One response to “Ownership of Content in Your Digital Life – Social Media (Part 1)”

  1. bryan short

    Hi Jason, Great article! Really informative about how social media turns consumers into producers and how content is licensed through these services. But I’m wondering how long this claim, from your subsection ‘User Data vs User Content’, will hold true:

    “This type of [user] data, although problematic in its ability to identify a user based on browsing history and IP, is not authored, or ‘owned’ by a user.”

    I’m hopeful that, under new forms of legislation like the E.U.’s GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act, user data created by using services like Facebook and Twitter will be universally recognized as owned by the person who creates it. For example, under the California act, personal information will soon include any personal identifiers like IP addresses, geolocation, biometric data, browsing history, and psychometric data, and any and all inferences that can be made about a person based on this data.

    Hopefully progressive models like the one’s being adopted by the E.U. and California will influence other governments to consider policies that better protect consumers and our democratic values alike. And maybe soon, there won’t be such a stark difference between, and confusion about, user data and user content. They’re not all that different, after all.

    Looking forward to reading part 2!

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