The Web’s Creator Is Doing Us A Solid

Category: Social-Networking

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web and the Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) that underpins it in March, 1989. Today, the father of the web is “devastated” and “sickened” by what has been done with his brainchild. But he has a plan to change all that. Read on for the details…

A Brighter Future For the Web?

“I’ve always believed the web is for everyone,” Berners-Lee writes. “… But for all the good we’ve achieved, the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas.”

Those forces – corporations such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and many more – have perverted the People’s web into “the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value.” We all know how that has turned out.

You are not a paying customer of these corporations so you are their product, a non-human commodity whose attributes, activities, attention, and appetites are to be cultivated like rice, harvested, sold to marketers and politicians, and carelessly kept on servers that are secure only against you, not hackers who would do you harm.

Solid Web platform

Berners-Lee, his business-savvy partner John Bruce, and thousands of collaborators worldwide have been quietly working for years on a way to wrest control of personal data from corporate giants and return the priceless power of privacy to the People. On October 1, they went public with their progress.

It’s a software platform called Solid. My headline can be interpreted as, “These guys are doing all of us a solid favor.” I don’t know if that’s what Berners-Lee, et. al., meant in choosing this name but it sure fits.

The company formed to provide resources to Solid is called Inrupt. Visit it. Bookmark it. Sign up for Solid’s email newsletter. Much, much is coming real soon. For now, let’s see how Solid will relieve the suffering of social media.

A Not-So-Imaginary Conversation

(Virtually Everyone I know): “I hate Facebook! Always spying on me, even when I am not logged in or on the site. Always shoving creepy ads at me about things I mentioned weeks ago. Banning me from posting for a week without even telling me why. And what’s with that darned Enter key?”

(Me): “Why don’t you just delete your Facebook account?”

(VEIK): “Because then I’d never see photos of my grandkids growing up. I’d lose a lot of connections to relatives, friends, and business partners. I’ve invested too much time and effort uploading photos, videos, comments, and more. And no one would remind me of Dad’s birthday!”

It’s the Network Effect in action The more connections you have on a network the greater its value to you, and the higher the cost of leaving that network. Facebook, and Google, and other giants have you firmly by your, uhh, connections.

But what if you could leave the network and take your connections with you? What if all your digital “stuff” could be packed up and brought with you, effortlessly? What if kicking Facebook out of your life and moving to another social network was as easy and painless as switching web browsers? That is what Solid promises to enable!

You Can Take it With You

Under the Solid paradigm, none of your connections and personal digital stuff ever leave your possession! Instead, it all goes into a file called a “POD” -- a Personal Online Data file -- that is stored wherever you decide to store it: on your local hard drive, on Google Drive, on DropBox, etc. In fact, your POD can exist and be continuously updated simultaneously in multiple places. Redundancy (a backup) provides security against disasters.

Your POD is protected against hackers and other unauthorized intruders by encryption so strong it would take the NSA 1,000 years to crack it. Only you have the key that unlocks your POD. So it does not matter if Google Drive or Dropbox is hacked; what can be stolen is indecipherable without your private key.

If you worry about losing the key, you can split it into two or more pieces and give a piece to each of several trusted parties for safekeeping. None of those parties can unlock your POD with one piece of the key. All of the pieces must be reassembled in order to recover a working key.

Those photos of your family are in your POD. Your relationship with John and how to initiate a chat with him are in your POD. Everything that Facebook and Google now stores about you (name, address, phone, work, school, contacts, calendar, photos, shoe size, and your favorite ice cream flavor) can instead be stored in your POD.

New Apps to Manage Your Data and Communicate

You control what is stored in your POD, who can access which things in your POD, and when such access ends. To help you manage your POD, open-source software is being developed.

Imagine an app called “FacePOD” that is a user interface instead of the walled garden that Facebook is. It could enable the same displays and actions that are possible on Facebook now, but you could modify things however you like. When you want to try another user interface to your POD – say, “TwitPOD” - it’s as easy as switching from Google Chrome to Firefox.

In this brave new world, you could be using FacePOD to communicate with John who is using TwitPOD, with the greatest of ease for both of you.

Sir Tim reminds us that "The first web browser was also an editor. The idea being that not only could everyone read content on the web, but they could also help create it. It was to be a collaborative space for all mankind." But that notion of a "read/write" Web was quickly lost. Solid aims to restore it.

Who Will Pay For This?

Google and Facebook have massive "server farms" with untold thousands of powerful processors working together to provide their services. How will Solid replicate that scale of computing power in a distributed Web?

The Solid software must run on hardware servers, with more hardware connecting them to the Internet. There are several Solid server farms operating now, including a group at Inrupt. At the moment, funding coming from the pockets of each server farmer. But multiple funding streams are obviously possible; most likely, each server operator will employ several funding mechanisms. Subscriptions can be sold to users, who become truly valued customers to whom the server operator is accountable.

You could run a Solid server on a spare PC in your bedroom, if you have the technical skills. I suspect that software will soon be available to enable Solid servers on ordinary home computers.

