6 ms·

Solid – A set of conventions and tools for decentralized social applications

153 points by edwinjm 10y ago

wodenokoto 10y ago
I feel like the description of this is either so high-level that it doesn't make sense, or too close to the ground to really get an idea about what it is. Is it an alternative to HTML? To http? Is it a set of guidelines for data handling? Is it a web-framework like Django or a framework like react?
- pfooti 10y ago
  Ah, from their github repo: Specifically, Solid is: A tech stack -- a set of complementary standards and data formats/vocabularies that together provide capabilities that are currently available only through centralized social media services (think Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/many others), such as identity, authentication and login, authorization and permission lists, contact management, messaging and notifications, feed aggregation and subscription, comments and discussions, and more. A Specifications document that describes a REST API that extends those existing standards, contains design notes on the individual components used, and is intended as a guide for developers who plan to build servers or applications. A set of servers that implement this specification. A test suite for testing and validating Solid implementations. An ecosystem of social apps, identity providers and helper libraries (such as solid.js) that run on the Solid platform. A community providing documentation, discussion (see the solid gitter channel), tutorials and talks/presentations. -- https://github.com/solid/solid https://github.com/solid/solid
bluesilver07 10y ago
How does this prevent developers from still copying your data and storing a copy on their own servers for faster access?
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  That's a feature of the Web, which allows applications like Google and the Wayback Machine. If you don't want it copied all over the world and archived forever, don't put it online.
  - mankash666 10y ago
    Bah. This project was pitched as a alternative to free-for-all data access. So your answer is silly
    - adyus 10y ago
      I don't think that's the point of the project, rather decentralization and breaking free from proprietary data silos. The point is that you decide where your data sits and who has access to it, not that it's free-for-all. Unless I misunderstood your point completely...
    - fizzbatter 10y ago
      So you think this is being pitched as a form of DRM? Somehow preventing content from being copied/stolen? Personally, i take "data ownership" as a hosting issue. Where it originates from, where it lives. Not specifically protecting anyone from copying it. Eg, Facebook is a sort of vendor lock-in. You end up entrenched in their platform, because your content cannot be swapped to, so, Google+ with ease. If you had true ownership of the data, you could theoretically swap as your desires dictate. If your idea of ownership was true (assuming i'm understanding you correctly!), then that would mean Twitter, Facebook, etc don't actually own your data either. Because you can copy your Facebook data. There is no lockin with Facebook, and our problem with ownership is that someone else in your friends-list can copy/steal your data?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Twisell 10y ago
  It don't that's not the point. By what I understand you could choose to host your media on one server in a standardized way and share them via as many other services that you want. For instance imagine Facebook, Twitter and Dropbox comply to this standards. You put your content on your Dropbox and share it on FB and Twitter. Now with solid if you erase your data on Dropbox its erased on FB and Tweeter too. If you delete your Facebook post, the tweet don't have to be erased as well. And should you want to leave Dropbox for whatever reason you can download standardized data and upload it to a new solid compliant server of your choice and keep link working by simply updating url to your new server. I haven't read the git now but this is how I picture such a stack. And this is definitely the missing link of today social networks in my opinion. So basically it's about not being kept captive because of the contents you've put in today's social media.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    But part of the appeal of the captivity is that you trust FB (for instance) to limit control of your data. If I upload a picture and say "Friends only", I can trust that Facebook won't allow a friend to share it wider. If I just have my data, even if there's a way to specify it's for friends only, there's no limit to the # of apps that I would have to hope wouldn't abuse or mistake that, instead of just one (FB).
    - Twisell 10y ago
      Well I haven't read the specs yet hopefully they include a privacy layer. But I don't see why solid would be worst than today. You will still have to trust the different a services you link to your data. But unlike today if one service mess-up badly you will be able to switch to some other service. Should we learn tomorrow that Facebook is evil, currently most of the users would rather keep going rather than delete their account and loose everything. (Full disclosure I left Facebook one year ago)
