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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

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.

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.