7 ms·

U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with them

341 points by howard941 7y ago

munherty 7y ago
Misses the mark...
Derelicts 7y ago
After watching Mark Zuckerberg testifying on Capitol hill I think it's obvious Facebook and Alphabet are leading the show... A very interesting case is Alexander Nix speech against UK comittee, recommend.
- spicyramen 7y ago
  Can you unpack this statement?
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
Who asked for this, exactly? I know plenty of users who would like to delete their data--I can't think of too many that want to port it over somewhere else. Is the idea that this would fuel competition by allowing people to migrate their history over to decentralized/federated alternatives?
- amwelles 7y ago
  I would love to do that. Move all my Instagram pics to Pixelfed and all my tweets to Mastodon. Not sure I could do that with the way things are now.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    But that kind of makes no sense. It'll be completely out of context and it's not going to provide much value. Wet can't you just link to your Twitter on mastodon?
    - baq 7y ago
      Somebody might decide that his Twitter account offends somebody important and make it disappear. Or his Twitter might get compromised. Or Twitter might go out of business. Or maybe no reason at all.
      - monksy 7y ago
        Or twitter would cut off that integration because it takes away business from them.
    - amwelles 7y ago
      I’d like having an archive of my tweets that I control. I know they have a tool, but as far as I know, there’s no way to upload that to Mastodon. I could be wrong about that.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    do all your tweets just mean top level? or all your replies to others as well? and the resulting threads?
    - amwelles 7y ago
      I’d be fine with top-level.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  I have to be on mainstream social networks to interact with people I know who are. That's the fundamental problem with these networks. "Under the bill the companies would be required to maintain an interface to facilitate interoperability. Or users would be allowed to choose another company to manage a user’s account settings, content, and online interactions, the statement said." Think of this requirement less like a "Facebook export" and more like what AOL Instant Messenger was once forced to do: They were legally required to allow other messengers to communicate with AIM users. Imagine me being able to be on Mastodon, but follow my Facebook friends and tag them and be tagged by them.
  - AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
    I understand the possible use-case. My skepticism (or cynicism, maybe) comes from the fact that the CBP under this same government has taken to forcing people to provide their social media history when entering the country. So there might be a less than altruistic reason that the government would like to ensure people's social media history lingers forever, rather than being deleted when the user tires of Facebook.
    - DanielBMarkham 7y ago
      Yeah, I feel this pain. This is kinda where we are on a lot of these issues, right? Like Net Neutrality? Ok, just make a law that all bits must be treated the same by pipe providers. Boom, you're done. But no, instead what's suggested is that the FTC start managing this stuff under Title 2. Right after that, you can bet we'll start hearing calls for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. Want users to own their data? Great. Write a law that says that users have total control over their data, where it lives and where it goes. Furthermore they can delete or access it at any time. Also boom. It's a simple concept. But no, we're going to split the baby yet again and talk about exporting data. Next up an argument on CBP. We seem incapable of actually fixing tech matters, instead trying to chop off some small part where we can do stuff that sounds good but has possibly severe unanticipated side-effects down the road. I don't know why that is, but I know that it makes trying to figure out which laws or policies to support quite difficult. Maybe that was the intention all along? Note: all laws have side effects, but optimally you should set things up that the side effects are shouldered by the people involved in the activity, not the voters. You're not fixing a problem if all you're doing is setting up the next argument we're going to have. That sounds more like a recipe for endless conflict.
- sct202 7y ago
  Yeah I would like to have a tool to purge a lot of messages from history. I don't want people in the future to sift thru my messages and wonder why I and my friends were so weird in Facebook chats.
- ghaff 7y ago
  >delete their data Which is arguably, at least in part, actually in opposition to this. To the degree that data can be better exported and spread around, it's more likely to be persisted than if it's locked up in a single company's system.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > Which is arguably, at least in part, actually in opposition to this Disagree. Today, questions about persistence and portability are made by companies. Users have virtually no say. Giving users say in the matter may mean some make bad portability decisions. But there is nothing fundamental to user-initiated portability that interferes with user-initiated deletion. Today, I can do neither with Facebook.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      >Users have virtually no say. Well, that's true. Because once content by or about you is out there, neither you nor anyone else really has the power to force anyone to delete it. That's not so much a company making a decision but a collective decision that you don't generally have a "right to be forgotten." But that's not so much individual companies making an affirmative decision to always preserve data as no one providing individuals any real rights to erase what they've made public.
      - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
        > once content by or about you is out there, neither you nor anyone else really has the power to force anyone to delete it If you port your data to every social network on the planet, an act tantamount to publishing, yes, your data will be public. That isn't an argument against granting users this right. Social media companies distributed users' data when it was in said companies' interests. Letting users make that decision themselves may mean bad decisions will be made. But that's better than companies making users' decisions for them, with zero regard for what the users themselves want. > a collective decision that you don't generally have a "right to be forgotten" There is no right to be forgotten in America. (There can't be without gutting the First Amendment.)
- r00fus 7y ago
  > Republican Josh Hawley and Democrats Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal Are they thinking in defensive terms - I mean how can this be weaponized?
- droithomme 7y ago
  > Who asked for this, exactly? That's a good question. And how would it work. A couple cases I can see - photos and email. Export my email from gmail, import it to protonmail, delete gmail account. OK. How about incoming email though? That's not content I created or own the copyright to. What about emails I sent to people that are copy pastes of news article material or attached photos determined to be copyrighted by someone else. Perhaps these should be filtered out so it's only the user's personally created content that is downloaded. Now photos from one service to another have that same check that should be done. But the matter of comments on the photo. Some comments are responses from the photo owner. Others are comments by random people. Those comments should not be exported since they don't have the rights to transfer them. So I upload this to some other photo site and have a bunch of one sided conversations. Fair enough though I can see how that works. Then I want to export all my conversations from Hacker News and import them to Reddit. Hacker News will give me a zipped set of xml files or perhaps a SQLite database. Then I create some custom subreddit and upload these comments there. But they'll all be one-sided conversations of course since the people I'm replying to or who reply to me can't be part of the data dump. So