- justrossthings 10y ago
  >RE: "Facebook/other apps will just store your data after you login anyway, so what's the point?" Right now, just having user is data is only 'OK'; up-to-date user data is the real goal. People, particularly every marketer's favorite demographic, teenagers, change their tastes and interests drastically and frequently. Just knowing Jenny liked Justin Bieber when she was 12 is almost useless when trying to market to Jenny at age 15. Into the future 'old' data will further reduce in value as app developers make up-to-date and other hyper-targeted data more available.
sdegutis 10y ago
Some relevant things: Solid on Github: https://github.com/solid/ https://github.com/solid/ Solid server on top of the file-system in NodeJS: https://github.com/solid/node-solid-server https://github.com/solid/node-solid-server Plume[1]: https://github.com/deiu/solid-plume https://github.com/deiu/solid-plume [1] Plume is a 100% client-side blogging platform, built using Solid standards, in which data is decoupled from the application itself. This means that you can host the application on any Web server, without having to install anything -- no database, no messing around with Node.js, it has 0 dependencies! It also means that other similar applications will be able to reuse the data resulting from your posts, without having to go through a complicated API.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Ciantic 10y ago
Protocol for data sharing requires also a good product. I wish they get one, but I'm afraid this could end up like "Semantic Web", there is very little business incentive to make data sharing between services easy. Data after all is one of the most important assets for companies.
- Twisell 10y ago
  IMHO thinking of data as assets is what kept many company out of crowdsourcing opportunities. Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap for instance are wonderful example of successful open datasets. And what are social network if not personals public datasets. Now is maybe just the right time to make them more open.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    >Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap for instance are wonderful example of successful open datasets. Wikipedia definitely has a nice dataset, but they don't seem like a successful business. They always have the ads at the top of the pages asking for donations and talking about how poor they are.
technofiend 10y ago
I think the issue Solid attempts to address is ownership of your data, but as people suggest below if the data is readily available via API how much have you really gained? Facebook will simply write a web crawler that downloads all your data because it's public anyway. What seems to be missing is the web-of-trust component that controls who sees what data and in what context; i.e. your data shouldn't really be public but protected and limited by roles you control. The wedge will then of course be Facebook paying Facebook customers to mine data by subverting trust relationships. There doesn't seem to be a simple fix for sharing of data once it leaves your system. You can't tag it and encrypt it so only friends / family / whomever may read it, and if you could there's no way to prevent the unencrypted data's use. The only way to retain your privacy is never sharing the data in the first place. You may substitute Facebook with the name of the datamining and marketing company of your choice.
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  > if the data is readily available via API how much have you really gained? Facebook will simply write a web crawler that downloads all your data because it's public anyway. I don't really care what companies like Facebook do with such publically-accessible data, since I don't use any of their services anyway. What I would gain is access to such data, which I'm currently excluded from by their silo's EULAs.
  - technofiend 10y ago
    I hear you, but I do care what is done with my data. We're just different use cases. You don't directly use any of Facebook's services, but if you surf the web without some very strict cookie management I guarantee Facebook collects data about you. You're part of their service even if you're not a customer.
    - chriswarbo 10y ago
      > if you surf the web without some very strict cookie management I guarantee Facebook collects data about you. Unfortunately you're right. I block as many Facebook domains as possible in my hosts file, and browse with noscript, ublock, w3m, etc. to try and keep their tracking to a minimum. > You're part of their service even if you're not a customer. It's disturbing that Facebook gathers information on almost everyone. It's even more disturbing that so many people sign up for an account, and spend so much time providing so much more information. In reality very few people are actually customers of Facebook, as in, perform financial transactions with them.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
