Comment by jongjong
3 years ago
I agree with the premise of the article. Part of me thinks that a lot of the drama around data privacy was manufactured by big tech precisely to get people riled up about privacy protection in order to ensure that such interoperability solutions (which are ultimately about sharing data) would not see the light of day.
But this is casting a shadow on the idea that some users may actually want to share some of their data broadly and across platforms in an open and interoperable way. Regulators were so busy focusing on data protection, they completely neglected the other side of the coin which is data propagation. As a user, just as I have the right to have some of my data protected, I should have the right to have some my data freely propagated. Kind of like copyright versus copyleft in the software industry.
It seems like it should be possible to force companies which have a monopoly (or near-monopoly) to at least allow users to opt in to data sharing. Like for example, there should be a way for me to tell Facebook to share my name and/or email address publicly via API...
Though on the flip side, I think Facebook should be allowed to delete my account (with appropriate notice) if they don't want to support making my data public since they shouldn't be forced to bear the bandwidth costs. In any case, I think this would offer people with the option to confront big tech platforms about appropriate use for their data. People own their data and should be able to set the terms and change the terms any time they want. Big platforms with a near-monopoly should not be able to make it an all-or-nothing (if you don't like it, delete your account) kind of deal.
This is a difficult topic. On one side, it seems wrong to force platforms to pay for hosting and bandwidth costs associated with bots scraping their open user data... Yet it also feels wrong for big tech to continue to use their monopoly position to take away users' bargaining power in terms of control over their own data.
It feels like the free market solution would be to form some kind of large group, like a union, a syndicate whose members would agree to delete their Facebook (or whatever platform) accounts en mass unless their demands are met (similar to how a union works when employees go on strike). Then Facebook (or whatever platform) could decide whether it makes sense to lose all these users/accounts or comply with their demands to make their data public and take the costs of hosting/opening up that data. Then this would not require government intervention.
I think one thing the government could do would be to facilitate the creation of such group/syndicate via a large advertising campaign. That seems like the right level of government involvement.
The union/syndicate idea is interesting, but as with unions, reprisals are possible since there is little to no anonymity on social media, and no legal protection. Reprisals in the form of affecting your work, for instance. Not just affecting your access to social media, but these conglomerates offer other goods and services, and maybe they'll just update their EULAs so that such actions forbid you from using their other services...