This sounds like a big deal, but doesn't seem to be getting attention. Am I missing something?

Giants like Facebook, Twitter, etc. have a huge competitive advantage because of their user moats. There are a countless number of people who hate Facebook, but stay on it "because everyone is there" and use the one or two convenient features they appreciate, like Events or Groups.

If this initiative is for real, goodbye inferior products like all the stuff Facebook has stuck into its ecosystem (Groups, Events, Messenger, etc etc) and hello super-speciailized companies that can piggy-back on existing user moats (moats no longer).

This is obviously fantastic for the consumer, but seems to destroy something that I thought to be key to each of their bottom lines. Why are they doing this?

Google's motives tend to be just having as much data as possible so they can draw powerful inferences from it, in contrast to Facebook which mainly values exclusivity over their data. By playing the "good guy" card, Google:

- Generally encourages more data to be out there and available

- Pressures companies like Facebook to play along, weakening their data strongholds, lest they be painted as the bad guys

- Gets a lot of goodwill and, more importantly, user trust, which encourages people to give them even more data

While Google's interests seem to align with consumer interests more often than those of the other tech oligarchs, they don't do anything out of sheer good will.

Keep in mind, a huge company is also just a collection of people.

As far as I understood, this project is from the developers working on the gdpr-originating user export functionality. Maybe they've just been passionate about it and had a vision for a more user friendly solution and managed to push it through somehow.

It's probably both. They managed to push it through because it aligns with the higher-level company goals as well.

Previous threads.

The Data Transfer Project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17574707

137 points l2dy 4 days ago 50 comments

https://datatransferproject.dev/

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The Data Transfer Project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17580502

97 points cududa 3 days ago 47 comments

https://github.com/google/data-transfer-project

To be honest, it didn't get my attention yet, since I don't know what useful thing I could do for example with exporting all my Facebook data. I would only be slightly worried with how to protect them from theft, and basically their usefulness is tied to the Facebook web and mobile app.

There’s a risk regulators will force companies to allow exporting data. If companies work on this voluntarily, regulators might be satisfied and not regulate this.

I couldn't help but think so this is how they're going to merge. I'm only joking, of course. On one hand it has the potential to give users more control...

But making it so that all the data is in a standardized format could also make Facegoogtwitsoft easier to realize. That's not to say giving us our data is a bad thing, just that I wonder if someone somewhere wanted to implement this for a more nefarious reason.

...and then President for Life nationalizes it and extends his life until all of us are dead, yeah, I couldn't help "joking" either. We might be sooo doomed.

The comments there are spot on.