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Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

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Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#31

Post by frabcus »

koevet wrote: post #6

As much as I like the idea (and the people behind it), I have an hard time seeing how this can succeed. The idea of pod reminds me of the self-hosting movement: people -including myself - host a bunch of services to avoid sharing fundamental data, like email, GPS-history or contacts. Still, "self-hosters" interact with all the big personal data hoarder out there (FB, Google, the many ad and tracking companies) which…

It just needs to be there and be good enough, so when the time comes and people are upset enough for whatever reason, regulators can instruct FAANG to use it.

Usage meanwhile by non-US public sector, corporations (worried about industrial espionage), ethical consumers, could be enough to get it to that sate.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#32

Post by atoav »

koevet wrote: post #6

As much as I like the idea (and the people behind it), I have an hard time seeing how this can succeed. The idea of pod reminds me of the self-hosting movement: people -including myself - host a bunch of services to avoid sharing fundamental data, like email, GPS-history or contacts. Still, "self-hosters" interact with all the big personal data hoarder out there (FB, Google, the many ad and tracking companies) which…

≥ 2) the majority of internet users are oblivious to the data collection tactics employed by half the internet and I can't picture folks raising pitchforks for "pods" to become a standard.

Usually purely technical solutions to societal problems won't bring you far. It is still not bad to have them, because they essentially show what would be possible, if we just wanted. Helps in discussion as well if of all people Tim Berners-Lee was part of it.

However: we have issues of education around the topic and our jurisdictive let's the big internet corps get away with too much. Starting with taxes and privacy down to the societal effects their algorithms have.

What ad networks do is the digital equivalent of filming and spying on people who walk by your storefront. What they do, how they do it and the effects it has on society are wrong. Online Advertisement is probably one of the big drivers of the political division we are seeing lately, because controversial topics produce more engagement and more engagement is what people selling ads want.

If you'd explain the current practise to common folk, most of them clearly don't think is okay. This means both education and media isn't doing their job.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#33

Post by tchaffee »

fulafel wrote: post #12

> at this point, I feel that I should only work on things that matter to society I wish more people in tech did this.

Don't they already? The people in society pay for what matters to them. I think the real truth trying to get out here is that we wish what matters to society were different.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#34

Post by dataduck »

atoav wrote: post #32
koevet wrote: post #6

As much as I like the idea (and the people behind it), I have an hard time seeing how this can succeed. The idea of pod reminds me of the self-hosting movement: people -including myself - host a bunch of services to avoid sharing fundamental data, like email, GPS-history or contacts. Still, "self-hosters" interact with all the big personal data hoarder out there (FB, Google, the many ad and tracking companies) which…

≥ 2) the majority of internet users are oblivious to the data collection tactics employed by half the internet and I can't picture folks raising pitchforks for "pods" to become a standard. Usually purely technical solutions to societal problems won't bring you far. It is still not bad to have them, because they essentially show what would be possible, if we just wanted. Helps in discussion as well if of all people Ti…

> What ad networks do is the digital equivalent of filming and spying on people who walk by your storefront.

Which is also legal, at least in the UK, and not many people have a problem with it. I think well-known, major abuses will need to occur before people take this seriously.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#35

Post by ianopolous »

TeeWEE wrote: post #22

Solid's goal is nice but its solution ia based on RDF and semantic web. Those technologies failed to take off for a web 3.0. I dont see this going to take off either. Turtle is just another syntax for RDF because XML is too verbose.... Anyway i do see a lot of value in IPFS, its solving a different problem, but it's related. It could allow for storing private data encrypted in a non centralized way, having the pinned…

If you like the idea of an encrypted personal data store on ipfs, then check out Peergos. That's exactly what we're doing.

https://book.peergos.org

https://github.com/peergos/peergos

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#37

Post by bluesign »

This kills the innovation or puts too much power to the first innovator.

- if solid will dictate a protocol for data, it should cover the common denominator: so if you have your email on gmail now, lets say solid is covering basic email structure, i can move my email data to another provider, but about my filters? On other tiny stuff that gmail builds on email

- if i invent something new in a chat app, lets say stickers. I implemented that. (Should I ask solid to update protocol for this) Now all other chat apps supporting solid, has to follow my lead? Interoperability will be hell to manage.

- even with the limited number of browsers, we couldn't manage to unify the protocol. Protocol stuff is real hard.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#38

Post by e12e »

TeeWEE wrote: post #22

Solid's goal is nice but its solution ia based on RDF and semantic web. Those technologies failed to take off for a web 3.0. I dont see this going to take off either. Turtle is just another syntax for RDF because XML is too verbose.... Anyway i do see a lot of value in IPFS, its solving a different problem, but it's related. It could allow for storing private data encrypted in a non centralized way, having the pinned…

> Turtle is just another syntax for RDF because XML is too verbose....

I'm not so sure that alone should be dismissed - html was "just" a simpler docbook. And json too, if you squint, is just a dumbed down xml - in the sense that both represent graph/documents.

[ed: and xml was just a simpler sgml].

Both json and html dropped some important features from xml/sgml, but I think the resulting simplicity (both good and bad) had a hand in the success of first the web, and later the "json-rest" web 2.0.

(I have a hard time calling it REST as it retains quite few of the benefits of rests, and modern SPAs aren't really REST at all, but rather "move able code" - more architecturally like office documents with rich macros than REST).

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#39

Post by atoav »

dataduck wrote: post #34
atoav wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

≥ 2) the majority of internet users are oblivious to the data collection tactics employed by half the internet and I can't picture folks raising pitchforks for "pods" to become a standard. Usually purely technical solutions to societal problems won't bring you far. It is still not bad to have them, because they essentially show what would be possible, if we just wanted. Helps in discussion as well if of all people Ti…

> What ad networks do is the digital equivalent of filming and spying on people who walk by your storefront. Which is also legal, at least in the UK, and not many people have a problem with it. I think well-known, major abuses will need to occur before people take this seriously.

It is not legal in Germany and Austria at least. The UK is one of the most surveilled places in Europe.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#40

Post by fauigerzigerk »

koevet wrote: post #30
zuckluni wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an existential threat to FAANG. Because they could request access to your data to perform their AI/analytics on it to then be able to deliver you value-added personalized services. Most likely these sort of brokered accesses will be the purview of third-party data brokers who will handle your pods for you.

Why would people accept their data to be harvested? I guess money could be an incentive, which is quite interesting because it would fundamentally revert the power dynamics between the big data abuser and the people. Lots of food for thought.

>Why would people accept their data to be harvested?

Same as always, to get services free of charge. If I want my photos to be searchable, I'm going to have to let someone run their AI on them.

As an iPhone user, I have my photos in iCloud. I'm paying for it through high device prices and storage fees.

But as Apple's business model is to sell expensive devices, they won't let me securely share my photos with my wife who doesn't own any Apple devices.

So I also upload all my photos to Google Photos where I'm benefitting from a far better AI as well.

If my photos were stored in a Solid pod, I could grant access to various service providers who use various different business models, but it would be far more flexible and easier to switch.

That's what I'm hoping for. Not sure if it will ever come to pass, but it's worth a try.

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