5 ms·

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

by gklitt 6y ago

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/ https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2017/12/20/paradigm-shifts-f... 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 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 scratch? I've explored this a bit with my Wildcard project, where users can store annotations in a "spreadsheet" that is linked to a web page: https://www.geoffreylitt.com/wildcard/ https://www.geoffreylitt.com/wildcard/

er4hn 6y ago
I think that with a problem statement of "I want to control my data and how third parties use my data" Solid makes a good deal of sense. Personal information should be owned by you and you should be able to take it from service to service as you see fit. The two problems that I find with Solid, based on my own limited understanding are as follows: (1) Services don't need to give back to Solid - Services, Facebook, your medical provider, whatever else you are using, does not have a clear incentive to provide their own data on you back to your Solid pod. It is far easier for them to keep it: it lets them do offline processing, and it keeps you more locked into their service. I'm not sure how one would solve this issue. (2) Much like mobile apps with excessive permissions and the abuse of tracking elements - I don't see how Solid prevents the abuse of its service. If Solid catches on and Facebook has a permissions check saying "Let Facebook do 'SELECT * FROM .;' on your Solid data, how many people will click yes? Even if you request it each time, once the data is copied out, it is out there and can be packaged and resold, used to build advertising profiles, etc. You're back to the original problem of not being able to limit access to your data, but with extra steps. Where I think this could be solved is by Solid not providing the data directly, but by being a service which can answer queries. Queries could be items such as "Does user like cats? y/n/m". Or it could be something like "Here is an anonymized dataset being built out. Please add your input to it." Replies to queries could also have an amount of deliberately wrong or misleading answers given, depending on the service and endpoint to obfuscate your personal data on places that don't need it. While this can still be abused, it raises the bar for abuse.
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  The problem with Facebook is not that they are using user uploaded content, is that the user has no clue whatsoever the data is being collected by means of tracking actions (likes, time spend on a video...) and cross site tracking and what is going to be used for (Ads, make the site more addictive ?, recommendations?). It's an issue of collecting user generated data without awareness, and with lack of transparency, that's very different from "I upload a picture and I share it with my closest friends only" for that issue, one could argue Facebook has a fair enough UI/UX. I'm assuming that what would go into a pod is decided by the user and therefore is a separate issue. I imagine the permission you are describing more like, "Let Facebook Access your Wedding photo's Pod" if well implemented, and "Let Garage Band access your Music pod".
  - khimaros 6y ago
    another problem is that once data has been accessed, it can be stored and analyzed. maybe we need to play big tech's own game and apply ToS to any data we allow them to access?
    - er4hn 6y ago
      When you put it that way it feels like Solid is a technical solution to a legislative issue.
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        Or perhaps a complement to a legislative issue. Solid could be an easy tool/set-of-practices that allows companies to abide by data privacy laws.
    - infogulch 6y ago
      This exactly. This problem can never get better until normal individuals have the capacity and leverage to demand reasonable contractual limits on the use of their data, and the confidence that these limits will be enforced. That's a tall order when we don't even have the language to describe what data-usage limits even mean.
Blake_Emigro 6y ago
March 2020 I was investigating Solid for legaltech projects I'm designing. I thought it sounded like a great way for a user to create a master profile that can be used with multiple web apps and service providers, while maintaining more control over their data. I engaged with the Solid community and with Ruben, who was very nice and helpful. However, I found that the tech was still at the hobby stage, and I didn't really think the toys being built on it were very compelling. It was very disappointing considering it was already a couple years old and had a lot of hype around it. I hope that this moves forward, but it's almost a year later and seems to be the same story.
- gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
  there's a "joke" on the dweb groups that "SOLID is freenet with less caching of other people's illegal content"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sbazerque 6y ago
Look at Hyper Hyper Space! https://github.com/hyperhyperspace https://github.com/hyperhyperspace Its goals are similar, the approach is more pragmatic (p2p data layer using standard web browsers and webrtc).
gibsonf1 6y ago
We are launching both a Solid server TrinPod and a suite of productivity apps with TrinApp launchpad - free versions will be available end of the month https://graphmetrix.com https://graphmetrix.com

