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Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

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Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#41
post #23
post #11

It was an idea that never went away. Many people have wanted to self host everything. Sadly companies have found it easier to centralise, and then as a bonus can monetise that data.

It wasn’t the companies but the users that found it easier. There’s a reason why everyone’s on Facebook, instagram, and gmail instead of running their own hosts—because it’s vastly easier for the majority of people to do so, and because everyone else is there. We have not solved decentralisation in an accessible and useful way yet, and the incentives won’t change until we do. If ever.

But those who actually want to do this should be allowed by law to practice their ownership over their data.

I, and many like me, would pay for centralised service or any other service if it meant that we own our data and can tune the algorithms to our own preferences. I wont pay for doom scrolling, but would gladly pay for algorithm to serve me content that would better my human experience.

Governments have given corporation to much power, people need to rise up agains that, if it remains the same in AI age, we humans, and our collective mind would erode to the point of no return.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#42

> Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. I don't see how this follows. The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? The only thing this seems to attempt to solve is portability/interop (and moving control of and responsibility for blocking/moderation/spam to…

> The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? If I can clearly assert origin and personal ownership of my data, I can forbid further reselling of it. EU legislation shows that we can actually have the right to demand that a company forgets about us . Asserting such rights become easier the more accurately we define what data is ours .

> If I can clearly assert origin and personal ownership of my data, I can forbid further reselling of it.

Can you? A site's TOS will say that by sharing your data, you grant them the right to display, reuse and redistribute it, the same as you do now. And that would take precedence because your host provided the data. They requested and you provided.

The only thing that would change that is actual legislation. But then the legislation is orthogonal to personal data storage. If you want legislation for that, pursue legislation for that. Personal data storage is completely separate, and the two shouldn't be confused with each other.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#43

> Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. I don't see how this follows. The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? The only thing this seems to attempt to solve is portability/interop (and moving control of and responsibility for blocking/moderation/spam to…

current data points are much more valuable than historical data points, so storing old data doesn't have much incentives

also by having ability to enable/disable access to your data, you have the power of who gets what and for which purpose

also reselling of your data should become illegal to start with, would you be OKAY if your lawyer sells your data? or your colorectal surgeon? off course not, we have laws in place for that, and same laws should be applied to whoever handles your personal data

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#44
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t the companies but the users that found it easier. There’s a reason why everyone’s on Facebook, instagram, and gmail instead of running their own hosts—because it’s vastly easier for the majority of people to do so, and because everyone else is there. We have not solved decentralisation in an accessible and useful way yet, and the incentives won’t change until we do. If ever.

God forbid that people actually have to learn and do something instead of sitting around being a doomscrolling tiktok zombie... /s

Slightly offtopic, but the sheer scale of the phenomenon you allude to - of screen-addled zombification - is really turbo-charging my own misanthropy. People staggering around, necks hunched, eyes down, all but glued to their miserable little toys. Everywhere, everyone, all the time. It's just pathetic. I guess I had hoped humans would have more self-control than this.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#45
Both of these proposals (as far as I've read them, YMMV) fail the evolutionary test. At the scale we're talking about, ideas must proceed as evolution does: not with a far-away goal in mind, but with incremental changes, each of which individually must be an improvement over the status quo.

We are at (near) a significant local maximum, and (again, as far as I've read, which is not all of it for sure) the people pitching this form of information control have given no set of steps from here to there without significant cost/effort.

Of course they don't have to have the whole path in mind. By definition they just need the first step or two. But they must be steps up.

You don't get wings by wanting to fly; first you need feathers to keep warm (I am not an evolutionary biologist, I don't know if that's a valid theory).

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#46
post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

This is demonstrably not fantasy as the example case is a fully productionized network (Bluesky and the rest of AT-net) that’s having real-world impact to the point where it’s under threat from several authoritarian states.

It has?

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the tech industry and generally more online then likely 95% of the population, but ime ... Nobody even knows what bluesky is?

(They also don't know what X is, though they DO know what Twitter is)

And even more niche products like mostodon, the fediverse altogether etc are entirely unknown to most of the tech industry too.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#47

> Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. I don't see how this follows. The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? The only thing this seems to attempt to solve is portability/interop (and moving control of and responsibility for blocking/moderation/spam to…

current data points are much more valuable than historical data points, so storing old data doesn't have much incentives also by having ability to enable/disable access to your data, you have the power of who gets what and for which purpose also reselling of your data should become illegal to start with, would you be OKAY if your lawyer sells your data? or your colorectal surgeon? off course not, we have laws in plac…

> current data points are much more valuable than historical data points, so storing old data doesn't have much incentives

Not true -- advertising profiles are vastly more valuable when based on a lifetime of data.

> also by having ability to enable/disable access to your data, you have the power of who gets what

But realistically, when are you ever going to disable access? If you want people to be able to read your replies no matter what social network they're using, you're going to make those replies available to every social network.

> and for which purpose also reselling of your data should become illegal to start with

This is my point. The solution here is legal, not technological. Personal data storage doesn't change anything legally, and changing the law would prevent reselling even if you didn't have personal data storage.

It seems important not to confuse the two, in order not to give people false hopes.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#48
post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

Nothing changes because the ask is silly and disconnected from the reality of normal people's lives. So what happens if Google has all your data? To the best of my observations over the past 20 years: best in class services, cheap, paired with excellent security and data availability.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid that people actually have to learn and do something instead of sitting around being a doomscrolling tiktok zombie... /s

Slightly offtopic, but the sheer scale of the phenomenon you allude to - of screen-addled zombification - is really turbo-charging my own misanthropy. People staggering around, necks hunched, eyes down, all but glued to their miserable little toys. Everywhere, everyone, all the time. It's just pathetic . I guess I had hoped humans would have more self-control than this.

Stop viewing them in isolation and view them as a product of their environment. They weren't born with a phone in hand, someone gave it to them and someone created Tik Tok for them.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#50

I find the ideas of data coops to be very appealing. I don't want to depend on faceless mega-corps like Google to host stuff like my email, but I also don't find the idea self-hosting to be realistic. I wouldn't mind paying for the security since losing access to certain accounts would be a disaster, but I'm already locked in, and the benefits of existing services would be marginal compared to the cost of moving.

ideally you should be able in a simple way to host your stuff, in this case in a POD. That service should be provided by a utility company, same way we have internet providers now. They will be well regulated and it would be in their interest to safely hold your data because if not, they would face legal and financial consequences.

All other services would read/write from your Pod.

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