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He is arguing that the customers will demand it; I am unsure of whether this is actually true or simply wishful thinking.

He argues that the data belongs to the user, and the user should be allowed to easily transfer it to another service.

We could argue about privacy stuff, but the fact that Facebook allows Yahoo access to the data means that Facebook uses this only as an excuse, all they really care about is giving competition a hard time.

I didn't watch the interview (is there a transcript somewhere?). Does he mean release like is possible under the "Download a copy of your Facebook data" link on the account settings page, https://www.facebook.com/settings? Or more?

It just takes one succesful lawsuit by a user.

Also there is legislation being drafted in the EU for data portability.