Hmmm… what makes you think so?
If an pod contains our “naked” data; every apps with access can create a copy of our data and use it for any purpose. Having an intermediate “routing” app we could encrypt or change our visible data (may be using format preserving encryption like the banks and insurers are already doing).
Sorry I was referring to:
Great platform “based on the principles of Solid” but apparently not using Solid
Looking on the website of startinblox I see that your system can connect to different data sources and separates app and data. I do not get the impression that each freelancer/user has its own pod with his/her system interaction data stores locally.
They do. We basically provide a “POD” per organization at the moment. The spec allows it.
Within that organization server, users do get virtual PODs, meaning a webid with their associated data. We’ll reach the point where each user actually gets a separate virtual storage in the future but that not 2021.
Hubl is Solid compliant, we spent a great deal of effort and took part in many discussions to make sure it is.
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Great. I will highly recommend your platform to my sons and daughter. They are all deep into our IT industry.
Hi - I’d be interested in discussing a use case for Solid to act as the framework for a decentralised Facebook Connect, where users can share their email address and possibly other demographic details with a publisher, like a premium news brand. The current process is that if a user lands on a news article (like the Wall Street Journal or Guardian), and they want to read the article, they need to register in order to get an allotment of articles to read. This is a design issue - in that the process of filling out forms and agreeing to consent across each publisher is not worth the time.
It seems like Solid has a basic framework for a user to store their details once, and a mechanism for the user to share (and revoke) their details with a publisher. This is an important piece of functionality that is needed so that individual publishers do not have to rely on centralized login mechanisms by their competitors Google and Facebook.
I’d like to discuss the feasibility of this use case with the Solid community and hear some reasons why this idea should or should not be pursued with Solid.
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Solid could be used as ID for all web services that don’t need to know your real identity (services handling purchases and money). That includes all discussion forums, information services such as IMDB and LastFM, and many others. So instead of “login with Facebook” you could choose “login with Solid”.
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For a publisher business, it seems like they could have different offerings depending on the following scenarios:
- User shares an anonymous hash, and gets an allotment of free articles per month, and tailored articles based on their reading history.
- User shares an email, and gets everything above, but greater allotment of free articles, as well as tailored newsletters and news alerts.
- User shares their identity and credit card details, and can subscribe to the publication (there could be many tiers of service here)
The key is for a button at the top of a publisher page to allow a user to share details with a single click.
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Oops, I completely missed this reply 2 weeks ago. Absolutely, I’d love to chat and see if this idea might have any legs - I can dm you to have a quick chat. I’m a software developer and business analyst with not much of a business head so it would likely start out as a POC to see if it interests any others.
Pimping out our personal data to corporations has been a concern of mine for a while but haven’t had the time or incentive to try building something in Solid on my own. Perhaps it will just take a couple of people getting together to start with a small simple goal.
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I don’t know why they are messing around with healthcare, what a slow torturous nightmare. Partner with Brave browser, BAT tokens, share info with advertisers, that’s what it’s built for and what a lot of people want. I say this with some conviction, as I wrote a brief business plan for what is now Solid back in1996. Just dug it up, pretty much the same thing.
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Is anyone here planning to attend the Internet identity Conference 4/20-22 (https://internetidentityworkshop.com)? I’m interested in prospective adoption thresholds and drivers (market, regulatory and otherwise) for Solid and decentralized identity, generally and as they may relate to particular killer app prospects. Would anyone attending be interested in joining a session on mapping these out?
Thanks to mthorner for starting this discussion and everyone for their contributions.
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It is so strange to see this post because these were topics we discussed at IIW around 2006. My notes from the event look like a todo list that’s finally being worked on 14 years later it. I’ll check out the conference, thanks for the reminder.
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I won’t go into details but just summarize an idea of architecture :
- You no longer post a picture in Instagram and another one on Facebook and texts on Twitter but everyting on your Pod.
- Then you allow some publishers such as a Twitter-like or/and a FB-like to access your data. They publish them on their platform in the way they want but in respect of one rule : They publish links to your data but are not allowed to download them.
That’s it ! Consequences of this architecture :
- The same content can be published by the Instagram-like, the FB-like and your family social media.
- At any time you can add a new publisher that will access all or a part of your data. Publishing authorization can be revoqued at any time, you keep your data.
- As data is available as links syndication tools can be developed. If you leave a publisher syndication tools will allow you to not leave your friends.
- As data is available without having to store it on big servers anybody can create his own social media publisher, with friends or family. No doubt a lot of free publishing tool will be developped.
