Bruce Schneier: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

Schneier has signed on to TBL's "Solid" distributed self-host-capable social media platform company, Inrupt.

I have joined a company called Inrupt that is working to bring Tim Berners-Lee's distributed data ownership model that is Solid into the mainstream. (I think of Inrupt basically as the Red Hat of Solid.) I joined the Inrupt team last summer as its Chief of Security Architecture, and have been in stealth mode until now.

The idea behind Solid is both simple and extraordinarily powerful. Your data lives in a pod that is controlled by you. Data generated by your things -- your computer, your phone, your IoT whatever -- is written to your pod. You authorize granular access to that pod to whoever you want for whatever reason you want. Your data is no longer in a bazillion places on the Internet, controlled by you-have-no-idea-who. It's yours. If you want your insurance company to have access to your fitness data, you grant it through your pod. If you want your friends to have access to your vacation photos, you grant it through your pod. If you want your thermostat to share data with your air conditioner, you give both of them access through your pod.

This was one of the more interesting (though not yet ready for prime-time) options we looked at in the #Plexodus G+ shutdown migration.

HN discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22395358

Reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/duplicates/f88t2f/inrupt_tim_bernerslees_solid_and_me/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/inrupt_tim_bern.html

#socialMedia #distributedNetworks #Federation #BruceSchneier #TimBernersLee #SolidProtocol #Inrupt