Take the Power Back: Decentralization and Data Portability.
When it comes to your online information, you have no power. Don’t kid yourself. If you think you have control, you’re either living in a constant state of ignorance or you are so wealthy that you own banks, social media platforms and reality doesn’t really apply to you(so this entire article is irrelevant). And before you baulk at this and shout ‘You have no idea what you are talking about!’, let me lay out your current digital reality.
You wake up and check social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Nextdoor, Instagram, the list goes on. All of your data, your comments, photos, ‘likes’, posts, they’re all owned by the platforms. Despite what you might think, you own none of your information. Sure you could ‘delete’ your profiles, but none of your information is actually removed from their servers.
Next, you check your email, all that data is owned by whatever email platform you’ve chosen to use.
Your files, are those on your computer? Probably not. Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Apple Cloud, yea, about that. All those files, they’re owned by those companies as well. You have access to those files, but you don’t physically own them. Lets see, what else, oh yea your bank account…. hmmm. Don’t kid yourself, you are renting that account. And renting is the most accurate term when referencing your bank account. You pay them to have the account, to send money, to exchange money, you pay them late fees when you miss a payment, overdraft fees, etc. Your bank is a business. They can even freeze your accounts and assets and take away access to your money. What do you get in return? A dope 1.55% APY on your savings account? Cool. By the way, the average inflation rate year over year is about 3.22%
We live in the area of centralized data. You do not own any of your data: your credit score, bank information, emails, files, identity, stock and investment portfolios, health records, text messages, snapchats, tweets, Facebook posts, Facebook messages, LinkedIn posts, your digital representation—it’s all owned and sold by companies. I am not trying to be hyperbolic here, it’s true. All of this data is mined, scrutinized, sold, fiddled with, and fed into machine learning algorithms to make your life ‘easier’.
Currently, you have to log into a company controlled account to access your own data. This is fucking crazy.
Data portability and blockchain technology
‘We don’t have any other option’ you say. Currently, you are correct, but it’s changing quickly.
With the advent of blockchains, data portability is on the horizon. What portability of your data means is that you own all your data and you choose the platforms you’d like to share your information with.
For example, lets say you want to buy shares of Tesla. Well, instead of going to an exchange and then to a broker to buy shares and then keeping your shares of Tesla on an exchange. Tesla can go ahead and put their shares right on the blockchain—allowing you to purchase shares directly from them. You can then store those shares in your own wallet. Cutting out middle men, fees and reliance on third parties to keep your information safe.
Inside your wallet on the blockchain, along side of those recently purchased shares of Tesla lives your health records, your social data, your credit score, your money and your mortgage. The decentralized web puts the power back in the hands of the individual. Ask yourself, do you want Equifax keeping your credit information ‘safe’? Fuck no.
Image being able to send money around the globe, to anyone, regardless of their country, for fractions of a cent. Or, never having to pay an overdraft fee, or have accounts opened up in your name without your knowing, or just plain account fees. How about borrowing money from other people? Decentralizing debt obligations. Envision for a moment, buying a house where the mortgage is stored in a smart contract, governed by the blockchain. Once the mortgage has been paid in full, the smart contract immediately sends the mortgage documents to your blockchain wallet. Or, perhaps, you need to go to a new doctors. Instead of trying to track down all of your personal information from all of your current doctors and logging into all your patient portals for each individual doctor, you have all your information stored in one place. One place that you own. Your blockchain wallet. Safe and secure.
Instead of you going to companies to retrieve your data, companies come to you for you data. You control where your information is and you control the access that other people or companies have to it. No more dealing with Facebook who experiments with it’s users or sells their data. As soon as a social media platform in the decentralized web starts acting up, you can port your social data from the platform you disagree with to one where they respect you. In the decentralized web, users will vote with their data.
