Comment by jongjong

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.