Become social-media platform independent
Idea 2018-11: Social media backups - memories
This is a continuation of the Saturday idea series.
Some of your wildest interactions may be found in an old Snapstreak, some of your fondest travel memories in a series of old Instagram stories, and your Facebook wall might even reveal special moments with the fam and your late grandma if you take the time to scroll down far enough.
Your social media data extracted, packaged, and reusable on the fly
I’m unsure what to call this brilliant million-dollar idea. Maybe MyDataHub?
MyDataHub has a standardized data framework for each major platform: You provide the login and it extracts everything available to you as a user. Old posts, photos, interactions, likes, names/MyDataHub IDs of those who clicked like. It does this both by using the “download my data” options present on online platforms by law, as well as by simply scraping and categorizing everything available to your profile after you provide the login, with Google-like spiders.
If you extracted your Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook profiles, you now have one large dataset for the four saved indelibly on your hard drive. The MyDataHub software has a simple interface that lets you scan all the memories by date, media type, and source among other filters. If the profiles are still up, you can click through to the original post, too.
New social media platforms pop up and you can join them allowing them access to parts or all of your MyDataHub set. It’s your choice. So if a new video-shorts platform, let’s call it Substack Shorts, launches, you can select to give it access to your entire ‘Hub, or you can only approve TikTok for ingestion. Now you can continue your TikTok career smoothly on Substack Shorts (as “Numifan05 is typing… 💬”), and if both sides opt in, even your following from TikTok can get carried over as other users also connect to Substack Shorts with the help of MyDataHub (a common practice once it’s established).
Wide use of MyDataHub will make it much easier for new social online platforms to gain momentum if they have compelling functionality, as users can keep building their story on this platform seamlessly without leaving a lot of baggage behind in the previous one(s).
Your digital identity
Let’s focus on what’s key now. Your MyDataHub export is yours, and it can be assigned a unique ID, your MyDataHub ID, to be used on the Internet. It’s your property. If advertisers want access to your data across networks they can pay you for it and you can decide what to share and what to leave out.
An established social media presence built over a decade will accrue real value: It will form a “thicker” digital identity. Starting a thin digital identity is easy: You create a throwaway Facebook account and download it into a MyDataHub instance. A thick digital identity is crafted over years and years across platforms. Facebook posts from 2014, Instagram stories from 2022, LinkedIn “teambuilding event” posts from 2023, and saved home decoration Pinterest collections from 2019 all feed into it. More importantly, your connections and their thickness also enrich your MyDataHub ID, thickening it.
Beyond enabling you to monetize your data, a MyDataHub ID will also provide access to loans: A loan attached to a thicker digital ID will carry a lower interest rate. Lenders would consider it less risky, as a default would tarnish this more painstakingly built identity. A thin ID, like one made with a throwaway account, would not get a loan without posting collateral.
Note that while your “real world” identity will likely yield the thickest digital ID nothing is stopping you from building multiple identities with meaningful content and valuable connections over the years, which can operate completely separately from each other.
Crypto angle
To circumvent legal challenges by established social media corporations MyDataHub should likely be launched as a decentralized crypto project. The extraction and scraping of Facebook and co. would happen by a local implementation of the MyDataHub protocol where all data is saved only on the owner’s computer and only metadata is exported to the MyDataHub chain. The extraction algorithm will need to be constantly updated by the developer community, similar to how AdBlockers are always evolving to avoid detection.
Like WorldCoin the governance tokens of MyDataHub can be issued to users who export their online presence into a public digital ID, based on the thickness of the ID. Unlike WorldCoin scanning your iris with an Orb is unnecessary to build a rich personal identifier that gives you access to financial services, real-world social circles, and much more. Real-world identities and biological identifiers can be optional data that add thickness to your MyDataHub ID, yet are not required.
You got the power
Ultimately, MyDataHub will take power from the social media giants back to the users (a long-held crypto promise), and it will make it easier for new platforms to launch as users can carry their lives over as they would when moving apartments.
Users will be able to translate their online presence into a digital ID, which gives them access to services while still allowing for anonymity and multiple identities (multiple identities should be a human right, but more on this in a different post).
Join the MyDataHub movement HERE
Oh wait, it doesn’t exist. But YOU can start it. This idea is a tough one to implement - but worth it. And I’ll be sure to HODL.
