Why Data Portability Is Not Good Enough — We Need Free Choice
Data portability sounds great, but it bloats data liability and still leaves the individual a prisoner of data. How can we give people true choice, without a data cost?
Data portability allows individuals to port or transfer data from one service provider to another. In practice, data portability establishes a system in which data is shared between companies under a user’s consent and direction. However, the ability to extract value directly from data still remains outside the individual’s control.
How do we fix this? By making the user the ultimate data nexus.
Here’s how things currently work. You have a lot of shopping data with Amazon. You also have a lot of shopping data on Walmart. In fact, your data is held by Target, Safeway and many more companies. Each company has its own data silo that builds a profile about you based on your shopping behavior and the types of things you’ve indicated interest in. Ideally, this creating and refining this profile should lead to a company offering you better personal value, prices, and products.
Data portability allows you to approach Amazon and tell them to send your data to Walmart, so Walmart can understand your shopping patterns and offer you better services and deals. Data portability also allows you to then tell Walmart to send your data to Target.
Let’s assume that you use your ability to port data as much as you can, such that all retailers have the same amount of information about you; what happens tomorrow? Tomorrow, the retailer you use to buy bananas will have an “N+1” sized dataset compared to the others, who will only have “N” sized datasets. Do you continue the merry go round of data portability? That seems tedious and complicated.
Leveling the data playing field is the holy grail of consumer value. Letting the companies compete on creating value for users, instead of on data shackles, is a great idea. However, portability alone does not create this kind of competition; it simply bloats the entire industry with more and more copies of incomplete data, leaving everyone with even greater data liability to deal with.
What if instead of aiming for data portability, we shoot for a user-held data model? Why port it from one service to another, if you can simply carry it with you and provide access to companies you buy from and services you use?
This might seem like a futuristic idea, but consider the fact that Google’s third party cookies will disappear by 2022 and that Apple is introducing enhanced privacy alerts, notifying users when apps track them across apps. This change was followed by Facebook’s announcement of a 50% decline in advertising marketplace revenues. On top of all that, companies spend $1,400 on average to process a simple data-request, which can sometimes take them weeks to get through. Data is changing, and the influx of more and more data just increases the liability and security risk across companies.
Why do I, as a consumer, care about these companies and their worries about data liability? I don’t, really. But I do care about getting the best deal and the best value wherever I go? Certainly. I don’t like getting marketing for cars I will never buy or for radical political agendas I don’t subscribe to.
Data portability is a great idea, but it’s just not good enough in practice. We should aim for a revolution in consumer value and allow the consumer to get the best service possible, wherever they go.
The world looks a lot like an inefficient data market
The alternative cost for going to a new merchant that doesn’t know you is high, both for you as a consumer and for the merchant. You don’t know one another! But relying on a captive market in which the consumer is limited to shopping from merchants who already have their data is highly inefficient and doesn’t presenta great experience for either the customer or the seller.
Explore user-held data applications
We’re piloting different types of applications that run on user-held data. In Prifina’s Personal Data Cloud, users can combine different data sources and install applications that provide value from this combined data set. This way, the individual never loses control of their data.
These apps can be very simple. For example, one could create applications that organize data from different data platforms and run on top of that data, such as:
- your activity data from your phone, your Oura ring, and your smartwatch.
- streaming data from different services, to create better playlists and recommendations.
- purchase data and content and media data, to come up with better recipe recommendations and restaurant highlights.
- It’s easy to continue the list, but we’d like to hear your ideas.
Democratized access to data should lead to increased value.The great thing about early markets is that we get to experiment! New platforms are emerging for personal data, and by focusing on what novel experiences we can bring, we can build amazing applications that give end users more choice.
Connect With Us and Stay in Touch
Prifina allows you, as an individual, to bring your data from different devices and services into one place under your control. Then, you can take that data and power different applications that give you daily value, such as insights or recommendations, without sharing it with anyone.
You can follow us on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, and Facebook or listen to our podcast. Join our Facebook group Liberty. Equality. Data. where we share notes about Prifina’s progress. You can also explore our Github channel.
