Walled In
In the age of instant teleportation, Facebook gives us data packers and movers.
…In a parallel universe…
“Hey sorry, I don’t have Gmail. Can you Outlook me?”
—
“Sir, yeh quad-sim phone hai. Matlab chaar SIM khareed lo aur phir koi fikr nahin. You can call anyone — Airtel, Vodafone, Jio, sab.”
We take it for granted, but we owe the architects of the internet and mobile networks for decentralisation, interoperability, and openness. If the internet was a city, their blueprint made sure that roads and public transport get between each area.
But a few businesses bought islands of their own, got everyone there, and built fortresses with our data. Have you ever considered this — if we can send emails from Gmail to Outlook, or make calls from AirTel to Vodafone, why can’t we send a WhatsApp to iMessage, or share an Instagram story on Snapchat?
It’s because building and keeping us in the fortress built with our data support the business model for the companies that do it. They extra and process our data at tremendous scale. In doing so, some have even built trillion-dollar valuations. Control over data became control over the internet — the fortress took over much of it. And it became a resource to be constructively extracted and jealously guarded. ‘Surveillance capitalism’ is what Shoshana Zuboff coined it.
Which is why Facebook’s moves towards letting us move our Facebook data to other platforms is a welcome surprise. Since December last year, Facebook users can export posted photos and videos to Google Photos. And now, it will let us move that information to personal storage, including on Dropbox. The precursor to these changes was a white paper that Facebook published last year, where it laid out both a path forward for data portability, as well as the complex questions that it is grappling with.
Data ought to not just be portable, but super easily so. Many regulators world-over agree wholeheartedly. Europe moved first with a new law. Following suit were Kenya and Brazil. A few years on, data portability is the norm. Large tech firms made all the right noises in support — and some like Facebook came forward to demonstrate their commitment with its export facility. However, in the age of instant teleportation, Facebook has given us data packers and movers.
Now, spare a thought for India’s first-time internet users, the ‘next half billion’, to whom a few platforms are their internet home — WhatsApp, Facebook, and once TikTok. They came online through these platforms — their friends, family, peers and community are all on these platforms. Many haven’t ventured too far beyond them. Even if they had an option of taking their data to another platform, where would they go?
Which is why ‘packer and mover’-style data portability is not nearly enough. The internet will be free once again when we can teleport with our data instantly. I can WhatsApp your Signal account, maybe book an Ola driver partner on Uber, or order from a Flipkart vendor through Amazon. If they don’t ‘own’ the asset — like Vistara owns a flight or FabIndia owns its stores — then they should let them free!
Before you think we’re going John Lennon’s Imagine on you, hear us out. Interoperability has been the standard for the better part of our internet’s history. And it has worked for business. Gmail continues to win big because it’s slick, easy, and gets the job done, not because we’re trapped in. Time for the walls to crumble, and for a teleport button for all.
