Facebook extends the types of data that users can transfer to other services

Facebook is renewing its calls for Congress to create guidelines on how online services should make data available to users for transfer to other platforms, as it expands its own function to do just that.

Facebook announced Monday that it is expanding a tool that allows users to transfer their data to other services. Facebook will now allow users to transfer a copy of their posts and notes to Blogger, Google Docs and WordPress. The company already has a way for users to transfer their photos and videos to other services.

Lawmakers have advocated for so-called data portability functions as a way to level the playing field for new entrants to the technology industry. Facebook has attracted antitrust control and is currently facing legal challenges from the Federal Trade Commission and a broad coalition of states for allegedly maintaining the monopoly illegally. Some lawmakers believe that if users could more easily remove their data from Facebook services, it could encourage them to leave. This would then pave the way for new innovators to grow in the social media space.

Facebook itself has advocated for data portability laws and is using Monday’s launch to illustrate how firmer guidelines around the process could allow for a larger and more secure flow of data between services.

For example, when users transfer their posts and notes through the new feature, those transfers will not include comments from friends on Facebook or posts that friends have left on users’ pages. This is due to the legal ambiguity that exists around the person who holds this data, especially in the absence of a federal law on digital privacy. Facebook has already had issues with how it gave a third-party developer access to friends’ user data without their explicit permission during the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In a white paper published in 2019, Facebook raised questions about whether a platform’s “social graph” – or their network of friends that a user maintains on the platform – should be portable to other services. While the idea of ​​portability aims for users to take ownership of their data and allow for greater competition, it can have privacy issues when it is not clear who owns the data or opted for the transfer.

There is also uncertainty about the services that should be liable if the data is compromised in the middle of a transfer. Facebook believes this is another place where Congress could clear up the confusion.

Congress could also set standards for the types of data that services should make available for transfer. It could also set bumpers to prevent the transfer of certain types of data.

Some of the data that Facebook collects is passively made or includes inferences that the service makes about users, including to protect the integrity of the service. For example, Facebook’s public policy manager, Bijan Madhani, said the company will make inferences based on account activity to determine if they are driven by robots. He suggested that it could benefit users to keep this data out of portability requirements in order to maintain the integrity of that function.

Madhani said Facebook intends to continue working on the tool and add destinations for users to transfer their data. He said consumers could look at the types of data already available for download to get an idea of ​​what might follow from the transfer tool.

Although Facebook has previously joined other players in the industry to create an open source platform that can be used to transfer data between services, Madhani said this is an area that requires government leadership to support industry standards.

“The lack of a potential partnership with the government there can make people feel are real on the table ”. he said. “Self-regulation is pleasant, but self-regulation without government regulation is less pleasant.”

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