The Bull Case for Owning Your Data
The bull case for owning your data by danfowler.eth38 🥝 • 3y • 0 views • 0 clicks | |
AI summary of the linked articleThe author argues that artists and users should own their data through open, ex-platform systems rather than rely on platforms that can delete or restrict it. Myspace announced in March 2019 that it had lost all content uploaded before 2016, and Spotify closed off access to historic artist data older than two years in August 2023. The author also points to projects such as Mycelia's "Creator Passport" and Catalog's "cosigns", a soulbound token minted while listening to a track in Catalog Radio, as early steps. The author notes that adoption remains hard because user incentives and experience are underdeveloped, and that such services will succeed only if they stay independent of the platform APIs they aim to disrupt. | |
Recommended by 3 curators | |
 That said, throughout all the post-internet years, there has been one single most important channel for an artist, email. By all rights, email should have been replaced years ago by one or many of the more viral and networked communication tools, and yet, ask a professional manager whether they would prefer an Instagram follow or an email address and there will be a very clear response. This is curious, is it not? But also completely logical when considering that the relationship between a creator and a fan has a lifespan far exceeding that of digital platforms. Email is a simple protocol that isn’t owned by any one party and can’t be killed. It also provides inspiration for one of the great narratives of blockchains and content. Dan Fowler, the email bull! No, but in all seriousness, this is a brilliant observation! And I think it summarizes the article in a great way! Raw email identifiers have allowed you to own your audience for decades, whereas your Facebook handle, your Twitter handle, etc., have NOT allowed you to own the pointers to your audience. And why have they allowed ownership? Because email is a protocol and because the identifier is generated and kept in a decentralized way. That lifecycle is much longer than the platform's. Makes me wanna use email more for Kiwi! Yep exactly, and it's kinda why I'm like meh about things like xmtp, because email works just well as it is. Actually, what I found really interesting and made me understand your rhetoric better is that it is very much in line with how dwr and v describe the Farcaster identity stack because they also take a lot of inspiration from email and keeping the identifier resolvable in a decentralized way. I imagine The question will be whether it really holds up as their protocol is far from self-sustaining. | |
Characters remaining: 10,000 comment guidelines | |
More from gotnojuice.substack.com on Kiwi News | |
