# Is Solid primarily a privacy platform or an app platform **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussion\ **Created:** [January 22, 2020, 11:07am UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/is-solid-primarily-a-privacy-platform-or-an-app-platform/2579 "2020-01-22T11:07:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 16
**Author:** ![aschrijver](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.solidproject.org/aschrijver/32/463_2.png) [@aschrijver](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/aschrijver)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 10:29pm UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/is-solid-primarily-a-privacy-platform-or-an-app-platform/2579/16 "2020-05-17T22:29:54Z")
> [@jeffz](#): > > The problem with asserting a dichotomy between privacy and apps is that, in Solid, there is no privacy without apps. > [@happybeing](#): > > I think most people will have just one pod, so I wonder if you are clear on what pod is? > [@markjspivey](#): > > to this specific point, a potential historical precedence here may be regarding email or social media in general etc … There is no clarity on the scope of Solid! As I see it: > **Solid is a specification that allows control (i.e. privacy) of your own data in a decentralized fashion** To me that means: spec + reference impls (libs) + examples. The first is important, the rest is just supportive. Remove the confusion that Solid is everything between spec and Internet vNext. - [v] pods are solid - apps are examples, not solid - linked data is not solid And refering to @markjspivey: - smtp is not Gmail or Protonmail - activitypub is not Mastodon or PixelFed They merely _use_ it! A social network, a chat app, a cms, a what-have-you is not Solid, but _use_ it as one of the many, many other things they’ll use. If the `solid project` keeps saying " Hey, did you see my SolidThis, and my SolidThat, and how we move to a SolidWorld?", then someone else will just say “Nice, I have this NodeJsThis and TypesciptThat, or WhateverIHave, and maybe take a look later, once my project is done”. Please help me. Do I see all this wrong? **Edit** : It may be that Solid as I describe it is a ‘tough sell’, as it comes with some prerequisites, like Linked Data, which constitutes a world in itself and there needs to be broader linked data / semantic web adoption for Solid to surf to the top. Plus there are no good decentralized identity solutions yet (but this I see as broader than Solid). But I see Solid as comparable to [GraphQL](https://graphql.org/), a de-facto standard that became popular driven (initially) by a commercial company (a tech giant in this case) and an attached community. GraphQL needed as prerequisites broad JSON and REST adoption and fixed important issues with the latter. I worked with in Java from the early beginning. They had a full spec, very clean documentation, and a high-quality javascript reference implementation. Let’s look how GraphQL - after years of further development - describes itself: > **_GraphQL - A query language for your API_** > _Describe your data, ask what you want, get predictible results_ --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/is-solid-primarily-a-privacy-platform-or-an-app-platform/2579)._