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Rory Byrne
Metro — Universal data collection, powered ethically by your users
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Metro is a new way to collect data. High quality data, in real-time, from any website on the internet.

The way it works is simple: your users generate the data you need in real-time, and share it with you.

People generate data using DataSources, community-made, open-source data-generation plugins. Anyone can make one!

Replies
Elizabeth
I can't tell - is this data tokenization - ie. sharing data = mining?
Rory Byrne
Maker
@elizabethhunker No tokenization, it's not a blockchain application and data is not being bought/sold. It's literally just data collection for companies. You - the end user - create data and send it to a company, and they give you access to their product in return. This is the same way that data collection works right now, except you are the one generating the data instead of the company. Does that answer your question?
Rory Byrne
Maker
@elizabethhunker awesome! It's great to hear that! :)
Rory Byrne
Maker
Hi folks, delighted to be making my first ProductHunt post! I started building Metro about 10 months ago. I wanted to build a personalized AI for learning languages - my final year university project -, but I couldn't access the data I needed. Metro is simply a data collection platform. It allows you to collect data from any website, through your users. This means that your users generate that data you need via a browser extension, and send it to you in real-time. It's designed to be mutually beneficial: you can collect new, useful data, while your users get to have control over their data for the first time ever. It can also be used to create open datasets, where all contributors can access all of the data. Feel free to ask any questions!
Brendan Cluskey
This is such a great idea!
Rory Byrne
Maker
@brendan_cluskey Thanks! Decentralization is nothing new though - YouTube did it to the TV industry, AirBnB did it to the hotel industry, the Internet itself decentralized media distribution. Data is just the logical next step, for me.
Luke Hynes

It will be cool to see how this develops over time!

Pros:

It's a cool idea, mutually beneficial for users and for businesses!

Cons:

It's kind of difficult to understand how GDPR affects this style of data collection

Nick Nott
Wow clever idea. Interesting would be to find out to what extent the big US tech giants could be threatened if they no longer have a monopoly on the global data.
Rory Byrne
Maker
@nick_nott It will probably be quite scary for the tech giants. They are essentially data-generation companies and this is diluting their power by distributing it to every internet user. However, I'm more focused on the kinds of innovative startups we might see being built on an open platform for generating data.
Rodrigo Alejandro

We need more project like this to empower the data subjects.

Pros:

I great idea to empower consumers for a more accountable data management.

Cons:

Go to market seem to rely on incentives provided by the companies to the users, which might be not easy to achieve.

Michael Breen

So long as more projects are added on a consistent basis, I'll be checking back.

Pros:

Great concept, it's about time people rather than companies decide who gets to use their data.

Cons:

Not many projects on the platform just yet.

Alex Mackenzie

At Web Summit 2018, ethical data collection was one of the more pertinent topics discussed at the event, Metro appears to solve / I imagine will solve in the future, many of the problems discussed.

Pros:

Transparency & empowerment. One of the few data collection platforms that I've seen place this much of an emphasis on collaboration.

Cons:

Dealing with the usual growing problems of any startup, but I suppose that's a good complaint to have.

Diana Catherine Lopez

Recently, I’ve been caught by the idea that if we don’t have control over the information that is generated about us online through the mere use of the Internet, then we won’t have control of the decisions that will be made on us by entities we will be even unaware of. I understand the logics of this project, and while it seems to be aimed to level up the game field so that Startups can have access to useful data, I see a huge potential on this project to empower people and help us have full control of our digital identity. Thank you for being a solution that help us prevent future problems.

Pros:

Bravo! Making possible to generate and own our data opens an opportunity to control our digital identity & empower the projects we careOf.

Cons:

I was able to get the extension on my desktop. And had to download Firefox, in order to have Metro on my Mobile.