Hi, i have been following Solid project from the start especially Tim’s TedTalk speech few years back about linked data. Solid speaks about data ownership and privacy protection but have anyone thought about having a balanced and not addictive web platform. In late 1990s to early 2000s when WWW was having its initial growth it was all new and internet users were not fully engaged into the virtual world until 2009. One decade back if you look internet was well balanced and web algorithms didn’t make us change our behavior or make us addictive and remove us from physical world, we after all used internet only for real purpose and it had a value. If i say in one word, internet really got “destroyed” only by social media in the name of “connecting people” i.e Facebook and whole websites/users of internet got connected to Facebook and became corrupt starting from 2009,2011 and following years. The immense freedom and availability of internet we got is misused by users and companies just as any product like for the first few years it will be good and the rest gets worse, rest of the people know what happened.
So i want the Solid platform to be more valuable and not addictive rather than just focusing more on data privacy, which is also important and reduce the algorithm control on we internet users. The users should balance more on real physical world than virtual world and use internet for purpose according to the need and want of the user, instead of uploading a user life history on the web.
I think many of use here share your analysis and that it is also one of our goals with Solid. To redecentralise the web, is about rebalancing, and a lot of the motivation for that is because of the unhealthy and downright destructiveness of the business models that dominate it at the moment, and continue to proliferate. Surveillance Capitalism (the phrase coined by Shoshana Zuboff) is one description which I subscribe to, so I hope we can create alternative business models - with different incentives - at the same time as giving users back their privacy, and control over where data is held and who has access.
The thing about privacy is that the user of the information has complete control over who accesses their information. There will still be plenty of people who want to upload their life history, and who want to make everything in their POD public. Solid will not prevent people doing that if they are daft enough to do so. Giving people control means every individual has control, not just the sensible ones. That’s one of the 'con’s of any system that allows individual control and individual privacy. The 'pro’s far outweigh the 'con’s however.
So you are saying that people have full freedom to what they want to do and no limitations ?
There should be some restriction or block for most crimes going on from comments to all rubbish things for eg: you may know last four years of religion or politics hate and too much violence on social internet and this last continuous nine years and so, we are seeing the worst of people when people around the world started to have availability of internet connections and the temptations on it.
If it is over control also its bad and freedom doesn’t mean it should be full granted but wisely use and be stable that an individual should not be hurt.