World Wide Web Foundation to close, as Berners-Lee shifts focus to Solid Protocol to take on centralised social media

In a surprising announcement, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the web, and Rosemary Leith, co-founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, revealed that the organization is ceasing operations. The decision comes after 16 years of advocating for a safe, trusted, open web.

However, Berners-Lee is not giving up on the Foundation’s goals; instead, he’s just redirected his efforts to the Solid Protocol.

From where they sit, the top threat to users’ rights is dominant, centralised social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, and Reddit. This dominance has led to the commoditization of user data and a concentration of power that’s contrary to Berners-Lee’s original vision of the web.

I’ve mentioned before that I was very concerned about some great ideas that came out of the Solid Protocol, but the momentum was dismally slow. There was a proof of concept and then not a lot heard. So this move is probably a very good thing to get some momentum and help shake things up.

Big businesses running a centralised social media platform, some selling the data, others exploiting it for their own gains, some giving into political interferences, etc is just not good for end users (the public).

On the other hand, decentralised platforms need to work cohesively, profiles need to survive hosting changes, users need to be found (if they wish to be), and they need to interconnect. This is what the Solid Protocol was tackling.

So, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with this going forward.

See zdnet.com/home-and-office/netw…
#Blog, #decentralisation, #socialmedia, #solidprotocol, #technology

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