I've done this, but why is it necessary this be supported at all? How about reverse? I tell Hacker News, hey the law says you have to let me import my comments from reddit here. So I do that. And what is that supposed to accomplish. Not sure. Maybe people will then say hey I want to upload my photos from Instagram to the Steam Store's comments section. Or upload all my email there. Also of interest is that every site will have to support every conceivable possible export format generated by every other site. Complex job for those of us who have struggled with similar data migration problems with a finite set of formats and possible errors in the data. And what about the data that has errors? Will the exporting company by liable for costs by the importing company due to errors in the exporting company's export job? Also the article suggests the bill is a bit more extreme than this. The user will not actually download the data and reupload it somewhere, instead they will go to Facebook and pick "Hacker News" from a drop down menu and then Facebook will be required to send all the user's data to Hacker News automatically and Hacker News will be required to accept it and do something with it, presumably provide similar functionality that the user is accustomed to. Perhaps Hacker News will then be legally required to implement a clone of Facebook, gmail, Instagram, and every other social media site simply to be able to handle these import requests. And every other site likewise will be required to do the same. What about illegal content and content that violates the importing services TOS? Will they be forced to accept the data and yet responsible still for hosting it even if they don't want it? Someone wants to export their homemade videos from their YouPorn account to YouTube or maybe to the comment section of the New York Times which should now support and host video. Can they refuse to interoperate under this bill mandating interoperating? Everything should be interoperable and all formats exportable from every site and importable to every other site, automatically. Is this a sensible goal. I have a suspicion that the senators supporting this bill really just want to be able to export their email from gmail and yahoo for free and import it to some other email service so they want to pass a law. And then they were brainstorming and someone said hey let's make this law apply to all forms of data, not just email. And they all thought that a great idea. Then the masses hear about this and think "Wow this is great, I'd love to get all my data from every site and upload it to every other site." without actually realizing that a law mandating companies support that is probably not a good idea.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Being able to take your data with you is good but most of the value in social media is due to the network effect. If you can't seamlessly being your connections with you, the incumbents will continue to have a huge advantage over newcomers to the market. In the context of social media, how could someone bring their connections with them to a new platform without compromising the rights of those connected to?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Yes, it's not clear what bringing your data out of social media even really means. Saving your posts/photos is one thing. But it's not clear that exporting your social graph and all their posts/photos/comments/etc. is even a good thing--yet that's what exporting their social media would mean to a lot of people.
- basch 7y ago
  interoperability and distributed federation would be much more powerful than export. Maybe they dont know facebook already has an export button? And if that export is in a non-standard-structured format, its not even useful to import into another network.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Interoperability just gives more people potential access to your data. What most activists are trying to do is move towards fewer people having access to your data, as well as you having full and legal custody of your data. Interoperability is better for companies, particularly small ones. But the idea here is to help people prevent companies from accessing their data willy nilly. I'd think the goal would be to decrease the number of access points and to require that strict, explicit, legally binding, criminally enforceable, consent be given for every access to a user's data. If you want to help smaller companies compete, that's a different discussion that can be had. But securing the data of users and providing a great deal more privacy than user's have right now really is a completely reasonable effort in its own right. In fact, I would think for the vast majority of users, the effort to ensure security and privacy should probably take precedence over providing more companies potential access to their data.
jnieminen 7y ago
The EU has also a similar right [1]. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/my-rights/how-can-i-access-my-personal-data-held-company-organisation_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
rocketflumes 7y ago
won't big players like FB benefit from this? It seems more likely that people would port data from smaller networks to bigger ones than the other way around.
lugg 7y ago
Right to federate is the new right to repair.
azujus 7y ago
I believe we are helping to build part of that future in my current startup. People should own their own data and have a right to use it for their own benefit. (Startup: argyle.io)
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  I am happy to hear about your startup, but if you are going to promote it, at least outline what's your approach / why should I be interested.
yami 7y ago
Isn't it the whole idea behind https://solid.inrupt.com/ https://solid.inrupt.com/ ?
- rhythnic 7y ago
  +1 for solid. Solid has these concerns baked into the design. It's the best solution I've seen for user-owned data and interoperability, not to mention the wealth of possibilities enabled by linked data. To try to legislate those concerns into the current centralized web is going to cause a lot of grief.
godzillabrennus 7y ago
Good move. It’s data we create, we should own it.
- readhn 7y ago
  and be able to delete it COMPLETELY and FOREVER!
- Mirioron 7y ago
  You do own it. You can copy paste your posts around as much as you want. Does Twitter have to put in work to make it easier for you for no benefit of their own though?
  - buboard 7y ago
    Twitter -> Settings -> Your twitter data -> Download your data. The option is already there. It has been for years This is not a big deal at all
riffic 7y ago
G Suite, or what was originally "Google Apps for Your Domain" is a white-labeled Gmail. Commercial social media companies can theoretically make some serious money by whitelabeling their services and selling those to whoever has an audience. Stop thinking about things in terms of followers - it's the publishers that need to be captured for revenue. What I'd really like to see from U.S. Senators is legislation to require all *.GOV agencies spin up their own ActivityPub-compliant implementations and publish through that means, rather than via accounts on commercial social media services. Eventually, media and other institutions will follow. if anyone is interested in learning more, just look up Mastodon Project, the Fediverse, and ActivityPub in Wikipedia. edit: By "whitelabeling" I mean "Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Youtube for Your Domain", federated and ActivityPub-compliant. Enterprises will eat this shit up.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  I've thought of this very same thought myself ever since I've had a presence on the fediverse (waaaaay back in the gnu social, statusnet, etc. days). Even if brands only gain the benefit of better control of their brand presence (on platforms that they control) instead of being beholden to the likes of Facebook, etc....I do agree that there's a business to be had for offering commercial social media hosting.
- bryan_w 7y ago
  You should check out workplace (by facebook).
readhn 7y ago
Another distraction from politicians! The issue for me and many other folks is not taking the data - but its the ability to remove specific users data COMPLETELY and FOREVER from all of the companies servers! So far this capability and access are reserved to special branches within the government (3/4 letter agencies etc). Every human should be able to wipe off their own digital footprint forever!