by gklitt 6y ago

er4hn 6y ago

I think that with a problem statement of "I want to control my data and how third parties use my data" Solid makes a good deal of sense. Personal information should be owned by you and you should be able to take it from service to service as you see fit. The two problems that I find with Solid, based on my own limited understanding are as follows: (1) Services don't need to give back to Solid - Services, Facebook, your medical provider, whatever else you are using, does not have a clear incentive to provide their own data on you back to your Solid pod. It is far easier for them to keep it: it lets them do offline processing, and it keeps you more locked into their service. I'm not sure how one would solve this issue. (2) Much like mobile apps with excessive permissions and the abuse of tracking elements - I don't see how Solid prevents the abuse of its service. If Solid catches on and Facebook has a permissions check saying "Let Facebook do 'SELECT * FROM .;' on your Solid data, how many people will click yes? Even if you request it each time, once the data is copied out, it is out there and can be packaged and resold, used to build advertising profiles, etc. You're back to the original problem of not being able to limit access to your data, but with extra steps. Where I think this could be solved is by Solid not providing the data directly, but by being a service which can answer queries. Queries could be items such as "Does user like cats? y/n/m". Or it could be something like "Here is an anonymized dataset being built out. Please add your input to it." Replies to queries could also have an amount of deliberately wrong or misleading answers given, depending on the service and endpoint to obfuscate your personal data on places that don't need it. While this can still be abused, it raises the bar for abuse.

alfonsodev 6y ago
The problem with Facebook is not that they are using user uploaded content, is that the user has no clue whatsoever the data is being collected by means of tracking actions (likes, time spend on a video...) and cross site tracking and what is going to be used for (Ads, make the site more addictive ?, recommendations?). It's an issue of collecting user generated data without awareness, and with lack of transparency, that's very different from "I upload a picture and I share it with my closest friends only" for that issue, one could argue Facebook has a fair enough UI/UX. I'm assuming that what would go into a pod is decided by the user and therefore is a separate issue. I imagine the permission you are describing more like, "Let Facebook Access your Wedding photo's Pod" if well implemented, and "Let Garage Band access your Music pod".
- khimaros 6y ago
  another problem is that once data has been accessed, it can be stored and analyzed. maybe we need to play big tech's own game and apply ToS to any data we allow them to access?
  - er4hn 6y ago
    When you put it that way it feels like Solid is a technical solution to a legislative issue.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      Or perhaps a complement to a legislative issue. Solid could be an easy tool/set-of-practices that allows companies to abide by data privacy laws.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    This exactly. This problem can never get better until normal individuals have the capacity and leverage to demand reasonable contractual limits on the use of their data, and the confidence that these limits will be enforced. That's a tall order when we don't even have the language to describe what data-usage limits even mean.

Blake_Emigro 6y ago

March 2020 I was investigating Solid for legaltech projects I'm designing. I thought it sounded like a great way for a user to create a master profile that can be used with multiple web apps and service providers, while maintaining more control over their data. I engaged with the Solid community and with Ruben, who was very nice and helpful. However, I found that the tech was still at the hobby stage, and I didn't really think the toys being built on it were very compelling. It was very disappointing considering it was already a couple years old and had a lot of hype around it. I hope that this moves forward, but it's almost a year later and seems to be the same story.

gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
there's a "joke" on the dweb groups that "SOLID is freenet with less caching of other people's illegal content"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sbazerque 6y ago

Look at Hyper Hyper Space! https://github.com/hyperhyperspace https://github.com/hyperhyperspace Its goals are similar, the approach is more pragmatic (p2p data layer using standard web browsers and webrtc).

gibsonf1 6y ago

We are launching both a Solid server TrinPod and a suite of productivity apps with TrinApp launchpad - free versions will be available end of the month https://graphmetrix.com https://graphmetrix.com