Ruben Verborgh, a researcher in decentralized web technology and Linked Data, writes about Solid, APIs, personal data and the problems with centralized platforms.
HN links it in discussions of Solid and GDPR; commenters like the philosophy but say concrete specifics and progress are hard to find.
1) I am a big fan of the general philosophy of Solid. But as others have mentioned, I've found it extremely difficult to understand specifics of the proposal or to see concrete progress, based on publicly available resources.
The best place I've found is Ruben Verborgh's blog (he's a researcher who's affiliated with Solid). For example here's a nice post which goes into more detail on the ideas behind Solid:
https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2017/12/20/paradigm-shifts-for-the-decentralized-web/
2) In terms of applications, I'd personally like to see more of a focus on productivity applications, rather than so much focus on social media. Better interop between cloud SaaS apps would be valuable to businesses and professionals, and would sidestep many thorny challenges like decentralized moderation.
As a concrete starting point: what if I could store my Google Docs text files on my own storage layer, and edit them in realtime using a variety of editor apps? This would resemble my ability to edit a .txt file on my computer in vim or TextEdit, but would port that metaphor to the world of modern online collaboration.
Here's a short Twitter thread I wrote on this topic:
https://twitter.com/geoffreylitt/status/1355255162626068482
3) I'm very curious to see more incremental paths from the current web to a decentralized approach. For example, what if we could start annotating existing websites with private data and sharing those annotations P2P, rather than starting over from…
> It really is an incredible public utility provided you liberally mute/bloctk/unfollow all the petty fighting and find good people.
How do you find good people on Twitter? My interests are esoteric and as far as I can tell not represented on Twitter. I've read people assert that most every interest is covered on Twitter, but that's not even close to true as far as I can tell.
https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2012/10/25/social-media-as-spotlight-on-your-research/
> virtually every topic is covered. The connection between butterfly wings and sea snails? Check. The latest trends in space law? Check. In fact, every niche has its Tweeters because of the long tail effect. And if you’re researching something really rare and unique, well, congratulations—you get to be a pioneer as a first online news source on your topic!
I don't see a reason to be a "pioneer" on someone else's platform (with character limits, etc.) when I think publishing a website on my interests would better reach people with the same interests.
I think that we are about to see a new strain of F/LOSS motivations and advocacy emerge, centered on human rights and political freedom, anti-surveilance, privacy, resilience, and so on. On one level I expect it to continue the "redecentralize the web"[0][1][2] movement from a few years ago, but sideline the mostly cryptocurrency focused aspects of "web3"[3] in favor of the "fediverse"[4][5][6] and "local first software"[7].
[0] https://redecentralize.org/
[1] https://ruben.verborgh.org/articles/redecentralizing-the-web/
[2] https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet
[3] https://medium.com/@shevski/how-decentralised-are-you-a6539eeb27ff
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
[5] https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-the-fediverse-and-can-it-decentralize-the-web/
[6] https://thenewstack.io/why-developers-should-experiment-with-the-fediverse/
[7] https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
It makes me think of the idea of legibility[1]: it's hard to understand incredibly large and complicated systems, so the solution is to simplify, and then enforce that simplification. From a high-level perspective, it seems reasonable to surveil everyone, to help them. I think someone really can delude themselves into thinking that it's necessary, utilitarian-style.
Now, if we designed technology for humans, we'd realize that most humans have local networks of trust. E.g. I talk to my friend in person, she tells me her discord handle, now we've established trust. In addition, trust is something that's gradually built, not given all at once in a EULA[2].
[1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/
[2]: https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2024/10/15/trust-takes-time/
You'll be surprised to hear that developers like Linked Data. People starting with Linked Data development today are not burdened by the Semantic Web legacy and mistakes of the past. We've been working with front-end devs who have never seen RDF, and never will. They enjoy how Linked Data is able to cross borders and leads to more data than a centralized database could ever give you.
The confusion in your comment is that one would need RDF to do Linked Data. I've written about that misconception here: https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2018/12/28/designing-a-linked-data-developer-experience/
Don't get me wrong, the Semantic Web community has made mistakes and has not been developer-friendly. But we're not still stuck in the 90s. For instance, XML hasn't been a part of any of this for many years.
While doing that anyway would be an egregious breach of GDPR I wouldn’t put it past Facebook to do it. They could release the update that prompts users to accept the tracking with the threat of being denied service, maybe pay a fine for breaching the GDPR regulations, take some time to ‘fix’ the issue and push out a new update after enough people have accepted to make it worth their while. I know it’s much more complicated than that but considering how much trouble people apparently have trying to leverage the data retrieval or removal requests under the GDPR[0] it looks like they think they’re above the law and are willing to make an effort to avoid complying with it. I wonder how far they’re willing to push it.
[0] https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/