zubspace 7y ago
> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. I assume that this proposal is based on good intentions. But how they want to overcome the technical hurdles is a mystery to me. Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data? Will there be a standard? Social media platforms like facebook, twitter, reddit or youtube are so fundamentally different that I doubt it is possible to create a common standard. And who decides which services need to have a compatible data format? The idea of downloading my twitter feed and post it on mastodon and vice versa is, I guess, a pipe dream. Or will I be able to download my Imgur posts and import them in Reddit? Can I export all my Youtube videos and import them on Vimeo? Yeah, go figure... I think a better alternative would be a requirement for such companies to open up their API. I want full access to my twitter feed for free. This would allow third parties to create a single interface to many different networks, like twitter and mastodon.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data? You might find clarity in the bill [1]. It avoids, as good laws do, defining how companies must comply, instead setting principles for clarification by the FTC and courts. ("A structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format" is the bill's language (§ 3(a)).) > who decides which services need to have a compatible data format Congress. "A product or service provided by a communications provider that...generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and...has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States" is the bill's threshold (§ 2(7)). [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968 https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968
- criddell 7y ago
  > Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data? Facebook. As long as it's well documented the format isn't that important. The requirement should just be that if you take the exported data and reimport it, you get back to the original state (or at least reasonably close).
buboard 7y ago
The users can already do that. FB and twitter do that , who doesn't actually? It's a good tactic that has been followed since blogs became a thing. Like when people could download their tumblr when it committed suicide.
- supercanuck 7y ago
  maybe they want DRM for data
danShumway 7y ago
> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. Facebook already has a data export feature. You have to manually navigate to that page and download a giant zip file. Cool. The much more important concept being proposed here is delegation: > Under the bill the companies would be required to maintain an interface to facilitate interoperability. Or users would be allowed to choose another company to manage a user’s account settings, content, and online interactions, the statement said. Very few people are going to manually export their data from Facebook. But they might go to a new network that supports cross-posting to Facebook, or an automatic import that doesn't require them to navigate Facebook's menus. Delegation is a severely underappreciated digital right. Beyond advocating for data-exports, we should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties. If I can manually update/download my Facebook status, I should also be allowed to programmatically update it. And I should be able to authorize another person to update/download it on my behalf.
- buboard 7y ago
  So, facebook and twitter already have apis for almost all their functions. What's the goal of this legislation?
  - duxup 7y ago
    At least as far as Twitter goes don't they limit some of their APIs like how many users a given set of API keys can use or something like that?
    - buboard 7y ago
      Yeah they severely limit bots and ask for phone numbers and then they 'll ban your number if you use it twice. Who's responsible for that other then the media FUD about russian bots? I really can't blame twitter (and FB) for limiting their platforms here.
rpmisms 7y ago
Title translation: supporting this bill polls well.
archie2 7y ago
For God's sake can the US government stop meddling in this kind of garbage. The republic is collapsing around us and we're supposed to be conserned about being able to port our facebook posts over to twitter. WHO CARES
- Taylor_OD 7y ago
  I understand where you are coming from but because one part of the government is failing doesnt mean the rest of it should shut down and focus solely on it. How would any long term change be enacted if every elect shifted focus every time something new and seemingly more important came up?
xkde 7y ago
At this point, if Facebook wasn’t public and I was Zuckerberg, I’d wind down the company and update the home page to simply read, “I’m leaving it as I found it. Take over. It’s yours.”
- mffnbs 7y ago
  I always used the analogy of a message board that I put in my yard. If people start dictating that I need to display the nazi graffiti someone spray painted on it, I'm just going to remove the damn board.
MR4D 7y ago
This bill is great in theory, but.... Getting the language correct and the implementation will be extraordinarily difficult. For instance: Let's say you are on twitter. Does twitter have to build an email interface so I can DM my friends who are on gmail? Or maybe I'm on Facebook - do they have to let me allow people on Myspace to "friend" me? Maybe I see an article on ZDnet, and I'm tired of using multiple accounts, so instead, I'd like to move away from Discus to Matrix for posting. Who is responsible here - ZDnet, Discus, Matrix? Will MSFT be forced to allow me to port my entire Skype history and number to Verizon? Or to WeChat? Will AT&T and instagram be forced to allow me to post on instagram using my AT&T account? Interoperability of protocols is important (e.g. one email provider not blocking another). But the law of unintended consequences here is going to be huge. Security alone is going to be a nightmare. I agree this goal is laudable, but the government never made Fords have to use GM parts (only that they use standardized gasoline). I think the idea that they have to expose an interface makes sense, and is much less problematic than full portability and interoperability. Words are important here, and the actual word choices in the legislation are going to radically affect our future. Read that last sentence again - this is a huge problem with any major legislation, and legislation with technology in particular.
- MR4D 7y ago
  One thing I forgot to add - how would this interoperate with the GDPR laws? For instance, if I move my data from FB to something else, what happens to the email addresses and phone number of all the people I'm connected with? Assume this gets even worse when you have social platforms based in different countries (e.g. EU, US, Russia, China for instance).
  - MR4D 7y ago
    Section 6(c) "Technical Standards" looks intriguing. Basically tasking NIST with publishing technical standards for online messaging, multimedia sharing, and social networking. Definitely some good parts here, but I'm still worried about the laws of unintended consequences. Nobody thought that allowing software patents would be bad, but clearly that's been way more costly than anyone imagined. I worry the same is true here. This paragraph on its own is great. Would love to see a step-by-step approach rather than doing everything at once. Less change for screwing up, and you can adjust new legislation as needed.
mal10c 7y ago
Hmm.. so I agree that it would be awesome to easily port my data from company A to company B. I mean, that would be really great! But I kind of don't think that's an appropriate role for the government. Feel free to disagree, I'm all ears on other opinions, I just don't feel the government should have that type of authority to regulate a company like that.... but maybe that's just me.
robomartin 7y ago
