‘digital natives’ without physical record of memories or important documents or important resources/guides are prone to losing entire lifestyles, entire histories, entire records.
central backups are a thing but are held by fallible institutions
huge losses at the whim of corporations and platforms
better personal backup mechanisms?
requires non-proprietary data formats
open-source clones of popular sites are useful for this
providing public decentralised data retrieval?
eg free/open-source data extractors
but also, a physical alternative?
eg streamlined mechanisms to store e-books on external storage, and/or print them off for archival
consider those photo printing booths in eg Boots where you can connect social media
this but free, private, public, open-source, etc
even could compromise bring-your-own-paper or similar
provision of information in a wider variety of formats can support those with accessibility needs, cross international/political limitations (e.g. communicating with dissident activists of authoritarian states), etc.
Open data is incredibly powerful.
Corporations as non-individuals despite appearing so in law — concerned ultimately with protecting their assets and capital, mostly non-inclusive of the workforce or service users — yet hold a huge amount of knowledge-power, personal info, etc
to the extent that younger generations have a lot more stake in the platforms they use that does not translate to power and autonomy
Entire communities, lifestyles, careers, reputations etc at the whim of mostly oblivious companies
platforms are designed to keep users on and not move their data out.