Did you know you can back up your social media data?
The Data Transfer Project was launched in 2018 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.
The contributors to the Data Transfer Project believe portability and interoperability are central to innovation. Making it easier for individuals to choose among services facilitates competition, empowers individuals to try new services and enables them to choose the offering that best suits their needs.
Data portability refers to the ability of consumers to move data – such as, emails, contacts, calendars, financial information, health information, favorites, friends or content posted on social media – from one service to another or to themselves. In addition to providing benefits to consumers, data portability may benefit competition by allowing new entrants to access data they otherwise would not have so that they can grow competing platforms and services. At the same time, there may be challenges to implementing or requiring data portability. For example, data that consumers want to port may include information about others, such as friends’ photos and comments. How should this data be treated? How can the data be transferred securely? Who has responsibility for ensuring that data portability is technically feasible? Does mandatory data access or data sharing affect companies’ incentives to invest in data-driven products and services?
Of course the question becomes: where do I move my data and what for? Enter the emerging world of personal data services which allow you to store your data under encryption and let you control access and potentially sell your data to who you choose.
Moving your data to yourself is a whole level more radical than moving it to another platform belonging to someone else.
George Spix and I had roughly the same idea in the book “Open Curtains”. Data ownership is a potentially a big political issue. The fact that Berners-Lee and startups have taken it up means it’s finally gotten traction.