What's missing here is the ability to ERASE all of your data from any service at your desired level of granularity. In other words, I ought to be able to tell Facebook to only keep a one month history on me and truly delete everything else, including from backups. If I want a 100% erase of everything, I should be able to get that too. It should be a simple single button operation with suitable confirmation. Perhaps I want all my pictures erased. It should be easy. How about all of my facial recognition data for myself and my children? That too. In other words, these services should not be allowed to store data on you that you don't want them to have. We should not toss out privacy just to protect someone's business model. I had an interesting experience with Turo.com. It's a P2P car rental service. I decided I wanted to try it. To sign-up I had to give up what I would call deep personal info: Name, address, date of birth, credit card, driver's license and maybe a few more things (don't remember). I ended-up not using it even once. It just didn't fit my needs. I contacted the company with a request to cancel my account and delete all of my personal information from their database. They refused. Well, they wanted to have the account go dormant at first. I pressed and they agreed to cancel the account. No data deletion though. I said: What possibly justification do you have to keep such sensitive information in your database and backups when I am not a customer and don't want to use your service? Well, long story short, they agreed to delete the data. My guess is they lied to me. Without a court order I have no way to verify that my data isn't sitting in multiple backups ready to be hacked or used by another company if they sell the company or go bankrupt and the database is sold as an asset. The consequences of having your data stored in databases forever could come years, decades later, when an event lands your data in the hands of someone with nefarious intent or someone who might accidentally and without intention cause you and others harm. This is just one example. We really need a law that says our data is ours and we get to decide who can keep it, what they can keep, for how long and under what conditions. This isn't hard and it is common sense. Put a different way: Just because a 15 year old in a garage decides to launch an internet business it doesn't mean that 15 year old is entitled to own our data and do with it as he or she pleases.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  They don't want that. They want to be able to ping facebook and get a universally readable source of everything about you.
holler 7y ago
Better Idea: Create a fund for startups that are building new social media platforms specifically to compete against Fb/Twitter/Reddit/Etc. Create pathways for them to compete and enter the public domain. Give them free national advertising slots. Only companies with less than 100M users can apply.
tqi 7y ago
How would/should permissions work in this if my friend moves to a new service? Do I also have to accept a TOS in order for them to continue to see my stuff? The email analogy fails for me because it is clear that once I send an email, that data now belongs to everyone I sent my email to. Is the same true for a tweet or photo I post?
yason 7y ago
Something like this would be the right way to do social media and networks, and it would never be allowed to work. Ideally, I would own my data and I could just bid the social media providers I want to host my data. I could pick one, or several, and I could pick free providers with ads or pay for a premium provider with no ads and other benefits. I could also host the data myself, and messages, posts, friend requests, and updates would travel from service to service via standard protocols. Each user would have a cryptographical identity that would be unalterable across different services; of course you could create many of them, such as one for your work-self, one for your personal self, and one for your hobby/forum discussion/spare time self. This would reduce social media companies into mere infrastructure carriers. Even telcos talked themselves out of it, I can't imagine social media companies to want anything except own us.
marknadal 7y ago
You can already do that with https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol (Open Source extension)! It hijacks input/comment areas & saves your tweet/post to your own personal local archive in the browser, and then encrypts the message so Facebook/Google can't spy on it.
lacker 7y ago
Facebook is getting pulled in two directions. First, for competitive reasons people want a Facebook platform that can actually do useful things like export data. The problem is that the other direction is for Facebook to keep your data private. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was basically blaming Facebook for giving users the ability to export their data to applications that subsequently sold it to Cambridge Analytica. Senators are not writing code, so they are not required to be logically consistent. I predict a future in which Facebook gets fined no matter what they do.
beatpanda 7y ago
Haha, remember more than a decade ago when we all thought that interoperability was more profitable, and that everything would just naturally tend toward open standards? Wow. We were all just stupid?
droithomme 7y ago
Maybe they can handle this like the phone number portability rules. All internet users will be charged a $5 or so monthly "social media portability tax" which will then be distributed to these 100 million+ user companies to help pay for the cost of maintaining the portability systems.
robbrown451 7y ago
I absolutely like the idea but hope that they push true interoperability more than just the "bundle all your data into a single big zip file" feature. The problem with the latter is it doesn't really do a lot for the vast majority of users wishing to use a competitor. Sure, they can take their data there but who is going to be able to see it easily? I wish it all worked like email. I can use any email provider I want, and people can send me mail, regardless of which provider they use. It isn't perfect (for instance gmail does some stuff with images and links to youtube videos and links to maps and so on that others don't, so I find myself using the product a bit differently if I know the recipient is using gmail), but still it is better than facebook etc where if you share via a product, the people seeing what you share have to use that product too. So basically what that means is competing (or complementary) products should be able to post your stuff to facebook as if you had posted it yourself. Or something. I don't know the exact solution, but I certainly support legislation forcing such companies to open up their platforms. Network monopolies are not good for consumers and not good for innovative competitors.
bcheung 7y ago
I'm 100% for this idea but is a government law really the best way to go about this? There are already social media alternatives that are decentralized and give users control and nobody uses it. There's an increasing amount of bureaucracy in the tech space that it is going to make it very hard to innovate. Laws typically deeper entrench bigger companies because they have the resources to have full legal teams and departments dedicated to compliance. Startups do not.
- mlok 7y ago
  This law is for companies with more than 100 millions users. This bureaucracy will not be a problem for innovators and startups because it takes a lot of time to reach this threshold, they are not concerned by this while at the startup stage.
munfred 7y ago
Please note that this article makes a crucial omission: this bill only applies to communication platforms With more than 100M users in the United States. To my knowledge, only Facebook and Facebook messenger meet that threshold (please list others for which there is data supporting that they'd also be affected). So as it is, this bill would make Facebook offer APIs to it's services, but other services with less users in the United States won't have to. Here's the relevant section of the bill: (7) LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM.—The term ‘‘large communications platform’’ means a product or service provided by a communications provider that — (A) generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and (B) has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States. Link to bill on congress website: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2658 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/265... Link to the full proposed text as uploaded by Mark Warren: https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968 https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968