I think these "open web" movement people are mistaken about what made the web successful. The web succeeded because it let people connect more easily by removing friction. Of course the "openness" part was important in gaining initial adoption, but today "adoption" is not a problem anymore. Most of these open web movement people just want to make things open without any immediate, clear, and tangible benefit to end-users. Even if they did, these always come with caveats--inconvenience. Introducing inconvenience for the sake of making things more open is going backwards, and that's why it never gets any traction. I'm not saying being open is stupid, I'm just saying it's not gonna happen if all these guys think about is "how are we going to make the web more open?", they will keep building the same shit that no mainstream user cares about. If you want to make the web more open, build something that provides a unique unprecedented benefit, important enough that people will use it no matter how inconvenient it is, like Bitcoin, or Bittorrent.
- formula1 10y ago
  You are an ISP provider A social network "connect me" offers voip and is backed by billions in venture funding, including your own modest investment of a million. Its ok. A new social network arises and people are really into the bohemian feel. It also is a voip except its meant to be extremely high bitrate so that music doesnt lose as much qualify. Its nane is "Life Vibrations". What have insentive do you have to keep competition fair when you are invested in a competitor? When ventures explicitely pay you to be unfair, what insentive do you have to be fair? How much can you charge an individual to allow your ip to be publicly available? $100 a month? $400 a month? Forget the days of homegrown websites. The new economy is rising the barrier to entry. Another example is censorship Open web is as much about ensuring monopolies and centrelazion of power dont corrupt a very vibrant ecosystem. The web is as American as capitalism. Free and full of opportunity. The second you give a company the ability to say "no", you are now bound to the limitations of each ISP since some may provide your content only if you guve them a reason. And theres cases like the timewarner/comcast merger where they are effectively the same company but the law prevents them having the same name.
  - cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
banach2 10y ago
I love this idea. Imagine you have a bunch of emails and a bunch of contacts that you'd like to preserve. You're using Gmail and for some reason they've put a bad taste in your mouth. If Gmail were built upon these open foundations then you could simply download your solid archive, and hand it to someone else to take care of. Regarding the complaints about trust; that should be the realm of litigation. We put trust in our licencing of source code. Your data should be licenced in a similar fashion, and if the handler of your data fails to comply then they shouldn't be allowed to operate.
- thringsaround 10y ago
  ? I did exactly this with an entire Google account the other day: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout It's all standard formats. Not sure what else you could want aside from a literal Gmail clone.
  - banach2 10y ago
    You're right, but that doesn't include licencing. There's no guarantee that Google won't retain any of your data. Additionally, there aren't many online services which you can just expect to work after handing them that data.
    - thringsaround 10y ago
      Fair point, it's not "the open web" or whatever. But they do, practically speaking, do everything you need-- and it speaks to other comments about whether "the open web" is really offering something people want. (I certainly do expect any service I'm likely to use to import .vcf or .mbox files without much grief.)
  - larl 10y ago
    This works for Google, but not everyone.
jms18 10y ago
> Solid is modular and extensible and it relies as much as possible on existing W3C standards and protocols. That's great! A good place to start would be here -- https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fsolid.mit.edu%2F https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fsolid.mit.edu.... It's a nitpick, I know. I view source. I always view source. There a lot of things that made the web a success (the REST principles underlying the architecture, the "a" tag, the non-draconian "error" handling, right-place-at-right-time), and one of them was "view source." And I always view source. And then I pick at nits. This one advertises "[relying on] existing W3C standards", so I brought it up. I usually keep my mouth shout.
linkmotif 10y ago
Cool. Would like to see more! Also wondering how this might relate to or complement a project like IPFS (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/)
larl 10y ago
How is this different from sandstorm.io?
- eitland 10y ago
  As I read it this is about data formats, sharing and reusability. sandstorm.io is about running apps on shared hosts safely.

