I remember diligently cataloging my movie preferences in LoveFilm, a UK Netflix competitor (when Netflix was a movie-by-mail company). I think I rated thousands of movies. I did the same in Netflix, certainly hundreds of films before they changed their rating scheme to thumbs up and "preference rating". Yet I have no access to this data.
We often talk about how much companies know about us. Google knows what search terms I search for. Facebook knows what content I slow down on while scrolling my feed. Youtube knows what videos I watch. My cell phone company probably knows the location of my cell every minute of the day. And outside of the horrible interfaces they have been regulated to provide me access to that data ... it is almost completely opaque to me.
Re-thinking data isn't the kind of thing a startup can do. I think we need to find legal mechanisms to really force companies to make data available to the originators of that data. IMO, that is the only way we salvage the Internet.