341 points by howard941 7y ago

Misses the mark...

After watching Mark Zuckerberg testifying on Capitol hill I think it's obvious Facebook and Alphabet are leading the show... A very interesting case is Alexander Nix speech against UK comittee, recommend.

spicyramen 7y ago
Can you unpack this statement?

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

Who asked for this, exactly? I know plenty of users who would like to delete their data--I can't think of too many that want to port it over somewhere else. Is the idea that this would fuel competition by allowing people to migrate their history over to decentralized/federated alternatives?

amwelles 7y ago
I would love to do that. Move all my Instagram pics to Pixelfed and all my tweets to Mastodon. Not sure I could do that with the way things are now.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But that kind of makes no sense. It'll be completely out of context and it's not going to provide much value. Wet can't you just link to your Twitter on mastodon?
  - baq 7y ago
    Somebody might decide that his Twitter account offends somebody important and make it disappear. Or his Twitter might get compromised. Or Twitter might go out of business. Or maybe no reason at all.
    - monksy 7y ago
      Or twitter would cut off that integration because it takes away business from them.
  - amwelles 7y ago
    I’d like having an archive of my tweets that I control. I know they have a tool, but as far as I know, there’s no way to upload that to Mastodon. I could be wrong about that.
- lowercased 7y ago
  do all your tweets just mean top level? or all your replies to others as well? and the resulting threads?
  - amwelles 7y ago
    I’d be fine with top-level.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
I have to be on mainstream social networks to interact with people I know who are. That's the fundamental problem with these networks. "Under the bill the companies would be required to maintain an interface to facilitate interoperability. Or users would be allowed to choose another company to manage a user’s account settings, content, and online interactions, the statement said." Think of this requirement less like a "Facebook export" and more like what AOL Instant Messenger was once forced to do: They were legally required to allow other messengers to communicate with AIM users. Imagine me being able to be on Mastodon, but follow my Facebook friends and tag them and be tagged by them.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  I understand the possible use-case. My skepticism (or cynicism, maybe) comes from the fact that the CBP under this same government has taken to forcing people to provide their social media history when entering the country. So there might be a less than altruistic reason that the government would like to ensure people's social media history lingers forever, rather than being deleted when the user tires of Facebook.
  - DanielBMarkham 7y ago
    Yeah, I feel this pain. This is kinda where we are on a lot of these issues, right? Like Net Neutrality? Ok, just make a law that all bits must be treated the same by pipe providers. Boom, you're done. But no, instead what's suggested is that the FTC start managing this stuff under Title 2. Right after that, you can bet we'll start hearing calls for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. Want users to own their data? Great. Write a law that says that users have total control over their data, where it lives and where it goes. Furthermore they can delete or access it at any time. Also boom. It's a simple concept. But no, we're going to split the baby yet again and talk about exporting data. Next up an argument on CBP. We seem incapable of actually fixing tech matters, instead trying to chop off some small part where we can do stuff that sounds good but has possibly severe unanticipated side-effects down the road. I don't know why that is, but I know that it makes trying to figure out which laws or policies to support quite difficult. Maybe that was the intention all along? Note: all laws have side effects, but optimally you should set things up that the side effects are shouldered by the people involved in the activity, not the voters. You're not fixing a problem if all you're doing is setting up the next argument we're going to have. That sounds more like a recipe for endless conflict.
sct202 7y ago
Yeah I would like to have a tool to purge a lot of messages from history. I don't want people in the future to sift thru my messages and wonder why I and my friends were so weird in Facebook chats.
ghaff 7y ago
>delete their data Which is arguably, at least in part, actually in opposition to this. To the degree that data can be better exported and spread around, it's more likely to be persisted than if it's locked up in a single company's system.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Which is arguably, at least in part, actually in opposition to this Disagree. Today, questions about persistence and portability are made by companies. Users have virtually no say. Giving users say in the matter may mean some make bad portability decisions. But there is nothing fundamental to user-initiated portability that interferes with user-initiated deletion. Today, I can do neither with Facebook.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    >Users have virtually no say. Well, that's true. Because once content by or about you is out there, neither you nor anyone else really has the power to force anyone to delete it. That's not so much a company making a decision but a collective decision that you don't generally have a "right to be forgotten." But that's not so much individual companies making an affirmative decision to always preserve data as no one providing individuals any real rights to erase what they've made public.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > once content by or about you is out there, neither you nor anyone else really has the power to force anyone to delete it If you port your data to every social network on the planet, an act tantamount to publishing, yes, your data will be public. That isn't an argument against granting users this right. Social media companies distributed users' data when it was in said companies' interests. Letting users make that decision themselves may mean bad decisions will be made. But that's better than companies making users' decisions for them, with zero regard for what the users themselves want. > a collective decision that you don't generally have a "right to be forgotten" There is no right to be forgotten in America. (There can't be without gutting the First Amendment.)
r00fus 7y ago
> Republican Josh Hawley and Democrats Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal Are they thinking in defensive terms - I mean how can this be weaponized?
droithomme 7y ago
> Who asked for this, exactly? That's a good question. And how would it work. A couple cases I can see - photos and email. Export my email from gmail, import it to protonmail, delete gmail account. OK. How about incoming email though? That's not content I created or own the copyright to. What about emails I sent to people that are copy pastes of news article material or attached photos determined to be copyrighted by someone else. Perhaps these should be filtered out so it's only the user's personally created content that is downloaded. Now photos from one service to another have that same check that should be done. But the matter of comments on the photo. Some comments are responses from the photo owner. Others are comments by random people. Those comments should not be exported since they don't have the rights to transfer them. So I upload this to some other photo site and have a bunch of one sided conversations. Fair enough though I can see how that works. Then I want to export all my conversations from Hacker News and import them to Reddit. Hacker News will give me a zipped set of xml files or perhaps a SQLite database. Then I create some custom subreddit and upload these comments there. But they'll all be one-sided conversations of course since the people I'm replying to or who reply to me can't be part of the data dump. So I've done this, but why is it necessary this be supported at all? How about reverse? I tell Hacker News, hey the law says you have to let me import my comments from reddit here. So I do that. And what is that supposed to accomplish. Not sure. Maybe people will then say hey I want to upload my photos from Instagram to the Steam Store's comments section. Or upload all my email there. Also of interest is that every site will have to support every conceivable possible export format generated by every other site. Complex job for those of us who have struggled with similar data migration problems with a finite set of formats and possible errors in the data. And what about the data that has errors? Will the exporting company by liable for costs by the importing company due to errors in the exporting company's export job? Also the article suggests the bill is a bit more extreme than this. The user will not actually download the data and reupload it somewhere, instead they will go to Facebook and pick "Hacker News" from a drop down menu and then Facebook will be required to send all the user's data to Hacker News automatically and Hacker News will be required to accept it and do something with it, presumably provide similar functionality that the user is accustomed to. Perhaps Hacker News will then be legally required to implement a clone of Facebook, gmail, Instagram, and every other social media site simply to be able to handle these import requests. And every other site likewise will be required to do the same. What about illegal content and content that violates the importing services TOS? Will they be forced to accept the data and yet responsible still for hosting it even if they don't want it? Someone wants to export their homemade videos from their YouPorn account to YouTube or maybe to the comment section of the New York Times which should now support and host video. Can they refuse to interoperate under this bill mandating interoperating? Everything should be interoperable and all formats exportable from every site and importable to every other site, automatically. Is this a sensible goal. I have a suspicion that the senators supporting this bill really just want to be able to export their email from gmail and yahoo for free and import it to some other email service so they want to pass a law. And then they were brainstorming and someone said hey let's make this law apply to all forms of data, not just email. And they all thought that a great idea. Then the masses hear about this and think "Wow this is great, I'd love to get all my data from every site and upload it to every other site." without actually realizing that a law mandating companies support that is probably not a good idea.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Being able to take your data with you is good but most of the value in social media is due to the network effect. If you can't seamlessly being your connections with you, the incumbents will continue to have a huge advantage over newcomers to the market. In the context of social media, how could someone bring their connections with them to a new platform without compromising the rights of those connected to?

