Solid

@gauthamzzz Sure. It's a set of standards, the goal of which is to have user data stored with users. Along with this comes other advantages: different apps can share the same data (as long as they agree on the underlying standards). I'm currently writing about this: Imagine you use a task planning app (a todo list or calendar). In the early days of computing, your personal computer stored this data. As people began using multiple computers, and added smartphones to their lives, the "your data stays with you" model died, to be replaced by "Your data is in one or more massive data centers around the world, and is managed by a centralized app developer". Solid attempts to flip this, but without losing the benefits of device portability that the transition to cloud based apps brought. Your data is stored on your pod. *You bring your own pod. Everyone brings their own pod.* You can host your own pod, or have a pod hosted for you by a provider. The format itself allows for heavy linking between the data. You can allow applications to read and write your data as you see fit. Going back to the task planning app: your tasks are now stored on your pod. All your devices can access them, and you can switch between task applications as you see fit, with all of them using the same underlying data. Disclaimer: I'm pretty new to this myself. I stayed awake last night reading about this.

@gauthamzzz @itsarnavb Like a personal server which saves all your data in simple terms

@gauthamzzz @itsarnavb Basically what Diaspora has been doing for social network for years. Except this is more universal. https://diasporafoundation.org https://joindiaspora.com

@timberners_lee @rrhoover @owenfar1 What if your pod is maintained over multiple devices that you own—a pod swarm? Your data could stay in multiple locations that you either own, or have privileges over. What if this pods concept begins to ship alongside browsers, the way web3/ethereum stuff ships on Brave and Opera? The point is, it's too early to tell. The pod implementation they've provided is just a simple prototype. We're having discussions about how this could look over at the gitter group right now.

@timberners_lee @rrhoover Am I off base in seeing this and Blockstack as being in direct competition?

@timberners_lee @rrhoover Was confused by your comment. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe this project is not using blockchain technology 😱At least there is no mention of it I could find in solid's description and specs...

Which is not to say I won't check it out as I have great respect for the man. But yeah, this kind of marketing needs to stop.

Which is absolutely to say that I would have never checked it out if the name wasn’t there

@rdev Yeah, that's the thing - if it's only good because of (name), that's celebrity marketing and junk. But if your reaction, like mine, is "Oh! That's a person who actually has some rep in this field, lemme see what they've done now" it's a slightly different and much better reason to mention the name.

@james_mtc Clearly not. Read the documentation. Access to a pod has restrictions the user dictates. Data spread/entropy still occurs. Not to be rude, but the entire point of the internet is to facilitate sharing data. Some bad actors within the ecosystem may very well copy down your data if you share it with them, but that is inherent to all information sharing. But, the crucial difference here is that any actor within this system that seeks to profit off systematically off of gathered data can be outed as abusing agreements with users, unless the users of said service have expressly given their consent for their data to be used in that way. Giving consent is a crucial psychological and technological distinction from the current "Facebook is free" paradigm. For example: Imagine building a Netflix-esque service that integrates with Solid. You could have a full-pricetier and a subsidized tier. The full-price is your standard Netflix except it collects 0 data about you, knows nothing about you except your WebID. Then the subsidized tier, you provide a given subset of your data, which allows them to target you. This is essentially the Hulu model, except in this case not only do you KNOW exactly what data they have, you can easily see the market value of that data (as it is reflected in the subsidized cost of the service). If this thing takes off, this is essentially breaking down the established moats that Google and Facebook have on the internet ad market. You could actually see Google still existing in this system, so long as they started paying users some dividend for the profit Google extracts from your information. (A side note: what this protocol also does, interestingly, is separates user interaction from user data in a very clear line. That is to say, a developer obviously will know how a user interacts with their service, and that data is clearly the developer's right to own and control that information. What they don't necessarily have the right for, though, is to 1-to-1 match up that user interaction to specific users.) It's really, really fascinating. I might have some of the details here inaccurate as well. Just read about this.