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Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

solidproject.org

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Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#51

Post by gameman144 »

How does this work in practice, I didn't see a worked example on the site.

For instance, say I give Solid Social access to my contacts and my photos. At that point, Solid Social can access all my contacts and photos, copy them, and then do whatever they please with them (even if I later revoke permissions). In the current web, I upload my photos to a website, which I then trust not to use them inappropriately. In the Solid world, it seems like I give photo-access to a website (which could then copy them) and trust that website to not use them inappropriately. This seems like the current system, but with extra steps.

In terms of data compatibility, I think that there's a potentially compelling case (user-driven standards vs. bespoke handling per website), but again I fail to see the practical implications. For example, if I upload a video to a website and it becomes incompatible with other websites, my assumption is that there's some reason for that step. It could be out of walled-garden malice, but it also could be that the website is encoding it and co-locating it in such a way that it'll be really fast for other users to watch. In Solid-world, it's unclear what the flow here should be: does the website only get to consume the videos as I have them on my pod (potentially terrible performance)? Does the website get to still do optimizations (and potentially keep artifacts of my video after I revoke permissions?)

I like the drive towards consistent standards for interfacing with data, but other than that I could just be missing the important bits here (and please let me know if so), and I fail to see the positive change in most web-based user-experiences for the most part.

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#52

Post by angst_ridden »

What Solid really needs to do is create a page that I could show to my nontechnical friends where it explains how it works and what services/sites support it. Without those two things being front and center, I can't see Solid being anything more than a niche interest for technical folks.

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#53

Post by alfonsodev »

er4hn wrote: post #43
gklitt wrote: post #34

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://…

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, yo…

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".

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#54

Post by hackpert »

Last month, I was working with some people on building a decentralized health data store for vaccine waitlists (a la Mailbox) and certificates and we were looking at Solid as one potential backbone. I really admire what they’re trying to do. However, as some other people have observed, their example applications are quite awful and not very useful(?) and they seem to be marketing it to end users, not developers. In my experience, most end users do not care about privacy and security until 1) they either lose a lot of money or other valuables 2) some hacker comes knocking on their door for extortion and they lose a lot of money or other valuables.

It would be so much better if they just made it so easy and simple for developers to use that it becomes their default, and not rely on hope that end users will suddenly start using decentralized apps in the name of privacy.

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#55

Post by Blake_Emigro »

gklitt wrote: post #34

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://…

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.

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#56

Post by khimaros »

alfonsodev wrote: post #53
er4hn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, yo…

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, t…

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?

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#58

Post by gcblkjaidfj »

er4hn wrote: post #43
gklitt wrote: post #34

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://…

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, yo…

> 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?

Excellent point. For the answer, just look at how many people give FB app permission to all their contact and photos.

Hint, if you add an observer on android, you will see that whatsapp and fb app, both scan your contact list every few minutes!

If you allow anything (access my contact list so i can find person X), they will take it literally everything they can (you entire contact list, every few minutes).

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#59

Post by gcblkjaidfj »

Blake_Emigro wrote: post #55
gklitt wrote: post #34

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://…

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 re…

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

Re: Solid Project: All of your data, under your control

#60

Post by er4hn »

khimaros wrote: post #56
alfonsodev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

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?

When you put it that way it feels like Solid is a technical solution to a legislative issue.
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