153 points by edwinjm 10y ago

I feel like the description of this is either so high-level that it doesn't make sense, or too close to the ground to really get an idea about what it is. Is it an alternative to HTML? To http? Is it a set of guidelines for data handling? Is it a web-framework like Django or a framework like react?

pfooti 10y ago
Ah, from their github repo: Specifically, Solid is: A tech stack -- a set of complementary standards and data formats/vocabularies that together provide capabilities that are currently available only through centralized social media services (think Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/many others), such as identity, authentication and login, authorization and permission lists, contact management, messaging and notifications, feed aggregation and subscription, comments and discussions, and more. A Specifications document that describes a REST API that extends those existing standards, contains design notes on the individual components used, and is intended as a guide for developers who plan to build servers or applications. A set of servers that implement this specification. A test suite for testing and validating Solid implementations. An ecosystem of social apps, identity providers and helper libraries (such as solid.js) that run on the Solid platform. A community providing documentation, discussion (see the solid gitter channel), tutorials and talks/presentations. -- https://github.com/solid/solid https://github.com/solid/solid

bluesilver07 10y ago

How does this prevent developers from still copying your data and storing a copy on their own servers for faster access?

chriswarbo 10y ago
That's a feature of the Web, which allows applications like Google and the Wayback Machine. If you don't want it copied all over the world and archived forever, don't put it online.
- mankash666 10y ago
  Bah. This project was pitched as a alternative to free-for-all data access. So your answer is silly
  - adyus 10y ago
    I don't think that's the point of the project, rather decentralization and breaking free from proprietary data silos. The point is that you decide where your data sits and who has access to it, not that it's free-for-all. Unless I misunderstood your point completely...
  - fizzbatter 10y ago
    So you think this is being pitched as a form of DRM? Somehow preventing content from being copied/stolen? Personally, i take "data ownership" as a hosting issue. Where it originates from, where it lives. Not specifically protecting anyone from copying it. Eg, Facebook is a sort of vendor lock-in. You end up entrenched in their platform, because your content cannot be swapped to, so, Google+ with ease. If you had true ownership of the data, you could theoretically swap as your desires dictate. If your idea of ownership was true (assuming i'm understanding you correctly!), then that would mean Twitter, Facebook, etc don't actually own your data either. Because you can copy your Facebook data. There is no lockin with Facebook, and our problem with ownership is that someone else in your friends-list can copy/steal your data?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Twisell 10y ago
It don't that's not the point. By what I understand you could choose to host your media on one server in a standardized way and share them via as many other services that you want. For instance imagine Facebook, Twitter and Dropbox comply to this standards. You put your content on your Dropbox and share it on FB and Twitter. Now with solid if you erase your data on Dropbox its erased on FB and Tweeter too. If you delete your Facebook post, the tweet don't have to be erased as well. And should you want to leave Dropbox for whatever reason you can download standardized data and upload it to a new solid compliant server of your choice and keep link working by simply updating url to your new server. I haven't read the git now but this is how I picture such a stack. And this is definitely the missing link of today social networks in my opinion. So basically it's about not being kept captive because of the contents you've put in today's social media.
- mcphage 10y ago
  But part of the appeal of the captivity is that you trust FB (for instance) to limit control of your data. If I upload a picture and say "Friends only", I can trust that Facebook won't allow a friend to share it wider. If I just have my data, even if there's a way to specify it's for friends only, there's no limit to the # of apps that I would have to hope wouldn't abuse or mistake that, instead of just one (FB).
  - Twisell 10y ago
    Well I haven't read the specs yet hopefully they include a privacy layer. But I don't see why solid would be worst than today. You will still have to trust the different a services you link to your data. But unlike today if one service mess-up badly you will be able to switch to some other service. Should we learn tomorrow that Facebook is evil, currently most of the users would rather keep going rather than delete their account and loose everything. (Full disclosure I left Facebook one year ago)
justrossthings 10y ago
>RE: "Facebook/other apps will just store your data after you login anyway, so what's the point?" Right now, just having user is data is only 'OK'; up-to-date user data is the real goal. People, particularly every marketer's favorite demographic, teenagers, change their tastes and interests drastically and frequently. Just knowing Jenny liked Justin Bieber when she was 12 is almost useless when trying to market to Jenny at age 15. Into the future 'old' data will further reduce in value as app developers make up-to-date and other hyper-targeted data more available.

sdegutis 10y ago

Some relevant things: Solid on Github: https://github.com/solid/ https://github.com/solid/ Solid server on top of the file-system in NodeJS: https://github.com/solid/node-solid-server https://github.com/solid/node-solid-server Plume[1]: https://github.com/deiu/solid-plume https://github.com/deiu/solid-plume [1] Plume is a 100% client-side blogging platform, built using Solid standards, in which data is decoupled from the application itself. This means that you can host the application on any Web server, without having to install anything -- no database, no messing around with Node.js, it has 0 dependencies! It also means that other similar applications will be able to reuse the data resulting from your posts, without having to go through a complicated API.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Ciantic 10y ago

Protocol for data sharing requires also a good product. I wish they get one, but I'm afraid this could end up like "Semantic Web", there is very little business incentive to make data sharing between services easy. Data after all is one of the most important assets for companies.

Twisell 10y ago
IMHO thinking of data as assets is what kept many company out of crowdsourcing opportunities. Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap for instance are wonderful example of successful open datasets. And what are social network if not personals public datasets. Now is maybe just the right time to make them more open.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  >Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap for instance are wonderful example of successful open datasets. Wikipedia definitely has a nice dataset, but they don't seem like a successful business. They always have the ads at the top of the pages asking for donations and talking about how poor they are.

technofiend 10y ago

I think the issue Solid attempts to address is ownership of your data, but as people suggest below if the data is readily available via API how much have you really gained? Facebook will simply write a web crawler that downloads all your data because it's public anyway. What seems to be missing is the web-of-trust component that controls who sees what data and in what context; i.e. your data shouldn't really be public but protected and limited by roles you control. The wedge will then of course be Facebook paying Facebook customers to mine data by subverting trust relationships. There doesn't seem to be a simple fix for sharing of data once it leaves your system. You can't tag it and encrypt it so only friends / family / whomever may read it, and if you could there's no way to prevent the unencrypted data's use. The only way to retain your privacy is never sharing the data in the first place. You may substitute Facebook with the name of the datamining and marketing company of your choice.

