Data Sharing across social media is broken. And it is by design.
Here is why.
1. Poor Data Ownership
All information generated on a social media platform is lost upon leaving it.
Posts and activity are user generated. And yet, the platform keeps or deletes it depending on user membership. Users can, at best, request a data dump from the platform. More on that later.
2. Poor Data Privacy
Different people access your data. There is no easy way to set permissions like "Share X data with Y users only."
Your ex-employer can see all your posts, and your future manager can see your certifications.
We need something like Google Docs' permission management.
3. Poor Data Portability
If you manage to convince the platform to share all of your activity in the past, they will share it in a format suitable to them. This could be a CSV file. It could have field names and values that you do not understand. It could have platform-specific tags that aren't documented. Who knows what such data means?
Instead, a standardized format of data sharing would remove portability issues.
Moving your data from one social media platform to another should be as easy as transferring money from one bank account to another.
4. Duplicated Effort
Suppose you are hunting for a job. You write a post and share it on LinkedIn. You then post on Twitter. Followed by Instagram.
Every post costs you time and effort to generate. Activities like comments and sharing, which boost recommendation algorithms, are lost between platforms.
The resultant posts get lesser viewers overall.
How do we solve these problems?
A unified platform, with Government oversight, would work. But it doesn't feel safe (You may not like the Government having access to your posts).
Instead, we notice that the four problems have something in common: Data Sharing.
If we enforce data retention and access guidelines for social media platforms, we would solve problems 1 and 2.
If we send data across the platforms in a standardized format, we could remove problems 3 and 4.
The above two points can be combined into a single open-source protocol: Beckn.
What the Beckn Protocol looks like
The Beckn protocol is a set of specifications consisting of APIs, data models, reference architecture, transaction mechanisms, and global standards that enable the creation of decentralized networks.
Using the Beckn Protocol for social media platforms would make their data interoperable and portable.
Would social media platforms be averse to such a change? Maybe…ahem…lower profits due to competition…ahem…
In any case, the protocol is worth looking into.
Reference: https://becknprotocol.io/