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

Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 94 posts

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#51

Post by monksy »

treis wrote: post #48
pents90 wrote: post #3

How do you grant a company access to your data but prevent them from storing it? And how does it apply to data a company generates about me? For example, if I listen to songs on Spotify, are they supposed to somehow not store it, but still give me recommendations?

I think the privacy angle is misguided. Most people don't really care about it. Even moreso for stuff like what songs did I listen to on Spotify. The better angle is that we're becoming digital serfs. Google decided that they didn't want Google Music to exist anymore and poof went my listening history and playlists. Any service that I use today can do the same thing. If that data were stored somewhere I had access to…

> If that data were stored somewhere I had access to I could have imported it in to Spotify.

At the moment we've been pushing services in the wrong direction to create their own schemas. However, we may win back control with standards on this one.

But yes, the idea is that you are able to remove the control they have over the data you've produced. It's such a terrible arguement to claim they own the data. (Also, why do they need to control that other than to try to prevent you from leaving)

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#52

Post by tester756 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #44

TBL and W3C could enable competition to de facto monopolies such as FB by providing web standards that enable competitors to overcome FB's inherent walled garden first mover silo advantage. How? Extend HTML to include a Like button and a Share button, and implement a new standard that defines an open access comment platform. I'm not suggesting W3C should set up servers to compete with service providers. Rather, it co…

So what exactly would they have to add to HTML?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#53

Post by monksy »

gnarbarian wrote: post #6
pents90 wrote: post #3

How do you grant a company access to your data but prevent them from storing it? And how does it apply to data a company generates about me? For example, if I listen to songs on Spotify, are they supposed to somehow not store it, but still give me recommendations?

>How do you grant a company access to your data but prevent them from storing it? Outlaw it. >And how does it apply to data a company generates about me? You store it on a server you control, then provide access to 3rd parties. This is how https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ is setup to work.

If you don't want them to know what it is, encrypt it. Even if they store it, it's not much use.

If you don't want them to keep it, find a way to invalidate it. (This would be for where the read key is time sensitive.. not sure how to make that work)

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#55

Post by monksy »

normanmatrix wrote: post #39

The GDPR could make or break this. Here's hoping for the former..

I don't see how GDPR would break this. It would be compatible with what that hopes to acomplish. This is a technology solution which helps you to enforce GDPR redactions.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#56

Post by coliveira »

It is very interesting that, with the exception of people like Berners-Lee, computer scientists around the world have decided that the problems of social networks should be addressed only within the realm of private companies. I see little to no coordinated activity targeted at open social networks for commenting, liking, and sharing. Similar pattern on open and distributed protocols for searching and sharing data. It seems to me as a failure of academia in this important area of computing.

It is important to remember that distributed protocols for social interaction is not something new that researchers had not considered before. Email is the prime example of open, distributed protocol that still is very successful. But many researchers have stoped to consider such open protocols and jumped in the walled garden bandwagon.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#57

Post by monksy »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #28

Try it in china. Or all is just for non-china. And if you think you can’t do that this reveal most significant problem.

Why should we worry about that one country and the usage of it? They tend to want to control who deals with what data and track those who access it.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#58

Post by kvark »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #21
kvark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we need a quantum leap in technology first? Operating on data that can't be immutably copied (i.e. quantum state) opens up interesting possibilities in privacy space.

How? The 3rd parties will still need to copy the data, even temporarily, to be able to do anything with it.

If I understand correctly, that's the point. Nobody should be able to read or copy your data without permission.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#59

Post by wrnr »

Yesterday I got pissed when I tried to download a podcast episode. It is available on Apple, Google and Spotify, but these platforms won't let you download a simple mp3.

Ended up having to pay for the network traffic.

Freedom is the better technology, and Solid claims to offer freedom but if you look closely it doesn't.

In what world does a specification designed by comity, describing functionality that existed for at least 15 years, and that furiously lobbies the government for its forced adoption, have anything to do with freedom?

How does ActivePub help me compete with facebook, How? Why can TikTok get popular without it, Why?

Maybe, companies should be forced to offer me a RSS feed of mp3s. Maybe not mp3 but some open format, and we should force chip makers to add special instructions to their chips for optimal playing speed.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data

#60

Post by Slackwise »

mxuribe wrote: post #47
wcerfgba wrote: post #13

I'm glad TBL is working on this stuff, but at this point I can't help but feel like this is doomed to a very slow uptake, like how Semantic Web and IPv6 are still emerging technologies. I am reminded of esr on Plan 9: > Unix creaks and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done well enough to hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: The most dangerous enemy of a bett…

@wcerfgba That is such a great quote about unix and an existing codebase being good enough! Do you know the source? I'd love to refer to that in my presentations at work, etc. Thanks!

Parent mentioned it was "esr" or Eric S. Raymond.
Post reply on HN