Communications of the ACM
Toward a Solid Acceptance of the Decentralized Web of Personal Data: Societal and Technological Convergence
Credit: Andrey Suslov
Citizens using common online services such as social media, health tracking, or online shopping effectively hand over control of their personal data to the service providers—often large corporations. The services using and processing personal data are also holding the data. This situation is problematic, as has been recognized for some time:13 competition and innovation are stifled; data is duplicated; and citizens are in a weak position to enforce legal rights such as access, rectification, or erasure. The approach to address this problem has been to ascertain that citizens can access and update, with every possible service provider, the personal data that providers hold of or about them6—the foundational view taken in the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Recently, however, various societal, technological, and regulatory efforts are taking a very different approach, turning things around. The central tenet of this complementary view is that citizens should regain control of their personal data. Once in control, citizens can decide which providers they want to share data with, and if so, exactly which part of their data. Moreover, they can revisit these decisions anytime.
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