ghaff 7y ago
Yes, it's not clear what bringing your data out of social media even really means. Saving your posts/photos is one thing. But it's not clear that exporting your social graph and all their posts/photos/comments/etc. is even a good thing--yet that's what exporting their social media would mean to a lot of people.
basch 7y ago
interoperability and distributed federation would be much more powerful than export. Maybe they dont know facebook already has an export button? And if that export is in a non-standard-structured format, its not even useful to import into another network.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Interoperability just gives more people potential access to your data. What most activists are trying to do is move towards fewer people having access to your data, as well as you having full and legal custody of your data. Interoperability is better for companies, particularly small ones. But the idea here is to help people prevent companies from accessing their data willy nilly. I'd think the goal would be to decrease the number of access points and to require that strict, explicit, legally binding, criminally enforceable, consent be given for every access to a user's data. If you want to help smaller companies compete, that's a different discussion that can be had. But securing the data of users and providing a great deal more privacy than user's have right now really is a completely reasonable effort in its own right. In fact, I would think for the vast majority of users, the effort to ensure security and privacy should probably take precedence over providing more companies potential access to their data.

jnieminen 7y ago

The EU has also a similar right [1]. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/my-rights/how-can-i-access-my-personal-data-held-company-organisation_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

rocketflumes 7y ago

won't big players like FB benefit from this? It seems more likely that people would port data from smaller networks to bigger ones than the other way around.

lugg 7y ago

Right to federate is the new right to repair.

azujus 7y ago

I believe we are helping to build part of that future in my current startup. People should own their own data and have a right to use it for their own benefit. (Startup: argyle.io)

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
I am happy to hear about your startup, but if you are going to promote it, at least outline what's your approach / why should I be interested.

yami 7y ago

Isn't it the whole idea behind https://solid.inrupt.com/ https://solid.inrupt.com/ ?

rhythnic 7y ago
+1 for solid. Solid has these concerns baked into the design. It's the best solution I've seen for user-owned data and interoperability, not to mention the wealth of possibilities enabled by linked data. To try to legislate those concerns into the current centralized web is going to cause a lot of grief.

godzillabrennus 7y ago

Good move. It’s data we create, we should own it.

readhn 7y ago
and be able to delete it COMPLETELY and FOREVER!
Mirioron 7y ago
You do own it. You can copy paste your posts around as much as you want. Does Twitter have to put in work to make it easier for you for no benefit of their own though?
- buboard 7y ago
  Twitter -> Settings -> Your twitter data -> Download your data. The option is already there. It has been for years This is not a big deal at all

riffic 7y ago

G Suite, or what was originally "Google Apps for Your Domain" is a white-labeled Gmail. Commercial social media companies can theoretically make some serious money by whitelabeling their services and selling those to whoever has an audience. Stop thinking about things in terms of followers - it's the publishers that need to be captured for revenue. What I'd really like to see from U.S. Senators is legislation to require all *.GOV agencies spin up their own ActivityPub-compliant implementations and publish through that means, rather than via accounts on commercial social media services. Eventually, media and other institutions will follow. if anyone is interested in learning more, just look up Mastodon Project, the Fediverse, and ActivityPub in Wikipedia. edit: By "whitelabeling" I mean "Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Youtube for Your Domain", federated and ActivityPub-compliant. Enterprises will eat this shit up.

mxuribe 7y ago
I've thought of this very same thought myself ever since I've had a presence on the fediverse (waaaaay back in the gnu social, statusnet, etc. days). Even if brands only gain the benefit of better control of their brand presence (on platforms that they control) instead of being beholden to the likes of Facebook, etc....I do agree that there's a business to be had for offering commercial social media hosting.
bryan_w 7y ago
You should check out workplace (by facebook).

readhn 7y ago

Another distraction from politicians! The issue for me and many other folks is not taking the data - but its the ability to remove specific users data COMPLETELY and FOREVER from all of the companies servers! So far this capability and access are reserved to special branches within the government (3/4 letter agencies etc). Every human should be able to wipe off their own digital footprint forever!

