The privact e.V. is not the only initiative that wants to empower users to take control of their personal data. Whether you call it decentralized storage, personal data store, vault, or pod, we all share very similar goals.
And the resistance we face is enormous. The current system of surveillance capitalism does not want to change.
To be successful, users need to want a system of decentralized storage more than they want the current system.
To achieve this, users need to have a single database of their personal data - because only then will they be able to unlock personal benefits that current cloud storage does not provide.
So let’s work together, share our experiences, and learn from each other.
We invite you to use this thread to introduce your initiative and outline your area of interest. In this way we can start networking. Our medium-term goal is to organize a conference with all initiatives working on these issues.
Please also share this thread with other initiatives you know about. The task is huge - we can only do it together. And the more we are, the better our chances of success.
I’m the product owner for health-x.org, a project that aims to create a european health data space that is decidedly citizen-centric.
We won’t introduce new data storage, but instead leave the data where it is generated (ie: In clinics, universities, your digital patient records, etc.) and then add a Gaia-X layer to make these data storages interoperable - provided the person who’s data is affected actively consents!
And we’re not talking about broad blanket consents, but instead fine-grained consent statements that ensure only the minimum of data is handled.
We want this to be a pan-european effort, to have more empowerment for citizens in their health-data.
I’m developing the BYODA personal data server. In the BYODA architecture, a ‘service’ publishes a data schema and operates a website, and/or develops a mobile application. People who want to use that service tell their pod to join it. The pod then downloads the data schema and creates data storage and REST APIs for storing and manipulating the data. The schema includes access controls, specifying who can access and modify the various data structures in the schema. Anyone can launch a service, and the pod will create a separate namespace for each service it joins.
The BYO.Tube video hosting site showcases the pod’s features; when using it, please consider it is still an alpha release.
As most people will not want to operate their server, I have launched BYO.Host to host personal data servers as a managed service. Revenue from this service will fund the non-profit company I incorporated to develop the software and operate these services.
There are many use cases for personal data servers, and BYODA is the implementation of just one. I’m interested in discussing how these different applications can run in parallel on a host so that people end up with just one server running multiple applications instead of needing multiple servers.
I’m founder of memri (www.memri.io). We have built an AI Data Wallet that safely stores personal data with a dynamic schema, with keys that are held by the owner of the wallet and AI that can only report back to the owner. We are encouraging app makers and model builders to use the AI Data Wallet as a way to safe guard their user’s data now and in the future.
Looking forward to collaborate with you all. Could we get to a common stack that we all use?