On Friday 20 July, several web giants - Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter – expressed a desire to work together to facilitate the portability of the personal data of web users wishing to move from one service to another.
At present, it is already possible to download all one’s personal data, photos, messages, contacts and various documents to one’s own computer, but one is not always allowed to upload said files to another service with which they might not be technologically compatible. This de facto prevents users from leaving a service or social medium and choosing a new one without losing all their data.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are therefore planning to set up an open source platform to allow services to transfer data directly using a compatible digital format, explains the groups on their blogs, urging other companies to joint this initiative, called 'Data Transfer Project'. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)