zubspace 7y ago

> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. I assume that this proposal is based on good intentions. But how they want to overcome the technical hurdles is a mystery to me. Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data? Will there be a standard? Social media platforms like facebook, twitter, reddit or youtube are so fundamentally different that I doubt it is possible to create a common standard. And who decides which services need to have a compatible data format? The idea of downloading my twitter feed and post it on mastodon and vice versa is, I guess, a pipe dream. Or will I be able to download my Imgur posts and import them in Reddit? Can I export all my Youtube videos and import them on Vimeo? Yeah, go figure... I think a better alternative would be a requirement for such companies to open up their API. I want full access to my twitter feed for free. This would allow third parties to create a single interface to many different networks, like twitter and mastodon.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data? You might find clarity in the bill [1]. It avoids, as good laws do, defining how companies must comply, instead setting principles for clarification by the FTC and courts. ("A structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format" is the bill's language (§ 3(a)).) > who decides which services need to have a compatible data format Congress. "A product or service provided by a communications provider that...generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and...has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States" is the bill's threshold (§ 2(7)). [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968 https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968
criddell 7y ago
> Who decides, how facebook should structure their exported data? Facebook. As long as it's well documented the format isn't that important. The requirement should just be that if you take the exported data and reimport it, you get back to the original state (or at least reasonably close).

buboard 7y ago

The users can already do that. FB and twitter do that , who doesn't actually? It's a good tactic that has been followed since blogs became a thing. Like when people could download their tumblr when it committed suicide.

supercanuck 7y ago
maybe they want DRM for data

danShumway 7y ago

> The bill would require communications platforms with more than 100 million monthly active members - Facebook has more than two billion - to allow its users to easily move, or port, their data to another network, Warner’s office said in a statement. Facebook already has a data export feature. You have to manually navigate to that page and download a giant zip file. Cool. The much more important concept being proposed here is delegation: > Under the bill the companies would be required to maintain an interface to facilitate interoperability. Or users would be allowed to choose another company to manage a user’s account settings, content, and online interactions, the statement said. Very few people are going to manually export their data from Facebook. But they might go to a new network that supports cross-posting to Facebook, or an automatic import that doesn't require them to navigate Facebook's menus. Delegation is a severely underappreciated digital right. Beyond advocating for data-exports, we should advocate that users have the right to delegate data-access through APIs to third-parties. If I can manually update/download my Facebook status, I should also be allowed to programmatically update it. And I should be able to authorize another person to update/download it on my behalf.

buboard 7y ago
So, facebook and twitter already have apis for almost all their functions. What's the goal of this legislation?
- duxup 7y ago
  At least as far as Twitter goes don't they limit some of their APIs like how many users a given set of API keys can use or something like that?
  - buboard 7y ago
    Yeah they severely limit bots and ask for phone numbers and then they 'll ban your number if you use it twice. Who's responsible for that other then the media FUD about russian bots? I really can't blame twitter (and FB) for limiting their platforms here.

rpmisms 7y ago

Title translation: supporting this bill polls well.

archie2 7y ago

For God's sake can the US government stop meddling in this kind of garbage. The republic is collapsing around us and we're supposed to be conserned about being able to port our facebook posts over to twitter. WHO CARES

Taylor_OD 7y ago
I understand where you are coming from but because one part of the government is failing doesnt mean the rest of it should shut down and focus solely on it. How would any long term change be enacted if every elect shifted focus every time something new and seemingly more important came up?

xkde 7y ago

At this point, if Facebook wasn’t public and I was Zuckerberg, I’d wind down the company and update the home page to simply read, “I’m leaving it as I found it. Take over. It’s yours.”

mffnbs 7y ago
I always used the analogy of a message board that I put in my yard. If people start dictating that I need to display the nazi graffiti someone spray painted on it, I'm just going to remove the damn board.

MR4D 7y ago

This bill is great in theory, but.... Getting the language correct and the implementation will be extraordinarily difficult. For instance: Let's say you are on twitter. Does twitter have to build an email interface so I can DM my friends who are on gmail? Or maybe I'm on Facebook - do they have to let me allow people on Myspace to "friend" me? Maybe I see an article on ZDnet, and I'm tired of using multiple accounts, so instead, I'd like to move away from Discus to Matrix for posting. Who is responsible here - ZDnet, Discus, Matrix? Will MSFT be forced to allow me to port my entire Skype history and number to Verizon? Or to WeChat? Will AT&T and instagram be forced to allow me to post on instagram using my AT&T account? Interoperability of protocols is important (e.g. one email provider not blocking another). But the law of unintended consequences here is going to be huge. Security alone is going to be a nightmare. I agree this goal is laudable, but the government never made Fords have to use GM parts (only that they use standardized gasoline). I think the idea that they have to expose an interface makes sense, and is much less problematic than full portability and interoperability. Words are important here, and the actual word choices in the legislation are going to radically affect our future. Read that last sentence again - this is a huge problem with any major legislation, and legislation with technology in particular.

MR4D 7y ago
One thing I forgot to add - how would this interoperate with the GDPR laws? For instance, if I move my data from FB to something else, what happens to the email addresses and phone number of all the people I'm connected with? Assume this gets even worse when you have social platforms based in different countries (e.g. EU, US, Russia, China for instance).
- MR4D 7y ago
  Section 6(c) "Technical Standards" looks intriguing. Basically tasking NIST with publishing technical standards for online messaging, multimedia sharing, and social networking. Definitely some good parts here, but I'm still worried about the laws of unintended consequences. Nobody thought that allowing software patents would be bad, but clearly that's been way more costly than anyone imagined. I worry the same is true here. This paragraph on its own is great. Would love to see a step-by-step approach rather than doing everything at once. Less change for screwing up, and you can adjust new legislation as needed.

mal10c 7y ago

Hmm.. so I agree that it would be awesome to easily port my data from company A to company B. I mean, that would be really great! But I kind of don't think that's an appropriate role for the government. Feel free to disagree, I'm all ears on other opinions, I just don't feel the government should have that type of authority to regulate a company like that.... but maybe that's just me.

