LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A coalition of social media’s most promising venture-backed companies today launched the My Friends My Data Coalition (MFMD) to give online consumers control of their most valuable asset: friends. MFMD is calling for an industry-wide interoperability standard for friend graphs, focused on ease of portability through one-click privacy-safe API protocols.
MFMD’s founding members are Dispo, Itsme, Clash App, Muze, spam app, and Collage. Backed by tens of millions of downloads, founding members have received nearly $100 million in venture capital from the world’s pre-eminent venture capitalists including Sequoia Capital, 776, and Andreessen Horowitz. MFMD’s founding members are committing to making their friend graphs interoperable in a privacy-safe, one-click manner.
“Large social media companies are intentionally holding our personal contact information hostage,” said Dispo founder and CEO Daniel Liss. “This limits consumer choice, stymies competition, and inhibits free speech. We, the members of MFMD, are committed to giving our community members control of their friend data. We invite Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snap, Twitter, and other large social media platforms to join us.”
Currently, consumers on the largest social media networks cannot export friend lists in a privacy-safe way. While the largest tech companies have promised cross-app data portability for years, concrete changes have never emerged, and consumers are instead provided with incomplete and unsearchable information when attempting to move their contacts.
“The internet was founded on a fundamental belief in consumer choice and connection, and working together we can achieve that,” said Aakash Sastry, founder and CEO of Itsme. “MFMD is working to make friend data portable, so you can take your friends wherever you go online, safely and privately.”
“There is so much talk right now about these legacy platforms ‘prioritizing’ creators. As a former creator, I’ve sat in meetings since 2014 about their efforts to build better for creators,” said Brendon McNerney, founder and CEO of Clash App. “If platforms truly want to prioritize us then the best thing they can do is allow us to move our fans between platforms. Each platform offers their own outlet for creativity and connection with fans - this is not a zero-sum game.”
The move to give consumers online friend portability mirrors efforts to enact phone number portability, enabled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
For more information, visit: myfriendsmydata.org.
