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Tim Berners-Lee Creating New Solid Web Where You Own Your Data

Tim Berners-Lee is building a new version of the World Wide Web where you — not Google or Facebook — controls your personal data.

Tim Berners-Lee Creating New Solid Web Where You Own Your Data

The father of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, is sick of how big tech and social media companies have corrupted his child. He’s building a new version where you — not Google or Facebook — controls your personal data.

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46 replies on “Tim Berners-Lee Creating New Solid Web Where You Own Your Data”

@Bill: you really should read up on the basic terms at least: blockchain would absolutely not ensure whoever not see content. It’s just a shared ledger of open transactions.
End-to-end encryption is a completely different animal.

And while in theory it is not completely impossible to create a central store of encrypted content where the host only sends it out without having a clue what is in to however many clients — for practice it is. As the store can just join as a client and so get the access. If it can’t officially, if the number of your clients go beyond a handful, again you can’t expect your secret be contained.

With respect, I think you guys are missing a key issue: the Pareto Principle, which basically states that in all creative endeavours the work, the profit, the benefits tend always to flow from and to a minority of participants. In economic terms, this means new creative endeavours always tend to become oligopolies. Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot and describes it as a “brutal” principle. Which means the same thing will happen again to Internet 2.0 absent external controls.

I think Capitalism 1.0 has internet 2.0 beaten to the punch. Facebook and Twitter has lost 51 billion in a week since banning Trump. Amazon is taking a huge hit. Its only a small part of their net work but share prices are plummeting. That money will be going to alternatives. Both Dorsy and Zuch are approaching hostile buyout territory.
Someone got twitters boss twit, Jack Dorsey, on tape talking in dictatorship terms. That recording has to be from someone so high up in finance or Twitter that Jack can’t fire them. CFO or chief programmer or something.
Also Australia, India and a dozen other countries are writing laws and starting enquiries that may get the companies heavily sanctioned across the world. Europe has already done that.

When Tim Berners-Lee got started on his projects he was on the other side; citing Russian interference in the 2016 election. That was one of the things he defined as being broken. Some of us pointed out that that was not a real thing, Trump was not supported by Putin at all. I don’t know where he stands now but I think he may have gotten the message.

The COE of Gab on Steven Bannon’s show was talking about this two days ago and said you can’t use blockchain to do social media because you can’t delete child porn of it shows up. Blockchain makes deletion impossible. It is being used to safe guard all the login and security systems which is what matters. It is interesting that Bill, Steven Bannon and others are all asking the some question.

Internet 1.0…Internet 2.0….it simply will not matter if the ISP’s decide my online activity “score” is worthy of a downgrade in speed, or connectivity at all. If Comcast/Xfinity ever decided to “grade” it’s users on what we post, what site we visit, and deem they are not politically correct, would it be that hard for them to “shadow-drag” your speed down to annoying but not unbearable? Bad enough to have to keep using, but not bad enough to quit their service as your only ISP available?
To that end, Musk’s Starlink. Will Starlink BE the ISP to the world? Will, someday soon in early 2021, will I finally have a choice in reliable high speed connectivity to the internet, version 1 or 2?
If what happened to Curt Shilling is indeed true, and his insurance company dropped him because of his outspoken online activity, I would not put it past Comcast to do the same.

Solid is at least 2.5 years old, I set up a pod in 2018. When I checked a few months ago, no additional progress had been made. The press releases of the last few days read almost exactly like the ones from mid 2018.

Just FYI, Solid isn’t coming.
It’s here. Visit SolidProject.org and set up your POD today.
For you programmers out there, there are developer links to get started on developing links and apps for the project.
(standard diclaimer: I am in no way associated with SolidProject.org. I was not compensated in any way by them or anyone.) ((I just know a good thing when I see it!))

Notice that the US based POD hosting providers are hosted by Amazon. Might not matter, but then again it might. There are options for UK and Germany hosted providers.

With the resources available to Big Tech to subvert this new initiative I’m not so sanguine about the success of Internet 2.0. I hope I’m wrong. I want to be wrong.

It’s not just Big Tech. It’s also the incumbent government, which is in bed with Big Tech. As a federal contractor, I am required to grant access to all of my personal data (financial, legal, medical, etc.) to retain my position. Can you ever imagine the Federal Government being capable of securing such data? If you do, then you should consider the Office of Personnel Management leaks several years ago, which lost the personal data of several million people (including myself) to foreign interests. The currently-living generations are totally screwed in this matter.
In short, I am not optimistic that such an Internet 2.0 will be viable for the majority of people.

I can see lots of use for this that would be GREAT for some companies. Now your local pizza joint doesn’t have to store your personal information (NPPI data it is called) on their servers, opening them up to lawsuits. This is awesome! You order a pizza, and the address is printed on the receipt after requesting that information from the provider. Pizza Planet never has to worry about the security of your information!

