Unsealed court documents say the search giant sought help from Apple, Facebook and Microsoft to "find areas of alignment."

An important change is beginning to sweep the world of personal data. For many years, people have debated the question ‘what if individuals — e.g. citizens, customers — were able to assert genuine control over their own data?’ Now the debate is moving on to how to make this happen, at scale.

When Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was asked what motivated her to share a trove of internal company documents with 18 news organizations and researchers in India and the Middle East, her response was straightforward. “The reason I wanted to do this project is because I think the Global South is in danger,” she said.

In response to mounting pressure from activists, parents and regulators who believe tech companies haven't done enough to protect children online, businesses and governments around the globe are placing major parts of the internet behind stricter digital age checks.

The European Union (EU) is a global regulatory powerhouse in the data rights space, with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being the most well known example. The upcoming Data Governance Act may be the next globally influential, data-related regulation benefiting citizens at home and abroad. In this blog, MyData Chair, Antti “Jogi” Poikola explains the EU Data Governance Act and how it supports achieving the goals in the MyData Declaration.
As a reference here the original commission proposal (from Nov 25, 2020), the parliament proposal (from July 2021), and the current council proposal (from Sep 24, 2021).

Facebook said Thursday it's changing its name to Meta. "From now on, we''ll be metaverse first, not Facebook first," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company's Oculus Connect event. "Over time you won't need to use Facebook to use our other services." This should highlight the companies longer-term effort to help build a "metaverse" that will bring physically distant people closer together.

A DIF & ToIP joint statement of support for the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 specification becoming a W3C Standard.

The TEHDAS (Towards European Health Data Space) project develops joint European principles for the secondary use of health data. The work involves 25 countries and you can find project results here.