chriswarbo 10y ago
> if the data is readily available via API how much have you really gained? Facebook will simply write a web crawler that downloads all your data because it's public anyway. I don't really care what companies like Facebook do with such publically-accessible data, since I don't use any of their services anyway. What I would gain is access to such data, which I'm currently excluded from by their silo's EULAs.
- technofiend 10y ago
  I hear you, but I do care what is done with my data. We're just different use cases. You don't directly use any of Facebook's services, but if you surf the web without some very strict cookie management I guarantee Facebook collects data about you. You're part of their service even if you're not a customer.
  - chriswarbo 10y ago
    > if you surf the web without some very strict cookie management I guarantee Facebook collects data about you. Unfortunately you're right. I block as many Facebook domains as possible in my hosts file, and browse with noscript, ublock, w3m, etc. to try and keep their tracking to a minimum. > You're part of their service even if you're not a customer. It's disturbing that Facebook gathers information on almost everyone. It's even more disturbing that so many people sign up for an account, and spend so much time providing so much more information. In reality very few people are actually customers of Facebook, as in, perform financial transactions with them.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago

I think these "open web" movement people are mistaken about what made the web successful. The web succeeded because it let people connect more easily by removing friction. Of course the "openness" part was important in gaining initial adoption, but today "adoption" is not a problem anymore. Most of these open web movement people just want to make things open without any immediate, clear, and tangible benefit to end-users. Even if they did, these always come with caveats--inconvenience. Introducing inconvenience for the sake of making things more open is going backwards, and that's why it never gets any traction. I'm not saying being open is stupid, I'm just saying it's not gonna happen if all these guys think about is "how are we going to make the web more open?", they will keep building the same shit that no mainstream user cares about. If you want to make the web more open, build something that provides a unique unprecedented benefit, important enough that people will use it no matter how inconvenient it is, like Bitcoin, or Bittorrent.

formula1 10y ago
You are an ISP provider A social network "connect me" offers voip and is backed by billions in venture funding, including your own modest investment of a million. Its ok. A new social network arises and people are really into the bohemian feel. It also is a voip except its meant to be extremely high bitrate so that music doesnt lose as much qualify. Its nane is "Life Vibrations". What have insentive do you have to keep competition fair when you are invested in a competitor? When ventures explicitely pay you to be unfair, what insentive do you have to be fair? How much can you charge an individual to allow your ip to be publicly available? $100 a month? $400 a month? Forget the days of homegrown websites. The new economy is rising the barrier to entry. Another example is censorship Open web is as much about ensuring monopolies and centrelazion of power dont corrupt a very vibrant ecosystem. The web is as American as capitalism. Free and full of opportunity. The second you give a company the ability to say "no", you are now bound to the limitations of each ISP since some may provide your content only if you guve them a reason. And theres cases like the timewarner/comcast merger where they are effectively the same company but the law prevents them having the same name.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago

banach2 10y ago

I love this idea. Imagine you have a bunch of emails and a bunch of contacts that you'd like to preserve. You're using Gmail and for some reason they've put a bad taste in your mouth. If Gmail were built upon these open foundations then you could simply download your solid archive, and hand it to someone else to take care of. Regarding the complaints about trust; that should be the realm of litigation. We put trust in our licencing of source code. Your data should be licenced in a similar fashion, and if the handler of your data fails to comply then they shouldn't be allowed to operate.

thringsaround 10y ago
? I did exactly this with an entire Google account the other day: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout It's all standard formats. Not sure what else you could want aside from a literal Gmail clone.
- banach2 10y ago
  You're right, but that doesn't include licencing. There's no guarantee that Google won't retain any of your data. Additionally, there aren't many online services which you can just expect to work after handing them that data.
  - thringsaround 10y ago
    Fair point, it's not "the open web" or whatever. But they do, practically speaking, do everything you need-- and it speaks to other comments about whether "the open web" is really offering something people want. (I certainly do expect any service I'm likely to use to import .vcf or .mbox files without much grief.)
- larl 10y ago
  This works for Google, but not everyone.

jms18 10y ago

> Solid is modular and extensible and it relies as much as possible on existing W3C standards and protocols. That's great! A good place to start would be here -- https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fsolid.mit.edu%2F https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fsolid.mit.edu.... It's a nitpick, I know. I view source. I always view source. There a lot of things that made the web a success (the REST principles underlying the architecture, the "a" tag, the non-draconian "error" handling, right-place-at-right-time), and one of them was "view source." And I always view source. And then I pick at nits. This one advertises "[relying on] existing W3C standards", so I brought it up. I usually keep my mouth shout.

linkmotif 10y ago

Cool. Would like to see more! Also wondering how this might relate to or complement a project like IPFS (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/)

larl 10y ago

How is this different from sandstorm.io?

eitland 10y ago
As I read it this is about data formats, sharing and reusability. sandstorm.io is about running apps on shared hosts safely.