But other companies NEED your data. My company does work that varies from state to state. My code can’t go out and request data every time I do a calculation based on your home state. I’ll still have to store this somewhere. Also, I wonder if this is a time-based repository? For example, if you live in Ohio when you start business with us, but now you are in Michigan, it could change everything. I’d need to know where you were on a particular date perhaps.

The final type of company just WANTS your data. If you open up your photos to Facebook, what’s stopping them from just scraping them all and keeping them on their own servers now?

I have two points to raise. The first is that it was a very astute observation by Steve. The internet as it is now was completely open just like the wild west was. As such , it invited people to take advantage of others. We need a sheriff that is beholden to the people to police the evil men that are trying to rob the stagecoach.
The second point is that no matter how secured our information is kept, there will always be people that willingly give up access just to get a simple benefit like Facebook and it’s connectivity.

Spot on, David. I haven’t used Facebook or Twitter for many years and I’m trying hard to de-Google myself. But I despair of all the sheeple who say “yes I agree but all my friends are on….”. *sigh*

I have been trying to get my wife off of Facebook & Instagram for years and I hadn’t had much luck, but since the election she has been more open to my entreaties. Fingers crossed.

Mike and Scott, I got off FB as a user a year ago, But just last week I got fed up and deleted my account after downloading some precious photos and content. My wife is so pissed off that she also left FB and for her, she was active on cross stitching and quilting pages and it would have killed her to quit FB 3 weeks ago. This weekend, she was laughing saying EFF Zuckerburg during the whole process of deleting her account…. She’s an example of those who say, “but I just can’t quit (insert platform here)”.
We left google for DuckDuckGo, and both of us are trying Brave and leaving Chrome (if that’s even possible). Mozilla pissed us off too, so I’m finding another FTP client for work. Oh, and because of Amazon’s move on Parler, we both vowed to stop habitually using Amazon for purchases.
Every time I hear someone tell me, “Oh, FB doesn’t care about you, Twitter doesn’t care if you quit, you’re a drop in the bucket”. 70+ million votes for Trump and a big % of them probably used FB/Goog/Twit. We’re a lot of droplets. It CAN add up.

How long do you think this guy who makes internet 2.0 survives before completion. Far too much money on the line for big tech to allow this guy to destroy their monopoly.

My thought also. I was thinking, “I hope he isn’t taken out.”
If I were this genius, I would surround myself with trusted others and not tell a soul until the day after roll out.

This sounds really cool. And it also gives me great hope: Just when you thought you had it all figured out, something happens or someone comes along and the game is changed completely.
All of us have been busy girding our loins for the rough times ahead. That’s wise. But at the same time, we can’t see the future and we don’t control anything when it comes right down to it, not even the people who now think they hold all the cards. Only God is sovereign, and I learned to trust Him long ago.
And so, a door opens, and someone walks in with a new internet. Didn’t see that one coming! Will it fix everything? Of course not, but it shows that along with the horrible stuff we see, there are people out there coming up with ways to overcome it that we can’t see yet, even some members here who are tirelessly looking for answers.
I’m so grateful for the BW team and their various perspectives, and to all the members here who share their ideas. Thanks one and all.

In some parts of the world this is the case, but it matters not since the Internet 1.0 is a global sandbox where the data rules are neither standardized nor enforced. In short, the Internet is a free-for-all for those with the $$$.

Disagree. The CEOs should be fired and become unemployable as a result of their destroying their shareholders’ capital. Which is exactly what will happen – be patient.

There’s always someone who will hire them because of their “work ethic”. If they’re in prison . . . no workie!

So we don’t know whether this new internet will use blockchain? If pods are stored anywhere but the user’s own devices, that would put them in third-party hands and without blockchain they’d be susceptible to hacking.

Yes, and someone will invent a system to monetize the pods, lol. I see it working like those “cookies” agreements work today. You want to see our website? you must accept cookies. You want to see our site on new web? You must allow access to your pod info. If the internet builder figures out a way to prevent this, I’ll believe it’s a new way forward.

The web site that sets such a condition wouldn’t see much traffic. I can’t think of any site on the internet that doesn’t have an equivalent alternate choice. Users would merely go to one of those. And those who don’t? They deserve what they get.

I’m not so sure of that. I think he was spawned in porcelain bowl. That makes the phrase “he’s just full of himself” take on a whole new meaning.

That’s a hypothesis worth investigating. If Algore were something interesting enough to investigate.

As much of a sphinchter muscle that Captain Planet is, this is the one topic where I’ll defend him. He never siad that he invented the Internet, just that he took part in the legislation that made it possible. But given all of the dishonesty that’s come from him over the years, I’m fine with hanging this on algore.

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