The Problem With Web Data

This is a repost from my new website. Please follow my new blog for future updates.

What does it mean to "own" my data in a web-based world? I don't know what this means, but we should.

Before the growing responsibilities of "The Web" is for us, owning my data meant the files sat on my own machine. It meant the files were in a format that was either human readable, or documented well enough that alternative tools could read it or convert it. It meant no vendor could die, or change its mind, and make my data useless to me.

This isn't the case in the web today.

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