@goob I was referring to an idea Jason mentioned in his post.
I think any backups should be dealt with from the podmin end, however I still think allowing a user to download their data is a good thing.
What does the user do if the podmin just stops running the pod? 
IMHO, there should be a way to optionally ensure podmin cannot keep the data. But I guess that could be a third-party client to automatically download data every day, which someone would surely make. That would just cause a huge load on the servers But a planned feature to share encrypted data would not.
What does the user do if the podmin just stops running the pod?
The problem does already exist with mail providers. When a provider stops its service, the mails are often lost (IMAP is wonderful, but most of people I know do prefer get their mails on the webmail, not with a MUA, so they just loose everything…)
The problem does already exist with mail providers.
I’m not sure it’s good practise to copy failed examples…
One concept that might be worth investing in would be Channel cloning, which RedMatrix handles pretty well. From the documentation:
Account Cloning
Accounts in the Red Matrix are called to as nomadic identities. Nomadic, because a user’s identity (see What is Zot? for the full explanation) is stuck to the hub where the identity was originally created. For example, when you created your Facebook, or Gmail account, it is tied to those services. They cannot function without Facebook.com or Gmail.com.
By contrast, say you’ve created a Red identity called tina@redhub.com. You can clone it to another Red hub by choosing the same, or a different name: liveForever@SomeRedMatrixHub.info
Both channels are now synchronized, which means all your contacts and preferences will be duplicated on your clone. It doesn’t matter whether you send a post from your original hub, or the new hub. Posts will be mirrored on both accounts.
This is a rather revolutionary feature, if we consider some scenarios:
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What happens if the hub where an identity is based, suddenly goes offline? Without cloning, a user will not be able to communicate until that hub comes back online. With cloning, you just log into your cloned account, and life goes on happily ever after.
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The administrator of your hub can no longer afford to pay for his free and public Red Matrix hub. He announces that the hub will be shutting down in two weeks. This gives you ample time to clone your identity(ies) and preserve your Red relationships, friends and content.
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What if your identity is subject to government censorship? Your hub provider is compelled to delete your account, along with any identities and associated data. With cloning, the Red Matrix offers censorship resistance. You can have hundreds of clones, if you wanted to, all named different, and existing on many different hubs, strewn around the internet.
Really neat feature indeed. I’m not sure about the “can use both id’s” thingy - a bit confusing no? But otherwise it’s something that maybe in a more limited manner would be perfect. Actually the backup thingy I suggested has the same principle except the profile would be encrypted and only activated if required.
Definitely concepts worth looking into. We shouldn’t limit the security of users (concerning pod sudden deaths that happen all the time) by not planning any feature that allows users to somehow be backed up via an automated process.
And after the pod migration has been implemented, I could see the possibility to trigger a migration from the already copied profile - in the case of the original pod going down for example. But I guess in this case the ownership claim to data process would have to be somewhat different.