any legitimate business people. But businesses being in charge of access to a user's data is absolutely a concept that should frighten users. The power of determining access has to be shifted back to the user where it belongs. If some businesses that specialize in "data brokering" are harmed because users are suddenly able to choose to disallow them access, so be it.
Again, allowing businesses to influence and determine who gets to access a user's data is literally the reason we're in this predicament in the first place. Solve that stuff separately if you want, but under no circumstances can end runs around the user's ownership of their data be allowed.
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#148> 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…
>> Under the bill the companies would be required to maintain an interface to facilitate interoperability.
This would be easily achieved with ActivityPub [0].
>> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members [...] to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network...
That's the idea behind Berners-Lee's Solid [1].
I wish legislators were more in touch with open-source technology innovators. I feel the FOSS movement's philosophy and the idea of having collective technologies promoted and funded by the government go hand in hand.
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#149> 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…
You have to somewhat assume a hostile actor here. Have you worked with fb's API before? They _technically_ have one, but frequently make breaking changes. They could easily justify this for such a legally-demanded API, as they do the same thing internally and already have that practice . What would prevent them from making it very difficult to maintain such a service?
Re: U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them
#150> 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.
One of the reasons that open banking works well is that every bank has essentially the same offerings and therefore the same type of data. It's perhaps possible that social networks may be marginally less uniform.