Advertisements may be allowed in limited quantities and only if the advertisers will be content with eyeballs, not the contents of the minds behind them or personal data that is none of their business.

Some people bemoan the fact that they receive nothing in return for all the personal data they provide to online companies. But under the Solid paradigm, you could sell to access to advertisers who are interested in limited portions of your POD! Users can also sell access to their own creations to other users, a’ la Patreon.

If you’re concerned about the destitute and untalented, start a Solid server just for them and fund it with donations, grants, bake sales, car washes, or whatever. Objections to subscriptions based on economic inequities are as bogus as saying we should not produce life-saving penicillin because some people are allergic to it. Come up with an alternative or shut up.

Get Started With Solid

Do yourself a Solid NOW! Go to Inrupt.com and read more about its vision. Sign up for the email newsletter. Get a Solid identity and POD.

As the second site warns, it’s all very messy, crude, and techy right now. But do not wait for Solid to become “ready for prime time” or it may never get there. By creating your Solid ID now, you help the project move closer to critical mass, hasten the end of corporate tyranny, and stop the abuse of your privacy and identity.

Am I too optimistic about the future? Your thoughts on this topic are welcome. Post your comment or question below...

 
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Most recent comments on "The Web’s Creator Is Doing Us A Solid"

(See all 24 comments for this article.)

Posted by:

2Picky
18 Oct 2018

Raw indeed.

I tried to create a POD, but it will not accept a myriad of usernames and will not tell you the requirements of said username.


Posted by:

Dave
18 Oct 2018

I tried several times to create a POD with no success. I will wait until some of the bugs are worked out or it is shown to be a hoax.


Posted by:

PeteFior
18 Oct 2018

Hi Bob:

Back in early September you wrote about FOSS social networks - especially "Mastodon" - as a way to move away from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other "commercial" social networks.

How does Sir Timothy Berners-Lee's "Solid" relate to this new FOSS movement - or is this an entirely different paradigm to be investigated? A further article might help to alleviate the confusion!
Thanks!


Posted by:

ken heikkila
18 Oct 2018

I didn't have a problem creating a POD after I stopped trying to be fancy and just used my name as they suggest in the light type in the box.
I would get out of FB just to get away from all the anger and cat videos if I could still keep in touch with old friends and relatives.


Posted by:

James Mills
18 Oct 2018

I signed up for the mail list.
I created an account.
I tried updating my profile information and it kept telling me "Error" or "Invalid" with only a confusing note about invalid HTML. It says things like:

This window was opened to log you in to YOURNAME.inrupt.net, but that app is no longer open.
If you're trying to log in to YOURNAME.inrupt.net, close this window, then go back to the app and log in again.
If you opened this window by accident, close it.

Huh? I could not figure out what to do about it, so I closed it. I'm not a newbie, but they at least need some minimal guidance other than saying this site is for technical people. Or words to that effect. Maybe they'll clean it up in time. I guess we wait and see.


Posted by:

Diane
18 Oct 2018

Honestly - 15 ads on this short article!!!


Posted by:

bb
18 Oct 2018

So, we're now supposed to trust a new {something} we're never heard of because ... why?
At least Facebook, etc. is the devil I know.


Posted by:

Phil
18 Oct 2018

Ahhh. Thanks Bob for that breath of fresh air. I'll give it a try.


Posted by:

Donn
18 Oct 2018

I tried 6 different user names and none were Acceptable. I tried a different pod - Same thing.


Posted by:

Bonnie
19 Oct 2018

Should I sign up for the Solid pod or the Inrupt pod? Or both? I don't understand the difference.


Posted by:

GerryR
19 Oct 2018

Bob,

This is your most important article in years!!


Posted by:

Chuck
19 Oct 2018

I hope Sir Tim has good security around him. These billionaires will not like having their cash cows taken away.


Posted by:

bret
19 Oct 2018

It's about time the man is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize....certainly more deserving than past awardees like Obama.


Posted by:

David
19 Oct 2018

Diane, where are you seeing all the ads? I see one at the top for PC Matic, and that's it. Or do you consider links to be ads?


Posted by:

Joseph
21 Oct 2018

Diane, David, the reason one has loads of ads and the other only has PC Matic is that Dave probably has Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials (or similar) as do I. True it is unfortunately no good for Bob's income, but I have only found one site that becomes somewhat illegible because of it. Incidentally, DDGPE gives Bob a grade B+ which I haven't seen anywhere else at all. Good on you Bob!


Posted by:

David B Wilson
21 Oct 2018

Thanks for offering some hope for the web I used to love.


Posted by:

SkipM
21 Oct 2018

Signed up.


Posted by:

Dave
27 Oct 2018

Diane and David : I've got 9 ads, with ad-blocker on Firefox, and 11 ads with some ad-blocker installed on Yandex browser.


Posted by:

John Wiggins
31 Oct 2018

What??!! I thought Al Gore invented the internet!


Posted by:

bill
08 Jan 2019

"have perverted the People’s web into “the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value."
Isn't that the way that things work? You want something of value to you so you pay for it with something of value to the seller.


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