robomartin 7y ago

What's missing here is the ability to ERASE all of your data from any service at your desired level of granularity. In other words, I ought to be able to tell Facebook to only keep a one month history on me and truly delete everything else, including from backups. If I want a 100% erase of everything, I should be able to get that too. It should be a simple single button operation with suitable confirmation. Perhaps I want all my pictures erased. It should be easy. How about all of my facial recognition data for myself and my children? That too. In other words, these services should not be allowed to store data on you that you don't want them to have. We should not toss out privacy just to protect someone's business model. I had an interesting experience with Turo.com. It's a P2P car rental service. I decided I wanted to try it. To sign-up I had to give up what I would call deep personal info: Name, address, date of birth, credit card, driver's license and maybe a few more things (don't remember). I ended-up not using it even once. It just didn't fit my needs. I contacted the company with a request to cancel my account and delete all of my personal information from their database. They refused. Well, they wanted to have the account go dormant at first. I pressed and they agreed to cancel the account. No data deletion though. I said: What possibly justification do you have to keep such sensitive information in your database and backups when I am not a customer and don't want to use your service? Well, long story short, they agreed to delete the data. My guess is they lied to me. Without a court order I have no way to verify that my data isn't sitting in multiple backups ready to be hacked or used by another company if they sell the company or go bankrupt and the database is sold as an asset. The consequences of having your data stored in databases forever could come years, decades later, when an event lands your data in the hands of someone with nefarious intent or someone who might accidentally and without intention cause you and others harm. This is just one example. We really need a law that says our data is ours and we get to decide who can keep it, what they can keep, for how long and under what conditions. This isn't hard and it is common sense. Put a different way: Just because a 15 year old in a garage decides to launch an internet business it doesn't mean that 15 year old is entitled to own our data and do with it as he or she pleases.

acollins1331 7y ago
They don't want that. They want to be able to ping facebook and get a universally readable source of everything about you.

holler 7y ago

Better Idea: Create a fund for startups that are building new social media platforms specifically to compete against Fb/Twitter/Reddit/Etc. Create pathways for them to compete and enter the public domain. Give them free national advertising slots. Only companies with less than 100M users can apply.

tqi 7y ago

How would/should permissions work in this if my friend moves to a new service? Do I also have to accept a TOS in order for them to continue to see my stuff? The email analogy fails for me because it is clear that once I send an email, that data now belongs to everyone I sent my email to. Is the same true for a tweet or photo I post?

yason 7y ago

Something like this would be the right way to do social media and networks, and it would never be allowed to work. Ideally, I would own my data and I could just bid the social media providers I want to host my data. I could pick one, or several, and I could pick free providers with ads or pay for a premium provider with no ads and other benefits. I could also host the data myself, and messages, posts, friend requests, and updates would travel from service to service via standard protocols. Each user would have a cryptographical identity that would be unalterable across different services; of course you could create many of them, such as one for your work-self, one for your personal self, and one for your hobby/forum discussion/spare time self. This would reduce social media companies into mere infrastructure carriers. Even telcos talked themselves out of it, I can't imagine social media companies to want anything except own us.

marknadal 7y ago

You can already do that with https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol (Open Source extension)! It hijacks input/comment areas & saves your tweet/post to your own personal local archive in the browser, and then encrypts the message so Facebook/Google can't spy on it.

lacker 7y ago

Facebook is getting pulled in two directions. First, for competitive reasons people want a Facebook platform that can actually do useful things like export data. The problem is that the other direction is for Facebook to keep your data private. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was basically blaming Facebook for giving users the ability to export their data to applications that subsequently sold it to Cambridge Analytica. Senators are not writing code, so they are not required to be logically consistent. I predict a future in which Facebook gets fined no matter what they do.

beatpanda 7y ago

Haha, remember more than a decade ago when we all thought that interoperability was more profitable, and that everything would just naturally tend toward open standards? Wow. We were all just stupid?

droithomme 7y ago

Maybe they can handle this like the phone number portability rules. All internet users will be charged a $5 or so monthly "social media portability tax" which will then be distributed to these 100 million+ user companies to help pay for the cost of maintaining the portability systems.

robbrown451 7y ago

I absolutely like the idea but hope that they push true interoperability more than just the "bundle all your data into a single big zip file" feature. The problem with the latter is it doesn't really do a lot for the vast majority of users wishing to use a competitor. Sure, they can take their data there but who is going to be able to see it easily? I wish it all worked like email. I can use any email provider I want, and people can send me mail, regardless of which provider they use. It isn't perfect (for instance gmail does some stuff with images and links to youtube videos and links to maps and so on that others don't, so I find myself using the product a bit differently if I know the recipient is using gmail), but still it is better than facebook etc where if you share via a product, the people seeing what you share have to use that product too. So basically what that means is competing (or complementary) products should be able to post your stuff to facebook as if you had posted it yourself. Or something. I don't know the exact solution, but I certainly support legislation forcing such companies to open up their platforms. Network monopolies are not good for consumers and not good for innovative competitors.

bcheung 7y ago

I'm 100% for this idea but is a government law really the best way to go about this? There are already social media alternatives that are decentralized and give users control and nobody uses it. There's an increasing amount of bureaucracy in the tech space that it is going to make it very hard to innovate. Laws typically deeper entrench bigger companies because they have the resources to have full legal teams and departments dedicated to compliance. Startups do not.

mlok 7y ago
This law is for companies with more than 100 millions users. This bureaucracy will not be a problem for innovators and startups because it takes a lot of time to reach this threshold, they are not concerned by this while at the startup stage.

munfred 7y ago

Please note that this article makes a crucial omission: this bill only applies to communication platforms With more than 100M users in the United States. To my knowledge, only Facebook and Facebook messenger meet that threshold (please list others for which there is data supporting that they'd also be affected). So as it is, this bill would make Facebook offer APIs to it's services, but other services with less users in the United States won't have to. Here's the relevant section of the bill: (7) LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM.—The term ‘‘large communications platform’’ means a product or service provided by a communications provider that — (A) generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and (B) has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States. Link to bill on congress website: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2658 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/265... Link to the full proposed text as uploaded by Mark Warren: https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968 https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968