Report: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter Launch the Data Transfer Project

From Venture Beat:

Here’s something of a curveball for your brain: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter have teamed up for a new open source project that would make it easier to transfer your data between online services.
The Data Transfer Project (DTP) was officially founded last year, and there have been whisperings about it on the likes of GitHub, but the initiative was officially unveiled today with its first four members. The DTP is actively seeking other members.
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So the launch of a project that basically involves building APIs for the purpose of sharing data is curious given some of these recent scandals. However, this move likely ties in with one of Europe’s GDPR data portability directives that stipulates users must be able to easily transport their data between services. The DTP makes no direct mention of GDPR, but the EU ruling probably served as a key driving force behind the project’s launch.
Furthermore, the DTP may help these companies distance themselves from the perception that they are walled gardens locking their users into silos.

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Direct to Data Transfer Project
Direct to Data Transfer Project Overview and Fundamentals (White Paper)

The Data Transfer Project (DTP) extends data portability beyond a user’s ability to download a copy of their data from their service provider (“provider”), to providing the user the ability to initiate a 1 direct transfer of their data into and out of any participating provider. The Data Transfer Project is an open source initiative to encourage participation of as many providers as possible. The DTP will enhance the data portability ecosystem by reducing the infrastructure burden on both providers and users, which should in turn increase the number of services offering portability. The protocols and methodology of the DTP enable direct, service-to-service data transfer with streamlined engineering work.

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