Last summer, I wrote a column calling for greater interoperability among social networking sites, thereby enabling users to better control their personal information. Developments yesterday marked an important step in that direction. It started with an exceptionally important guest post by Ottawa's own Alec Saunders on Gigaom. Alec set out a Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 era that focused on four key principles including full disclosure of data collection purposes, reasonable limits on data collection, full consent on the use of customer information, and secured storage of personal data. Those principles, which bear a striking resemblance to the principles codified in Canada's national privacy legislation, are neatly applied in the posting to recent Web 2.0 issues. Within hours, the relevance of the privacy manifesto became apparent as Facebook, Google, and Plaxo all joined DataPortability.org, which is promoting greater user control over their personal information.
Social Media and Data Portability
January 8, 2008
Share this post
One Comment
Law Bytes
Episode 200: Colin Bennett on the EU’s Surprising Adequacy Finding on Canadian Privacy Law
byMichael Geist
April 22, 2024
Michael Geist
April 15, 2024
Michael Geist
April 8, 2024
Michael Geist
March 25, 2024
Michael Geist
March 18, 2024
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Recent Posts
- The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 200: Colin Bennett on the EU’s Surprising Adequacy Finding on Canadian Privacy Law
- Debating the Online Harms Act: Insights from Two Recent Panels on Bill C-63
- The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 199: Boris Bytensky on the Criminal Code Reforms in the Online Harms Act
- AI Spending is Not an AI Strategy: Why the Government’s Artificial Intelligence Plan Avoids the Hard Governance Questions
- The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 198: Richard Moon on the Return of the Section 13 Hate Speech Provision in the Online Harms Act
Interestingly there is no technical need for central repositories of personal information like Facebook. If we want social networking we should do it in a decentralized fashion, allowing those of us that want to control our own internet identities using our own servers to do so. Here’s how this can be done:
[ link ]
Centralization is convenient but not necessary.
Adrian