- A new ecosystem should appear with social media publishers that will pay for your publications, or other you will pay to be published, with or without ads, respectful of your personal data (and this is the real goal, see Shoshana Zuboff’s book) or not, as well as social media search engines, social media networks, social media of social media etc…
This is so simple and so aligned with Solid philosophy that I guess either somebody already talk about this (however I only found 1 related topic in the forum) or I am wrong somewhere.
Related post : New decentralized social network, specialized in sharing public and Creative Common content. But it is only about video, creative-common and downloading in place of linking
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If I’m understanding you correctly the only difference in your approach and Solid is that in yours monolithic centralized software giants are the ones who actually make your data public and therefore have a huge amount of control over. Without laws, there is nothing to prevent them from storing your data. In Solid, instead it works the way you describe but the data can only be accessed by apps that you specifically approve and those apps make it available to others. The apps are not centralized and there are incentives for new apps. The Solid approach seems much more likely to address Zuboff’s issues than your approach.
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Hi Jeff, thanks for your answer. I think we agree on 90% but the difference is worth discussing.
If I’m understanding you correctly the only difference in your approach and Solid is that in yours monolithic centralized software giants are the ones who actually make your data public and therefore have a huge amount of control over.
Today if I want to post on both Twitter and Mastodon I have to login twice and copy/paste the post wich may include one or more pictures on both apps. What I will not do, because I am lazy and most of my friends are on Twitter. If I create my post and only have to select Twitter and Mastodon as targets in one click I will do it. And so Mastodon will get more posts, and as my friends know they will get my posts on Mastodon they will go there.
Without laws, there is nothing to prevent them from storing your data.
But terms and condition of my subscription to a publisher can do. Actually I don’t care as long I keep the “original” data and can post it where I want.
In Solid, instead it works the way you describe but the data can only be accessed by apps that you specifically approve and those apps make it available to others.
In my proposal - which of course is based on Solid - social media are the apps you are talking about and of course they need to be approved to get my data. But on the contrary of apps they act as scenarizeurs and push you data as classical apps act as browsers and you have to pull data. Actually both kind of classical apps and social media can coexist.
The apps are not centralized and there are incentives for new apps.
Same for new social media that can appear because posts of users will no longer be exclusive to a specific social media.
The Solid approach seems much more likely to address Zuboff’s issues than your approach.
I recommand using Solid but I think there is the need of a layer that act as agoras where people can meet. And the point that Zuboff denounces is not the existence of this layer but that it is monopolistic and its perversion.
Your idea is great, but unfortunately the big social platforms base their business model on storing, mining and selling our data. They will simply not allow us to convert them to simple temporary display engines. The moment we own and control our data - their present business model is gone.
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what about a decentralized “small ads” / “classified” / offers app ? https://scenaristeur.github.io/bon-prix/about
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@Smag0 you might like the idea of OfferBots by Andrew Mackie (the problem-analysis side is very cool and a unique perspective, solution-side needs more work and a different approach). This would lend itself for a combined ActivityPub + Solid solution! If this can be implemented, I am sure there’s a killer app in it. See also Offerbots (to bypass aggregators of attention) at HTC, and Offers Unchained at SocialHub).
I come at this from the perspective of auditable sharing of user profile data more than “one image on the POD/blockchain shared by all.” Taking back ownership of our data is a big topic, and while throwing memes in PODS for sharing is useful, it’s not a priority this early on, at least that’s how I see it today.
Posting to your pod: This is how well-established tools like Social Pilot and Buffer function. Use POD as content store, an app like Buffer uses API’s to connect and publish across multiple channels. This is decade-old tech that any junior marketer uses daily.
Side note: Who’s talking to 1Password and LastPass about using them as a front end for PODs? Huge installed base, reasonable UI, etc.
Allow some publishers to access your data: This is EXACTLY what the current NFT market insanity is all about. NBA does this and the company with the tech just raised $300M. This is why the NFT market could influence “photos on the blockchain/POD” more than anything we’re doing here TBH.
Getting Facebook to change it’s TOS for this will take a decade as they spent billions on stuff like Haystack, so off to Congress we go for a few years.
If I drag and drop a new photo into Messages, the photo gets uploaded to my POD and Messages app knows to display the image url. At the same time I’m emailing and texting images that aren’t on the blockchain so it’s a big mess unless the entire Windows/Mac/Linux ecosystem has this functionality built into the core codebase. That’s what, five years out once we know what we’re asking them to do? People want this built into the OS like sharing buttons are, not so much an external app.
As data is available without having to store it on big servers: PODS will definitely end up on some sort of AWS, we’re not going to have nine billion different datastores out there (say three devices, 3 billion people), that’s insane. Cloud doesn’t have to be the enemy of our data management. It’s about access and ownership functionality, not the location of hard drives.
A new ecosystem should appear with social media publishers: This is already here and similar to what Brave browser does via Basic Attention Tokens.