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

Re:U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take ... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @11:09AM (#21335403)
> If I'm on facebook and want to export all my comments, that would require exporting all the status updates of the people who's posts I've commented on

The bill [1] is ambiguous on the definition of user data (§ 2(9)). There is latitude with this definition, from rich portability (as you describe) to bare-bones portability (simply metadata, e.g. X commented on Y's post on such and such data).

> There's no such thing as exporting a single node in a network, you need the entire network

Graphs are divisible. My export need not contain every user in Kazakhstan's data.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968

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Re:U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take ... by scarface74 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @11:20AM (#21335525)
The bill [1] is currently ambiguous....

A bill written by a bunch of clueless lawmakers to legislate technology - there couldn’t possibly be any unintended consequences.

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Re:U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take ... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @11:21AM (#21335539)
> A bill written by a bunch of clueless lawmakers to legislate technology

This has been Silicon Valley's party line for why we can't be regulated by governments, and should instead be left to self regulate. While I agree with that for start-ups, it's patently failed with Big Tech.

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Re:U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take ... by scarface74 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @11:46AM (#21335809)
And look at what happened when California tried to regulate Uber to force them to treat drivers as employees.

Now freelancers in other industries who don’t want to be employees are having to jump through hoops.

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Re:U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take ... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:17PM (#21336116)
> look at what happened when California tried to regulate Uber to force them to treat drivers as employees

I agree, it's a mess. But the solution isn't to bar all regulation ex ante as illegitimate.

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Re:U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take ... by ysavir on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @01:03PM (#21336592)
No one is saying we should bar all regulation. But we do need to be careful, and _very_ knowledgeable and intentful, when we pass legislation in this field.
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