MutuData: Data Labour in an Age of Digital Migration

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In today’s data-driven digital economy, data assets — including personal information, behavioural patterns, social footprints and graphs — have become essential resources driving platform growth, AI training, and targeted advertising. They form the foundation of corporate competitiveness and market power. For users, however, the same data represents the digital property they expect to carry with them and continuously accumulate as they move between platforms, a process commonly referred to as digital migration.

In response to these developments, legislative initiatives have been introduced successively in the EU and the US, seeking to challenge the prevailing framework under which ‘platforms assume ownership’ over user data. These efforts include granting users the right to decide whether to provide data, as well as the right to request access to and copies of their personal data.

Such regulatory designs, however, tend to frame platforms and users as opposing parties in a data ownership dispute — a framing that is fundamentally misplaced. With appropriate institutional design, it is possible to protect user rights while simultaneously promoting platform development, thereby maximising overall benefits for both, rather than defining them as a zero-sum rivalry.

The New Wave of Data Portability and Digital Migration Legal Design

In 2025, the US state of Utah enacted the Digital Choice Act (HB 418), requiring social media platforms to provide comprehensive data portability. Notably, the Act extends beyond basic personal data to include social graphs — encompassing users’ connections and interactions — within the scope of portable personal data. Users are entitled not only to access their complete personal data sets but also to transfer them to other platforms, reducing platform lock-in and enabling migration without the loss of digital traces.

In the European Union, users have long enjoyed rights of data access and extraction under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The subsequent Digital Markets Act (DMA) further obliges designated gatekeepers, including Meta, Apple, and Google, to provide transferable data in order to facilitate cross-platform movement in the interest of fair competition. While Utah’s Act focuses specifically on social media services such as X, Instagram, and TikTok, and places particular emphasis on social graph portability, both frameworks respond to growing expectations surrounding digital migration.

Nevertheless, these regulatory regimes share a common assumption that users and platforms occupy opposing roles. Moreover, digital migration should not be understood solely as an exit mechanism; the rights and interests of those who choose to remain must also be taken into account.

Data as Capital — and as Labour?

Human data constitutes the core material and learning resource for platform and AI models. By analysing users’ personal information, social interactions, and behavioural patterns, platforms refine recommender systems and advertising strategies, increasing user stickiness and generating revenue not only through service fees but also through advertising. In this sense, the success of major platforms such as Meta and Google has been cultivated through vast quantities of data generated by everyday user activity.

Under the paradigm of Data as Labour (DaL), personal data — including interpersonal interactions, emotions, and preferences — should not be treated merely as users’ ‘luggage’ to be packed and taken away. Rather, it should be recognised as a cumulative and continuous form of data investment. When users choose to provide data and consent to its use for model training or service optimisation, platforms should, in return, offer corresponding recognition or benefits for that investment.

In current platform architectures, however, data collection is typically justified under the banner of ‘improving user experience,’ while the labour involved in producing that data remains largely unrecognised. As a result, users’ contributions are overlooked and reduced to unpaid digital labour.

Data Mutualism: Mutual Selection and Mutual Value

From the DMA’s emphasis on fair competition to the Digital Choice Act’s growing focus on user sovereignty, the ownership and governance of data assets are increasingly being re-evaluated. Data is generated through continuous digital labour by users, processed and analysed by platforms, and subsequently returned in the form of personalised and customised services, from which platforms derive profit. This relationship is, in essence, one of mutual dependence and reciprocal benefit.

Beyond unilaterally requiring platforms to provide portability rights, a more sustainable approach may lie in constructing and protecting the balanced framework of data mutualism.

MutuData, as a shorthand for data mutualism, reframes the platform-user relationship by transforming digital labour into recoverable contributions. These may include real-time data organisation, data extraction, cross-platform transfer support, and digital migration assistance — thereby fulfilling users’ expectations of digital migration while generating value for both users and platforms.

Given that users and platforms are engaged in a bilateral and mutually complementary relationship, one-sided mandatory regulations risk not only provoking corporate resistance but also failing to meaningfully advance the valuation of digital labour.

The Dual Freedom of Digital Democracy: From Exit Rights to Participation Rights

Digital democracy should not be defined solely by ‘Free to Opt-out,’ but should also safeguard the interests of those who choose to stay. Users who contribute data over extended periods should be entitled to reasonable and predictable returns on the value generated through long-term data cultivation, a principle that may be described as ‘Free to Opt-in.’

In practical terms, governance mechanisms could convert sustained data contributions into service tiers, feature permissions, or other usage benefits, offsetting part of the cost as a return on digital labour. Such arrangements can preserve innovation incentives while protecting digital rights and promoting digital equality by reducing divides driven by economic disparity.

Within Taiwan’s current legal framework, the Artificial Intelligence Basic Act explicitly identifies the balancing of technological development and human rights, as well as the promotion of digital equity, as core legislative objectives. Accordingly, policy should neither sacrifice user rights in pursuit of platform growth nor treat data exclusively as private consumer property tilted entirely towards user welfare. Instead, it should foster cooperative arrangements that maximise benefits for both users and platforms.

Possible regulatory directions include:

Real-time Feedback Mechanisms for Digital Labour: providing tools for data organisation, extraction, and seamless cross-platform transfer to enable penalty-free digital migration.
Benefit Structures for Long-term Digital Labour: recognising sustained participation through enhanced services, expanded functionality, or preferential access.
Transparency and Informed Consent: ensuring that users fully understand data collection practices, intended uses, and potential risks prior to consenting.

Digital migration is not a one-off event but an ongoing condition. Users move, stay, return, and participate across platforms over time. MutuData offers a governance framework capable of accommodating this reality by balancing exit rights with participation rights, while recognising digital labour without undermining innovation incentives.

From Confrontation to Mutualisation

As data portability regimes take effect — including the full implementation of Utah’s Act in July 2026 — their practical consequences will become clearer. What is already evident, however, is that platforms and users are not adversaries in a zero-sum contest. Confrontation-based models of data governance are poorly suited to the complexity of contemporary digital ecosystems.

By contrast, a system that enables service optimisation through data while granting users meaningful control, portability, and returns on contribution, protecting both the power to leave and the benefit of staying, can fulfil a more substantive form of digital democracy.

Data assets should not be framed simply as belongings to be carried away. Moving beyond narrow conceptions of ownership or exit, MutuData points towards a mutualised digital social contract — one in which users are neither trapped nor reduced to unpaid digital labours, but recognised as stakeholders in data investment and shared returns within a mutually sustaining data ecosystem.